Abstract IMPORTANCE Microdosing psilocybin may be a novel treatment for major depressive disorder (MDD). OBJECTIVE Assessing the antidepressant effects and safety of repeated low doses of psilocybin in participants diagnosed with MDD. DESIGN This was a Phase II, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial. SETTING The trial was conducted from July 2022 to December 2024 at two...
BACKGROUND: Major depressive disorder (MDD) is the leading cause of disability worldwide, affecting roughly 322 million people. Recently, doses of psilocybin have shown promise in treating mood disorders, sparking interest in other dosing practices. According to anecdotal reports and observational studies, microdosing psilocybin yields benefits to mental health; however, rigorously controlled...
Background: Major depressive disorder (MDD) is the leading cause of disability worldwide, affecting roughly 322 million people. Recently, doses of psilocybin have shown promise in treating mood disorders, sparking interest in other dosing practices. According to anecdotal reports and observational studies, microdosing psilocybin yields benefits to mental health; however, rigorously controlled...
Meditation is a family of ancient and contemporary contemplative mind-body practices that can modulate psychological processes, awareness, and mental states. Over the last 40 years, clinical science has manualized meditation practices and designed various meditation interventions that have shown therapeutic efficacy for disorders including depression, pain, addiction, and anxiety. Over the past...
The observer effect (OE), the idea that observing a phenomenon changes it, has important implications across scientific disciplines involving measurement and observation. While often viewed as a confounding variable to control for, this paper argues that the OE should be seriously accounted for, explored, and systematically leveraged in research and clinical settings. Specifically, mindfulness...
Interoception, the representation of the body's internal state, is increasingly recognized for informing subjective wellbeing and promoting regulatory behavior. However, few empirical reports characterize interoceptive neural networks, and fewer demonstrate changes to these networks in response to an efficacious intervention. Using a two-group randomized controlled trial, this pilot study...
Teachable self-help techniques, such as mindfulness, can reduce anxiety and improve mental well-being outcomes. However, people lack proper awareness of such techniques. In this work, we explore the design space of using online dissemination channels to help people learn about mindfulness. We investigate the potential benefits of using Large Language Models (LLMs) to improve awareness and...
Interoception is a collection of different representations of signals originating within the body. The way of perceiving these signals seems to be related to both emotion regulation and dysregulation, and its dysfunction is implicated across a variety of affective disorders. There is a growing body of research investigating the relationship between mindfulness meditation practices and...
BACKGROUND: Neural reactivity to dysphoric mood induction indexes the tendency for distress to promote cognitive reactivity and sensory avoidance. Linking these responses to illness prognosis following recovery from Major Depressive Disorder informs our understanding of depression vulnerability and provides engagement targets for prophylactic interventions. METHODS: A prospective fMRI...
Contemporary scholarship on mindfulness casts it as a form of purely non-evaluative engagement with experience. Yet, traditionally mindfulness was not intended to operate in a vacuum of dispassionate observation, but was seen as facilitative of eudaimonic mental states. In spite of this historical context, modern psychological research has neglected to ask the question of how the practice of...
Psychedelics have a checkered past, alternately venerated as sacred medicines and vilified as narcotics with no medicinal or research value. After decades of international prohibition, a growing dissatisfaction with conventional mental health care and the pioneering work of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Science (MAPS) and others has sparked a new wave of psychedelic...
This definition is laudable in many waysit casts a distinctively social lens upon wisdom, arguing that to be wise is to consider and at balance the common good against selfinterest. It requires that such consideration be excellent, which presumably allows for measurable, “gold standard” processes and outcomes. It also proposes that metacognition is a hallmark of wise reasoning (perspectival...
Meditation practices are often used to cultivate interoception or internally-oriented attention to bodily sensations, which may improve health via cognitive and emotional regulation of bodily signals. However, it remains unclear how meditation impacts internal attention (IA) states due to lack of measurement tools that can objectively assess mental states during meditation practice itself, and...
Background: To investigate whether usage of treatment-acquired regulatory skills is associated with prevention of depressive relapse/recurrence. Method: Remitted depressed outpatients entered a 24-month clinical follow up after either 8 weekly group sessions of cognitive therapy (CT; N = 84) or mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT; N = 82). The primary outcome was symptom return meeting...
RationaleMicrodosing psychedelics-the regular consumption of small amounts of psychedelic substances such as LSD or psilocybin-is a growing trend in popular culture. Recent studies on full-dose psychedelic psychotherapy reveal promising benefits for mental well-being, especially for depression and end-of-life anxiety. While full-dose therapies include perception-distorting properties,...
Many people are starting to establish contemplative practices and Mindfulness-Based Interventions have become quite popular. While Mindfulness-Based Interventions positively impact well-being, drop-out and lack of practice-maintenance plagues these interventions. Such adherence issues may reveal a lack of fit between participant partiality for attentional anchors of meditative practice and the...
BACKGROUND Mindfulness training (MT) includes a variety of contemplative practices aimed at promoting intentional awareness of experience, coupled with attitudes of nonjudgment and curiosity. Following the success of 8-week, manualized group interventions, MT has been implemented in a variety of modalities, including smartphone apps that seek to replicate the success of group interventions....
Both Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) and Cognitive Therapy (CT) enhance self-management of prodromal symptoms associated with depressive relapse, albeit through divergent therapeutic procedures. We evaluated rates of relapse in remitted depressed patients receiving MBCT and CT. Decentering and dysfunctional attitudes were assessed as treatment-specific process markers. Participants...
Interoception, Contemplative Practice, and HealthWell-being is deeply rooted in the body, a continuous flow of feelings denoting comfort or distress.Interoception, the representation of the body's internal state, is a growing target of scientific research, buoyed by a growing respect for contemplative traditions relating interoceptive awareness to the cultivation of well-being.An emerging...
BMC PsychologyNovember 29, 2016Sheffy Bhayee, Patricia Tomaszewski, Daniel H Lee et al.
Mindfulness training (MT) programs represent an approach to attention training with well-validated mental health benefits. However, research supporting MT efficacy is based predominantly on weekly-meeting, facilitator-led, group-intervention formats. It is unknown whether participants might benefit from neurofeedback-assisted, technology-supported MT (N-tsMT), in which meditation is delivered...
Over the past several decades, a corpus of research has emerged detailing the therapeutic outcomes and processes of mindfulness. The emergence of the field of contemplative science has given rise t...
Interoception can be broadly defined as the sense of signals originating within the body. As such, interoception is critical for our sense of embodiment, motivation, and well-being. And yet, despite its importance, interoception remains poorly understood within modern science. This paper reviews interdisciplinary perspectives on interoception, with the goal of presenting a unified perspective...
Putatively, mindfulness meditation involves generation of a state of "nonappraisal", yet, little is known about how mindfulness may influence appraisal processes. We investigated whether the state and practice of mindfulness could enhance cognitive reappraisal. Participants (N = 44; M age = 24.44, SD = 4.00, range 19 - 38, 82.2% female) were randomized to either 1) mindfulness, 2) suppression,...
One component of mindfulness training (MT) is the development of interoceptive attention (IA) to visceral bodily sensations, facilitated through daily practices such as breath monitoring. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we examined experience-dependent functional plasticity in accessing interoceptive representations by comparing graduates of a Mindfulness-Based Stress...
Mindfulness involves nonjudgmental attention to present-moment experience. In its therapeutic forms, mindfulness interventions promote increased tolerance of negative affect and improved well-being. However, the neural mechanisms underlying mindful mood regulation are poorly understood. Mindfulness training appears to enhance focused attention, supported by the anterior cingulate cortex and the...