JMIR Mental Health
June 12, 2026
Polina Beloborodova, Lillian M. Smith, Kevin M. Riordan et al.
Background: Digital meditation-based interventions (MBIs) reach vast global audiences with millions of active users, yet concerns persist about the frequency and nature of adverse experiences (ie, AExs) occurring during meditation training. Some researchers have argued that AExs are substantially underdetected and reflect iatrogenic harm caused by meditation (ie, adverse effects [AEfs]). Others...
PsyArXiv
September 30, 2025
Christopher Timmermann, Tommaso Barba, James W. Sanders et al.
preprint
Meditation and psychedelics have separately been studied as powerful tools for probing consciousness through their capacity to deconstruct the sense of self. Yet, direct empirical comparisons remain scarce, particularly in expert meditators. Here, we report for the first time a case study in which an advanced meditator and Lama from the Mahāmudrā meditation tradition engaged in a traditional...
PLoS One
February 12, 2025
Zishan Jiwani, Simon B. Goldberg, Jack Stroud et al.
3 citations
INTRODUCTION: Meditation practice and psychedelic use have attracted increasing attention in the public sphere and scientific research. Both methods induce non-ordinary states of consciousness that may have significant therapeutic benefits. Thus, there is growing scientific interest in potential synergies between psychedelic use and meditation practice with some research suggesting that...
Translational Psychiatry
September 12, 2024
Christopher R. Nicholas, Matthew I Banks, Richard C Lennertz et al.
10 citations
Aspects of the acute experience induced by the serotonergic psychedelic psilocybin predict symptomatic relief in multiple psychiatric disorders and improved well-being in healthy participants, but whether these therapeutic effects are immediate or are based on memories of the experience is unclear. To examine this, we co-administered psilocybin (25 mg) with the amnestic benzodiazepine midazolam...
Mindfulness
October 1, 2023
Christine D Wilson-Mendenhall, John D. Dunne, Richard J. Davidson
Contemplative interventions designed to cultivate compassion are receiving increasing empirical attention. Accumulating evidence suggests that these interventions bolster prosocial motivation and warmth towards others. Less is known about how these practices impact compassion in everyday life. Here we consider one mechanistic pathway through which compassion practices may impact perception and...
The Oxford Handbook of Buddhist Practice
May 19, 2022
John D. Dunne
Abstract The scientific study of Buddhist and Buddhism-derived practices such as mindfulness meditation has accelerated dramatically since the start of the twenty-first century, and this dramatic increase in research emerges from a vibrant community of inquiry that often adopts the moniker of “contemplative science.” This chapter begins with a brief history of contemplative science, focusing on...
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 that suggest the persistence of electrophysiological coherence and connectivity in the brain of animals and humans reinforce the need for further investigation of the relationship between the brain’s activity and the dying process. Neuroscience is now in a position to empirically evaluate the extended process of dying and, more specifically,...
Frontiers in Psychology
2021
Christine D Wilson-Mendenhall, John D. Dunne
An emerging focus in affective science is the expertise that underlies healthy emotionality. A growing literature highlights emotional granularity - the ability to make fine-grained distinctions in one's affective feelings - as an important skill. Cross-sectional evidence indicating the benefits of emotional granularity raises the question of how emotional granularity might be intentionally...
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 incorporated into mental health interventions, and theoretical concepts associated with it have influenced basic research on psychopathology. Here, we review the current understanding of mindfulness meditation through the lens of clinical neuroscience, outlining the core capacities targeted by mindfulness meditation and mapping them onto cognitive and...
Neuropsychologia
July 21, 2018
Enrico Fucci, Oussama Abdoun, Anne Caclin et al.
58 citations
Non-dual meditation aims to undo maladaptive cognitive and affective patterns by recognizing their constructed and transient nature. We previously found high-amplitude spontaneous gamma (25-40 Hz) oscillatory activity during such practice. Nonetheless, it is unclear how this meditation state differs from other practices, in terms of perceptual information processing. Here, we hypothesized that...
American Psychologist
October 1, 2015
Antoine Lutz, Amishi P. Jha, John D. Dunne et al.
724 citations
There has been a great increase in literature concerned with the effects of a variety of mental training regimes that generally fall within what might be called contemplative practices, and a majority of these studies have focused on mindfulness. Mindfulness meditation practices can be conceptualized as a set of attention-based, regulatory, and self-inquiry training regimes cultivated for...
American Psychologist
2015
Anne Harrington, John D. Dunne
In the past 20 years, mindfulness therapeutic programs have moved firmly into the mainstream of clinical practice and beyond. As they have, we have also seen the development of an increasingly vocal critique. At issue is often less whether or not these mindfulness practices “work,” and more whether there is a danger in dissociating them from the ethical frameworks for which they were originally...
Child Development Perspectives
April 23, 2012
Richard J. Davidson, John D. Dunne, Jacquelynne S Eccles et al.
320 citations
Drawing upon research in neuroscience, cognitive science, developmental psychology and education, as well as scholarship from contemplative traditions concerning the cultivation of positive development, we highlight a set of mental skills and socio-emotional dispositions that we believe are central to the aims of education in the 21(st) century. These include self-regulatory skills associated...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
April 1, 2008
Antoine Lutz, Heleen A. Slagter, John D. Dunne et al.
Meditation can be conceptualized as a family of complex emotional and attentional regulatory training regimes developed for various ends, including the cultivation of well-being and emotional balance. Among these various practices, there are two styles that are commonly studied. One style, focused attention meditation, entails the voluntary focusing of attention on a chosen object. The other...