Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
June 1, 2016
David R. Vago, Fadel Zeidan
165 citations
Mind wandering and mindfulness are often described as divergent mental states with opposing effects on cognitive performance and mental health. Spontaneous mind wandering is typically associated with self-reflective states that contribute to negative processing of the past, worrying/fantasizing about the future, and disruption of primary task performance. On the other hand, mindful awareness is...
Journal of Neuroscience
March 16, 2016
Fadel Zeidan, Adrienne L Adler-Neal, Rebecca E Wells et al.
Mindfulness meditation, a cognitive practice premised on sustaining nonjudgmental awareness of arising sensory events, reliably attenuates pain. Mindfulness meditation activates multiple brain regions that contain a high expression of opioid receptors. However, it is unknown whether mindfulness-meditation-based analgesia is mediated by endogenous opioids. The present double-blind, randomized...
Journal of Neuroscience
November 18, 2015
Fadel Zeidan, Nichole M Emerson, Suzan R Farris et al.
Mindfulness meditation reduces pain in experimental and clinical settings. However, it remains unknown whether mindfulness meditation engages pain-relieving mechanisms other than those associated with the placebo effect (e.g., conditioning, psychosocial context, beliefs). To determine whether the analgesic mechanisms of mindfulness meditation are different from placebo, we randomly assigned 75...
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
April 24, 2013
Fadel Zeidan, Katherine T. Martucci, Robert A Kraft et al.
196 citations
Anxiety is the cognitive state related to the inability to control emotional responses to perceived threats. Anxiety is inversely related to brain activity associated with the cognitive regulation of emotions. Mindfulness meditation has been found to regulate anxiety. However, the brain mechanisms involved in meditation-related anxiety relief are largely unknown. We employed pulsed arterial...
PLoS One
May 15, 2012
A Chiesa, A Chiesa, A Chiesa et al.
217 citations
Two experiments examined the relation between mindfulness practice and cognitive rigidity by using a variation of the Einstellung water jar task. Participants were required to use three hypothetical jars to obtain a specific amount of water. Initial problems were solvable by the same complex formula, but in later problems (“critical” or “trap” problems) solving was possible by an additional...
Neuroscience Letters
April 6, 2012
Fadel Zeidan, J A Grant, C A Brown et al.
The cognitive modulation of pain is influenced by a number of factors ranging from attention, beliefs, conditioning, expectations, mood, and the regulation of emotional responses to noxious sensory events. Recently, mindfulness meditation has been found attenuate pain through some of these mechanisms including enhanced cognitive and emotional control, as well as altering the contextual...
Focus on Alternative and Complementary Therapies
May 12, 2011
Isabelle Marc, Fadel Zeidan, SK Johnson
Zeidan F, Johnson SK, Gordon NS, Goolkasian P. Effects of brief and sham mindfulness meditation on mood and cardiovascular variables. J Altern Complement Med 2010; 16: 867–73.
Journal of Neuroscience
April 6, 2011
Fadel Zeidan, Katherine T. Martucci, Robert A Kraft et al.
The subjective experience of one's environment is constructed by interactions among sensory, cognitive, and affective processes. For centuries, meditation has been thought to influence such processes by enabling a nonevaluative representation of sensory events. To better understand how meditation influences the sensory experience, we used arterial spin labeling functional magnetic resonance...
The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine
July 28, 2010
Fadel Zeidan, Susan K. Johnson, Nakia S Gordon et al.
323 citations
OBJECTIVES: Although long-term meditation has been found to reduce negative mood and cardiovascular variables, the effects of a brief mindfulness meditation intervention when compared to a sham mindfulness meditation intervention are relatively unknown. This experiment examined whether a 3-day (1-hour total) mindfulness or sham mindfulness meditation intervention would improve mood and...
Journal of Pain
March 2010
Fadel Zeidan, Nakia S Gordon, Junaid Merchant et al.
This study investigated the effects of brief mindfulness meditation training on ratings of painful electrical stimulation. In Experiment 1, we used a 3-day (20 min/d) mindfulness meditation intervention and measured pain ratings before and after the intervention. Participants' numerical ratings of pain to "low" and "high" electrical stimulation significantly decreased after meditation training....