PLoS One
March 20, 2026
Katherine G Jones, Marlee M Vandewouw, Jitendra Awasthi et al.
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a severe psychiatric condition associated with high rates of suicide and poor interpersonal functioning. There are no FDA-approved medications, and evidence-based psychotherapies such as dialectical behavior therapy (DBT) are difficult to access and vulnerable to patient dropout. Novel treatment directions are urgently needed. Mindfulness is the core...
Psychiatry Research Neuroimaging
October 1, 2025
Clemens C C Bauer, Jiahe Zhang, Francesca Morfini et al.
Auditory hallucinations (AHs) affect 60-80 % of schizophrenia patients and often resist antipsychotic treatment. AHs involve superior temporal gyrus (STG) hyperactivity and disrupted auditory-cognitive control connectivity. Real-time fMRI neurofeedback (NFB) enables voluntary modulation of targeted brain regions. We previously showed STG-targeted NFB with mindfulness meditation reduced STG...
Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging
April 1, 2025
Vaibhav Tripathi, Ishaan Batta, Andre Zamani et al.
23 citations
The default mode network (DMN) is intricately linked with processes such as self-referential thinking, episodic memory recall, goal-directed cognition, self-projection, and theory of mind. In recent years, there has been a surge in the number of studies examining its functional connectivity, particularly its relationship with frontoparietal networks involved in top-down attention, executive...
Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging
April 1, 2025
Ruchika S Prakash, Anita Shankar, Vaibhav Tripathi et al.
13 citations
Network neuroscience is an interdisciplinary field, which can be used to understand the brain by examining the connections between its constituent elements. In recent years, the application of network neuroscience approaches to study the intricate nature of the structural and functional relationships within the human brain has yielded unique insights into its organization. In this review, we...
Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging
April 1, 2025
Saampras Ganesan, Fernando A Barrios, Ishaan Batta et al.
6 citations
Meditation is a family of ancient and contemporary contemplative mind-body practices that can modulate psychological processes, awareness, and mental states. Over the last 40 years, clinical science has manualized meditation practices and designed various meditation interventions that have shown therapeutic efficacy for disorders including depression, pain, addiction, and anxiety. Over the past...
Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging
April 1, 2025
Clemens C C Bauer, Daniel A Atad, Norman A. S. Farb et al.
3 citations
The observer effect (OE), the idea that observing a phenomenon changes it, has important implications across scientific disciplines involving measurement and observation. While often viewed as a confounding variable to control for, this paper argues that the OE should be seriously accounted for, explored, and systematically leveraged in research and clinical settings. Specifically, mindfulness...
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
November 1, 2024
Isaac N Treves, Kannammai Pichappan, Jude Hammoud et al.
35 citations
Trait self-report mindfulness scales measure one's disposition to pay nonjudgmental attention to the present moment. Concerns have been raised about the validity of trait mindfulness scales. Despite this, there is extensive literature correlating mindfulness scales with objective brain measures, with the goal of providing insight into mechanisms of mindfulness, and insight into associated...
Biological Psychiatry Global Open Science
November 1, 2024
Isaac N Treves, Hilary A Marusak, Alexandra Decker et al.
7 citations
Trait mindfulness-the tendency to attend to present-moment experiences without judgment-is negatively correlated with adolescent anxiety and depression. Understanding the neural mechanisms that underlie trait mindfulness may inform the neural basis of psychiatric disorders. However, few studies have identified brain connectivity states that are correlated with trait mindfulness in adolescence,...
bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology
September 15, 2024
Isaac N Treves, Keara D Greene, Zia Bajwa et al.
7 citations
preprint
Neurofeedback concurrent with mindfulness meditation may reveal meditation effects on the brain and facilitate improved mental health outcomes. Here, we systematically reviewed EEG and fMRI studies of mindfulness meditation with neurofeedback (mbNF) and followed PRISMA guidelines. We identified 10 fMRI reports, consisting of 177 unique participants, and 9 EEG reports, consisting of 242...
Brain plasticity
May 1, 2024
Trevor L. Cline, Francesca Morfini, E. Tinney et al.
BACKGROUND: A single bout of aerobic exercise can provide acute benefits to cognition and emotion in children. Yet, little is known about how acute exercise may impact children’s underlying brain networks’ resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC). OBJECTIVE: Using a data-driven multivariate pattern analysis, we investigated the effects of a single dose of exercise on acute rsFC changes in...
April 14, 2024
Vaibhav Tripathi, Ishaan Batta, Andre Zamani et al.
preprint
The default mode network (DMN) is intricately linked with processes such as self-referential thinking, episodic memory recall, self-projection, and understanding the mindset of others. Over recent years, there has been a surge in examining its functional connectivity, particularly its antagonistic relationship with frontoparietal networks (FPN) involved in top-down attention, executive...
Psychonomic Bulletin & Review
February 1, 2024
Nancy Tsai, Isaac N Treves, Clemens C C Bauer et al.
Mindfulness has been linked to a range of positive social-emotional and cognitive outcomes, but the underlying mechanisms are unclear. As one of the few traits or dispositions that are associated with both affective and cognitive benefits, we asked whether mindfulness is associated with affective and cognitive outcomes through a shared, unitary process or through two dissociable processes. We...
BMC Psychiatry
October 17, 2023
Paul A Bloom, David Pagliaccio, Jiahe Zhang et al.
17 citations
Adolescence is characterized by a heightened vulnerability for Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) onset, and currently, treatments are only effective for roughly half of adolescents with MDD. Accordingly, novel interventions are urgently needed. This study aims to establish mindfulness-based real-time fMRI neurofeedback (mbNF) as a non-invasive approach to downregulate the default mode network...
The World Journal of Biological Psychiatry
October 3, 2023
Pablo G. Vázquez, Susan Whitfield, Clemens C C Bauer et al.
8 citations
Objective During hypnosis, significant changes in the BOLD signal associated with the anterior default mode network (DMN) and prefrontal attentional systems have been reported as evidence of dissociation defined since Charcot. However, it remains uncertain whether these changes are mainly attributable to the hypnotic state per se or to the target suggestions used to verify subject's state...
September 23, 2023
Paul Alexander Bloom, David Pagliaccio, Jiahe Zhang et al.
preprint
Adolescence is characterized by a heightened vulnerability for Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) onset, and currently, treatments are only effective for roughly half of adolescents with MDD. Accordingly, novel interventions are urgently needed. This study aims to establish mindfulness-based real-time fMRI neurofeedback (mbNF) as a non-invasive approach to downregulate the default mode network...
2023 11th International Conference on Affective Computing and Intelligent Interaction Workshops and Demos
September 10, 2023
Clemens C C Bauer, Jiahe Zhang, Margaret Niznikiewicz et al.
Numerous mental illnesses have been connected to the dysregulation of particular brain systems. However, few therapy approaches are able to change such specific patterns of brain activity. Nevertheless, this may be accomplished using closed-loop brain imaging techniques like neurofeedback, which aim to directly alter brain activity. Yet, due to methodological issues and the lack of specificity...
Molecular Psychiatry
June 1, 2023
Jiahe Zhang, Jovicarole Raya, Francesca Morfini et al.
65 citations
Adolescents experience alarmingly high rates of major depressive disorder (MDD), however, gold-standard treatments are only effective for ~50% of youth. Accordingly, there is a critical need to develop novel interventions, particularly ones that target neural mechanisms believed to potentiate depressive symptoms. Directly addressing this gap, we developed mindfulness-based fMRI neurofeedback...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
August 25, 2022
Jiahe Zhang, Jovicarole Raya, Francesca Morfini et al.
4 citations
preprint
ABSTRACT Adolescents experience alarmingly high rates of major depressive disorder (MDD), however, gold-standard treatments are only effective for ~50% of youth. Accordingly, there is a critical need to develop novel interventions, particularly ones that target neural mechanisms believed to potentiate depressive symptoms. Directly addressing this gap, we developed a mindfulness-based fMRI...
eNeuro
2021
Ana Y Martínez, Athena Demertzi, Clemens C C Bauer et al.
Focused attention to spontaneous sensations is a dynamic process that demands interoceptive abilities. Failure to control it has been linked to neuropsychiatric disorders like illness-anxiety disorder. Regulatory strategies, such as focused attention meditation (FAM), may enhance the ability to control focused attention particularly to body sensations, which can be reflected on functional...
Psychiatry Research
January 14, 2020
Clemens C C Bauer, Kana Okano, Satrajit Ghosh et al.
87 citations
Auditory hallucinations (AHs) are one of the most distressing symptoms of schizophrenia (SZ) and are often resistant to medication. Imaging studies of individuals with SZ show hyperactivation of the default mode network (DMN) and the superior temporal gyrus (STG). Studies in SZ show DMN hyperconnectivity and reduced anticorrelation between DMN and the central executive network (CEN). DMN...
Behavioral Neuroscience
December 1, 2019
Clemens C C Bauer, Camila Caballero, Ethan Scherer et al.
The impact of mindfulness training on stress and associated brain plasticity has been shown in adults, whereas the impact of such training in the developing brain remains unknown. To address this open question, 40 middle-school children were randomized to either mindfulness or coding training (active control) interventions during the school day for eight weeks. Outcome measures were ratings of...
eNeuro
November 1, 2019
Clemens C C Bauer, Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli, J L Díaz et al.
While brain default mode network (DMN) activation in human subjects has been associated with mind wandering, meditation practice has been found to suppress it and to increase psychological well-being. In addition to DMN activity reduction, experienced meditators (EMs) during meditation practice show an increased connectivity between the DMN and the central executive network (CEN). However, the...
Neuroimage
February 26, 2016
R. Lutterveld, Sean Dae Houlihan, Prasanta Pal et al.
Background: Meditation is increasingly showing beneficial effects for psychiatric disorders. However, learning to meditate is not straightforward as there are no easily discernible outward signs of performance and thus no direct feedback is possible. As meditation has been found to correlate with posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) activity, we tested whether source‐space EEG neurofeedback from...