American Psychologist
October 1, 2015
Antoine Lutz, Amishi P. Jha, John D. Dunne et al.
724 citations
Mindfulness meditation practices are a set of attention-based, regulatory, and self-inquiry training regimes used for wellbeing and psychological health. This article examines the construct of mindfulness in psychological research and reviews recent nonclinical work. Instead of proposing a single definition, mindfulness is interpreted as a continuum of practices involving states and processes that can be mapped into a multidimensional phenomenological matrix expressed in a neurocognitive framework. This matrix serves as a heuristic to guide next-generation research hypotheses from cognitive/behavioral and neuroscientific perspectives. The review identifies significant gaps in the literature and outlines new directions for research.
Annual Review of Clinical Psychology
December 11, 2018
Joseph Wielgosz, Simon B. Goldberg, Tammi R. A. Kral et al.
441 citations
Mindfulness meditation is increasingly used in mental health interventions and has influenced basic research on psychopathology. This review examines mindfulness meditation through clinical neuroscience, linking its core capacities to cognitive and affective constructs from the National Institute of Mental Health's Research Domain Criteria. Effective applications are noted for depression, anxiety, chronic pain, and substance abuse, with emerging work on attention disorders, traumatic stress, dysregulated eating, and serious mental illness. Priorities for future research include identifying mechanisms, refining methods, and improving implementation. Mindfulness meditation shows promise for interventions, especially for psychiatric comorbidity, and its successes and challenges offer lessons for integrating contemplative traditions with clinical science.
Child Development Perspectives
April 23, 2012
Richard J. Davidson, John D. Dunne, Jacquelynne S Eccles et al.
320 citations
A set of mental skills and socio-emotional dispositions—including self-regulation of emotion and attention, self-representations, and prosocial traits like empathy and compassion—are central to 21st-century education. These qualities can be strengthened through systematic contemplative practice, which induces plastic changes in brain function and structure, supporting prosocial behavior and academic success in young people. The authors call for focused programmatic research to determine which forms and frequencies of practice are most efficacious for which children and adolescents, and to document the neural changes induced.
Neuropsychologia
July 21, 2018
Enrico Fucci, Oussama Abdoun, Anne Caclin et al.
58 citations
Non-dual meditation, which aims to reduce maladaptive patterns by recognizing their transient nature, can downregulate automatic perceptual habits. EEG recordings from expert Buddhist practitioners and novices during Open Presence (OP) and Focused Attention (FA) meditation, plus a control state, showed increased gamma oscillatory power during both meditation states in experts. An interaction between states and groups emerged in the Mismatch Negativity (MMN) amplitude, with the MMN increasing during FA compared to OP in experts, while the opposite pattern occurred at the Late Frontal Negativity (LFN) latency. This suggests OP involves increased sensory monitoring and reduced perceptual inferences relative to FA.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 28, 2021
Dylan Thomas Lott, Tenzin Yeshi, N. Norchung et al.
18 citations
Recent EEG studies on the early postmortem interval suggest the persistence of electrophysiological coherence and connectivity in the brain of animals and humans, reinforcing the need for further investigation of brain activity during the dying process. Under the direction of the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, research was conducted in India on a postmortem meditative state (tukdam) cultivated by some Tibetan Buddhist practitioners, in which decomposition is putatively delayed. For healthy baseline and postmortem subjects, resting state EEG, mismatch negativity, and auditory brainstem response data were collected. Living subjects displayed well-defined MMN and ABR responses, but no recognizable EEG waveforms were discernable in any of the tukdam cases.
Translational Psychiatry
September 12, 2024
Christopher R. Nicholas, Matthew I Banks, Richard C Lennertz et al.
10 citations
Psilocybin, a serotonergic psychedelic, can relieve symptoms in several psychiatric disorders and improve well-being, but it was unclear whether these benefits arise during the acute experience or depend on later memory of it. In 8 healthy participants, psilocybin (25 mg) was co-administered with the amnestic benzodiazepine midazolam at a dose that allowed a conscious psychedelic experience while partially impairing memory for it. Higher midazolam doses and greater memory impairment tended to associate with lower salience, insight, and well-being from psilocybin. These results suggest memory plays a role in therapeutically relevant behavioral effects of psilocybin.
medRxiv
August 28, 2024
Zishan Jiwani, Simon B. Goldberg, Jack Stroud et al.
3 citations
preprint
Most meditators who use psychedelics perceive them as beneficial for their meditation practice. Among 863 regular meditators (practicing at least three times weekly for the past year) who also used psychedelics, machine learning identified four factors most likely to predict this positive perception: greater frequency of psychedelic use, setting intentions before use, higher agreeableness, and having used N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT). The model explained about 27% of the variance. The findings suggest that intentional and personality factors may shape how psychedelics influence meditation, but causality remains unestablished.
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
June 13, 2024
Christopher R. Nicholas, Matthew I. Banks, Richard C Lennertz et al.
3 citations
preprint
Co-administering the amnestic benzodiazepine midazolam with psilocybin in 8 healthy participants partially impaired memory for the psychedelic experience while still allowing a conscious experience to occur. The degree of memory impairment was inversely associated with salience, insight, and well-being induced by psilocybin. These results suggest that memory of the acute psychedelic experience contributes to therapeutically relevant behavioral effects. Because midazolam blocks memory by blocking cortical neural plasticity, it may also help evaluate how the pro-neuroplastic properties of psychedelics contribute to their therapeutic activity.
PLoS One
February 12, 2025
Zishan Jiwani, Simon B. Goldberg, Jack Stroud et al.
1 citation
Most meditators who also use psychedelics report that the drugs improve their meditation practice. In a survey of 863 regular meditators who had used psychedelics, 73.5% said psychedelics positively influenced the quality of their meditation. Machine learning analysis of 53 variables identified the strongest predictors of this perceived benefit: greater frequency of psychedelic use, setting intentions before taking psychedelics, having an agreeable personality, and having used N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (N,N-DMT). The results suggest that individual traits and patterns of use shape whether psychedelics are seen as helpful for meditation, but causality cannot be established from this cross-sectional data.
JMIR Mental Health
June 12, 2026
Polina Beloborodova, Lillian M. Smith, Kevin M. Riordan et al.
About 28% of distressed college students and 10% of distressed US adults reported at least one adverse experience during a digital meditation program, but rates did not differ between those who completed guided meditations and those who did not, suggesting the experiences were not caused by meditation itself. Higher baseline depression, anxiety, loneliness, experiential avoidance, and perceived barriers to meditation predicted more adverse experiences. Among those reporting adverse experiences, roughly 90% were glad to have learned to meditate. Participants used diverse coping strategies, often drawing on skills taught in the program. The findings indicate that adverse experiences during meditation training may reflect preexisting distress rather than iatrogenic harm.
PsyArXiv
September 30, 2025
Christopher Timmermann, Tommaso Barba, James W. Sanders et al.
preprint
In an advanced meditator and Lama from the Mahāmudrā tradition, nondual meditation and a low dose (5 mg) of 5-MeO-DMT both produced timelessness, reduced labeling of sensory content, and diminished narrative self and thoughts. Both states showed increased alpha power and decreased gamma power in the brain, with neural overlap driven by posterior and right frontal gamma reductions. Nondual meditation uniquely emphasized recognition of nonduality and clarity of mind, while low-dose 5-MeO-DMT was characterized by visual imagery. High-dose (12 mg) 5-MeO-DMT produced sensory disconnection, seeing a 'white-light', and broad increases in gamma power. The findings suggest two distinct routes to self-dissolution: a 'saturation' route with increased neural firing and entropy (high-dose 5-MeO) and a 'subtractive' route with reduced firing and entropy (nondual meditation and low-dose 5-MeO).
American Psychologist
January 1, 2015
Anne Harrington, John D. Dunne
Over the past two decades, mindfulness-based therapies have become widely accepted in clinical practice and popular culture, but with that acceptance has come growing criticism. Critics worry that stripping mindfulness from its original ethical frameworks turns it into a commodity for goals like weight loss, workplace productivity, or better school performance—uses it was never intended to serve. Yet the clinical and religious communities have long used meditation pragmatically for healing. This essay steps back to ask why these concerns are surfacing now, aiming to understand the historical roots of the current discontent rather than simply joining the critique.
Mindfulness
October 1, 2023
Christine D Wilson-Mendenhall, John D. Dunne, Richard J. Davidson
Imagining compassionate scenarios during contemplative practices may train the brain to act compassionately in daily life. Mental imagery activates the same sensorimotor patterns as real experiences, so vividly simulating compassion could prime prosocial behavior. The authors review evidence from psychology on mental imagery and prosocial episodic simulation, then identify specific contemplative exercises that might construct such simulations. They conclude by suggesting future research on how compassion-based interventions influence perception and action outside of practice sessions.
The Oxford Handbook of Buddhist Practice
May 19, 2022
John D. Dunne
The scientific study of Buddhist and Buddhism-derived practices like mindfulness meditation has grown rapidly since the early 2000s, driven by a community known as contemplative science. This chapter traces the history of contemplative science, emphasizing the Mind and Life Institute's role, and examines the more controversial term 'Buddhist science'—the idea that Buddhism is uniquely compatible with science. Critiques of Buddhist science are shown to be inaccurate and exaggerated in at least one context. The chapter concludes that shared assumptions in both fields about the thematization of experience create significant challenges for researching contemplative practices.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2021
Christine D Wilson-Mendenhall, John D. Dunne
Emotional granularity—the ability to make fine-grained distinctions in one's feelings—is linked to healthy emotionality, but it is unclear whether it can be intentionally cultivated. Drawing on shared features of Buddhist philosophy and modern constructionist theory, the authors hypothesize that contemplative practices, particularly mindfulness-style practices originating in Buddhist traditions, may improve granularity. The paper outlines theoretical foundations and specific practices that could bolster this skill, then proposes future directions for empirical testing.
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
April 1, 2008
Antoine Lutz, Heleen A. Slagter, John D. Dunne et al.
Meditation encompasses a family of complex emotional and attentional regulatory training regimes developed for various ends, including the cultivation of well-being and emotional balance. Two commonly studied styles are focused attention meditation, which involves voluntarily focusing attention on a chosen object, and open monitoring meditation, which involves nonreactive monitoring of the content of experience from moment to moment. The potential regulatory functions of these practices on attention and emotion processes could have a long-term impact on the brain and behavior.
Christine D Wilson-Mendenhall, John D. Dunne, Richard J. Davidson
Compassion-based contemplative practices may increase everyday prosocial behavior by using mental simulation. When people vividly imagine a situation, the brain activates sensorimotor patterns similar to those during real experience. This simulation during imagery-based compassion practices could prime individuals to act compassionately. Evidence from psychology and neuroscience supports this hypothesis, and the paper reviews how specific compassion interventions construct such simulations. The authors conclude with future research directions on how these practices shape prosocial perception and action in daily life.