Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry
December 13, 2024
Rosana Freitas, Efstathia Stephanie Gotsis, Alexander T. Gallo et al.
14 citations
A systematic review of 24 clinical trials on psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy for clinical populations found that physical and psychological adverse events during and after sessions varied in how they were measured and reported. The most common adverse events included elevated blood pressure, headaches, nausea, vomiting, fatigue, and anxiety. Suicidal ideation and behavior occurred infrequently and mainly in participants with a prior history of suicidality. No deaths were attributed to psilocybin. The review calls for standardized definitions and reporting of adverse events in psychedelic trials and emphasizes the importance of screening for suicidality history. Overall, the safety profile is generally supported, but cautious optimism is warranted given the preliminary and heterogeneous data.
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
June 26, 2023
Neil W. Bailey, Ben D Fulcher, Bridget Caldwell et al.
7 citations
preprint
Meditators show more stable brain activity over time and a different pattern of voltage fluctuations, particularly in a central-parietal brain region, compared to non-meditators. Analyzing over 7,000 time-series features from resting EEG data of 49 meditators and 46 non-meditators, classifiers could identify meditators with 67% accuracy using features from one principal component. Meditators exhibited higher stationarity—more consistent statistical properties across short time segments—and an altered distribution of voltage values around the mean. Traditional band-power measures did not distinguish the groups. These findings suggest that meditation is associated with greater temporal stability in brain activity, which may relate to enhanced attentional stability.
Mindfulness
October 1, 2024
Brittany McQueen, Oscar W. Murphy, Paul B. Fitzgerald et al.
6 citations
Meditation experience is associated with higher oscillatory power and altered distributions of theta, alpha, and gamma brain waves, even after controlling for non-oscillatory 1/f activity. Forty-eight experienced meditators and 44 matched non-meditators provided resting EEG recordings. Results indicated differences in theta, alpha, and gamma oscillatory power between groups, primarily driven by differences in the distribution of neural activity rather than overall power across the scalp. These band-specific differences in oscillatory activity may be a mechanism through which meditation leads to neurophysiological benefits.
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
April 14, 2019
J.R. Payne, Oliver Baell, Harry Geddes et al.
6 citations
preprint
Long-term meditation practice may not produce lasting changes in certain brain markers of attention. Experienced mindfulness meditators and non-meditators showed no differences in behavioral performance or in neural markers such as theta phase synchronisation, P200, and P300 during a dichotic oddball listening task when neither group meditated before or during the session. Bayes Factor analysis found evidence against group differences for P200 and P300. The findings suggest that increased activity in these attention-related neural markers does not reflect stable, trait-like changes in a community sample of mindfulness meditators, adding nuance to understanding how much meditation is needed to alter specific brain processes.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
July 7, 2022
Neil W. Bailey, Harry Geddes, Isabella Zannettino et al.
5 citations
preprint
Experienced meditators exhibit distinct neural activity during performance monitoring and error-processing compared to non-meditators. Using a larger sample and more rigorous analyses than prior work, the study clarifies previously inconsistent findings, showing that long-term mindfulness practice is associated with altered brain responses when detecting and processing errors.
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
July 2, 2025
Neil W. Bailey, Aron T. Hill, Kate Godfrey et al.
4 citations
Mindfulness meditation, which trains attention on sensory experiences with nonjudgmental awareness, is thought to sharpen sensory processing and reduce top-down expectations. This study measured forward and backward traveling cortical alpha waves—proposed to reflect bottom-up inhibition and top-down inhibition, respectively—using electroencephalography in meditators and nonmeditators. During eyes-closed resting (97 participants) and a visual Go/No-go task (126 participants), meditators showed stronger forward traveling waves than nonmeditators in both conditions, and weaker backward traveling waves during rest. These neural differences may underlie enhanced attention and reduced mind-wandering associated with meditation, supporting models where mental training increases sensory awareness.
Mindfulness
February 1, 2025
Gregory Humble, Harry Geddes, Oliver Baell et al.
4 citations
Experienced mindfulness meditators show altered brain reactivity to magnetic stimulation of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex compared to non-meditators. In a sample of 15 meditators and 19 matched controls, transcranial magnetic stimulation combined with electroencephalography revealed that meditators had larger P60/N100 ratios in response to both left and right prefrontal stimulation, suggesting differences in inhibitory activity. The spatial distribution of neural activity around 300 milliseconds after stimulation also differed between groups, potentially reflecting altered connectivity between cortical and subcortical regions. These findings indicate that long-term mindfulness practice is associated with measurable neurophysiological changes in brain regions supporting attention and cognitive control.
Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry
December 11, 2025
Adem T. Can, Jim Lagopoulos, Paul B Fitzgerald et al.
2 citations
Ketamine is a fast-acting treatment for psychiatric conditions that do not respond to other therapies, but its use is controversial. Evidence shows it can reduce depression, anxiety, and suicidal thoughts, yet it also carries risks such as dissociation, dependence, and unknown long-term effects. Its reputation as a recreational drug adds stigma and regulatory hurdles. The authors argue that ketamine should be accepted as a legitimate psychiatric treatment, but its use must be guided by ethical principles—autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice—and supported by careful regulation and research, avoiding both unwarranted rejection and premature hype.
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
May 30, 2025
Michael Y. Wang, M. Prabhavi N. Perera, Paul B. Fitzgerald et al.
2 citations
preprint
Attrition rates for mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) for chronic pain average 30.1%, but vary widely depending on program structure. Stricter completion thresholds are linked to higher dropout: requiring at least six sessions to count as a completer yields a 49.7% attrition rate, versus 18% when only three sessions are required. Online delivery shows higher attrition (51.0%) than in-person delivery (25.6%), and individual formats have higher attrition than group formats. These findings suggest that modifying program structure—such as lowering session requirements, offering in-person sessions, and using group formats—could reduce participant withdrawal.
medRxiv
May 29, 2025
Paul B. Fitzgerald, Sara Webb, Nigel Christopher Denning et al.
2 citations
preprint
A single dose of psilocybin, but not MDMA, produced short-term psychological changes in healthy adults: reduced neuroticism, increased extraversion, and improvements in mindfulness and connectedness one week after dosing. Psilocybin also induced stronger mystical experiences than MDMA, and the magnitude of those experiences correlated with changes in connectedness and mindfulness, though not with personality changes. Participants preferred larger group settings for MDMA than for psilocybin. The findings suggest that psilocybin's psychological effects may be mediated by mystical-type experiences.
Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry
December 17, 2025
Megan Dutton, Paul Schwenn, Jules S Mitchell et al.
1 citation
Australia reclassified psilocybin as a Schedule 8 substance for treatment-resistant depression, a major policy shift. Implementation faces challenges: limited prescriber access, no Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods-listed products, lack of standardized training, and high costs. Ethical issues include informed consent, cultural safety, and therapeutic fidelity in trauma-informed care. Recommendations include national training accreditation, fidelity monitoring, and research into neurobiologically informed stratification models for treatment. These steps aim to ensure safe, equitable, and evidence-based integration of psilocybin-assisted therapy into Australia's mental health system.
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
November 1, 2023
Gregory Humble, Harry Geddes, Oliver Baell et al.
1 citation
preprint
Experienced mindfulness meditators show altered brain reactivity to transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) compared to non-meditators. When TMS was applied to the left and right dorsolateral prefrontal cortices, meditators had larger P60/N100 ratios in their brain responses, suggesting differences in cortical reactivity. No differences were seen in the individual P60 or N100 amplitudes. Preliminary evidence also indicated differences in the distribution of neural activity about 300 milliseconds after stimulation, possibly reflecting greater inhibitory activity in frontal regions and differences in cortico-subcortical reverberation. These findings contribute to understanding the neurophysiology of mindfulness.
Mindfulness
July 3, 2026
Aron T. Hill, Sung Wook Chung, Melanie Emonson et al.
Experienced meditators show distinct patterns of brain activity during attention tasks compared to non-meditators. Using EEG to measure event-related potentials, the study found that meditators had stronger N2 brain responses in fronto-midline areas during a difficult task requiring conflict monitoring. The P3 brain response, associated with attention, was distributed more frontally in meditators during an easy task, while non-meditators showed this pattern during the hard task. These differences suggest meditation experience is linked to altered attentional processing rather than specific conflict monitoring or stimulus expectancy processes.
bioRxiv Preprint Server
June 30, 2026
Mihir Nath, Nicco Reggente, Neil W. Bailey et al.
preprint
Deep meditation is associated with heightened mental clarity, which corresponds to a measurable increase in the brain's functional signal-to-noise ratio (f-SNR). In experienced Vipassana practitioners, deeper meditative states produced stronger and more consistent neural responses to auditory tones, as measured by event-related potentials and single-trial decodability. The findings suggest that deep meditation enhances the brain's ability to faithfully represent sensory signals while reducing irrelevant background neural activity.
medRxiv
May 29, 2025
Michael Y. Wang, Neil W. Bailey, Paul B. Fitzgerald et al.
preprint
People with chronic pain who practice mindfulness react faster on attention tasks than those with chronic pain who do not meditate. In a study of 128 participants, those with chronic pain who meditated showed quicker reaction times on both a general attention test and a pain-related attention test compared to non-meditators with chronic pain. Non-meditators relied more on cues to alert their attention. However, no difference was found between the pain groups in attentional bias to pain-related words. The findings suggest mindfulness practice may help mitigate some attention difficulties linked to chronic pain.
The Clinical Journal of Pain
July 1, 2026
Michael Yufeng Wang, M Prabhavi N Perera, Paul B. Fitzgerald et al.
A meta-analysis of 44 studies found that mindfulness-based interventions for chronic pain have a pooled attrition rate of 30.1%, with substantial variation across programs. Attrition was higher when programs required more sessions for completion (49.7% for >6 sessions vs. 18.0% for 3–4 sessions), when delivered online (51.0%) versus in person (25.6%), and in individual versus group formats. The authors suggest that program structure should be optimized to improve retention.
Neural networks : the official journal of the International Neural Network Society
March 1, 2024
Neil W. Bailey, Ben D Fulcher, Bridget Caldwell et al.
Over 7,000 time-series features extracted from resting EEG data distinguished meditators from non-meditators with 67% accuracy, but only in a central-parietal brain component. Meditators showed higher temporal stability (more consistent statistical properties across short time segments) and altered distribution of voltage values around the mean. Traditional band-power measures failed to differentiate the groups. The findings suggest that meditation is associated with greater attentional stability reflected in more stationary neural dynamics.