American Psychologist
January 1, 2006
B. Alan Wallace, Shauna L. Shapiro
606 citations
Mental health is not merely the absence of disease but the cultivation of positive well-being, an idea that clinical psychology has only recently begun to explore. The Buddhist tradition, with over 2,500 years of experiential and theoretical inquiry, offers insights into exceptional mental well-being and the treatment of psychological problems. Drawing on both Buddhist thought and Western experimental research, the authors present an innovative model for attaining mental well-being through the cultivation of four types of mental balance: conative, attentional, cognitive, and affective. This framework integrates ancient wisdom with modern science to expand the understanding of positive mental health.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
January 1, 2012
Gaelle Desbordes, Lobsang Negi, Thaddeus W W Pace et al.
445 citations
Eight weeks of mindfulness meditation training reduced right amygdala activation in healthy adults when viewing positive emotional images, even when they were not actively meditating. A compassion-based meditation program showed a trend toward increased right amygdala response to negative images, which correlated with lower depression scores. No changes occurred in a control group. The results suggest meditation training can alter emotional processing in the brain during ordinary, non-meditative states, indicating that such training may produce lasting, process-specific changes in mental function rather than only task-specific effects.
Current Directions in Psychological Science
April 1, 2005
Paul Ekman, Richard J. Davidson, Matthieu Ricard et al.
295 citations
Enduring happiness, or sukha in Tibetan Buddhism, is a state of flourishing that arises from mental balance and well-being, not from transient pleasures. Destructive emotions, such as hatred and craving, are seen as afflictive states that disrupt this balance, while nonafflictive emotions like compassion and loving-kindness support it. The Buddhist perspective challenges Western psychology to consider that lasting happiness can be cultivated through mental training and that emotions are not simply automatic reactions but can be transformed. This view raises questions for empirical research about how to measure and study such cultivated states and traits.
Psychology of Consciousness Theory Research and Practice
March 1, 2016
Anthony P Zanesco, Brandon G King, Katherine A Maclean et al.
61 citations
Intensive meditation training in focused attention and monitoring is associated with reduced mind wandering and less mindless reading during a complex cognitive task. In two longitudinal studies, participants completed a reading task that required ongoing error monitoring to detect semantic inconsistencies. In the first study, training participants were assessed before and after a 3-month shamatha meditation retreat and again 7 years later. In the second study, training and matched control participants were assessed before and after a 1-month insight meditation retreat. Across both studies, meditation training reduced lapses of attention while reading, suggesting that intensive meditation may help maintain attention over time.
Front Psychol
September 8, 2025
Anita Milicevic, Angela Blazely, Anatol Bragin et al.
2 citations
This work presents a theoretical and methodological framework for studying the mind by integrating first-person (subjective) and second-person (intersubjective) phenomenological inquiry with experimental methods and EEG data. It argues that combining introspective and mindful awareness practices with objective brain measurements can provide a more comprehensive understanding of consciousness than either approach alone. The paper outlines how such integration can bridge the gap between subjective experience and neuroscientific observation, offering a pathway to study mental phenomena that are otherwise inaccessible through purely third-person methods.
Manish Saggar, Brandon G King, Anthony Paul Zanesco et al.
1 citation
Intensive meditation training over three months produces replicable changes in brain electrical activity. Retreat participants who practiced focused attention meditation showed reduced beta-band brain wave power over front and back regions of the scalp during mindfulness of breathing. Individual alpha frequency also decreased across retreats, and the decrease was directly related to the amount of meditation practice. These changes in brain oscillatory patterns may underlie improvements in attention and cognition from contemplative practice.