Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
July 22, 2026
Carla Pallavicini, Lorena Llobenes, Federico Cavanna et al.
Psilocybin is a classic psychedelic known to alter subjective experience and induce lasting psychological changes, including increased cognitive flexibility and reduced rigid self-related beliefs. Contextual factors, including preparatory mental states, are thought to play a key role in shaping these effects. Compassion imagery, which engages care-affiliative motivational systems, may represent...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
December 22, 2025
Carla Pallavicini, Lorena Llobenes, Federico Cavanna et al.
preprint
Abstract Psilocybin is a classic psychedelic drug known to alter subjective experience and elicit long-term psychological changes, enhancing cognitive flexibility and reducing rigid self-related beliefs. Combined with compassion motivational primes that involve generating mental representations of compassion, it may increase the potential for activating the care-affiliative motivational...
Psychological Medicine
2025
Sunjeev K. Kamboj, Matthew Peniket, Jessica Norman et al.
Abstract Background Physiological signals conveyed by the vagus nerve may generate quiescent psychological states conducive to contemplative practices. This suggests that vagal neurostimulation could interact with contemplative psychotherapies (e.g. mindfulness and compassion-based interventions) to augment their efficacy. Methods In a fully factorial experimental trial, healthy adults ( n =...
Discover Psychology
October 23, 2024
Paul Barrows, William van Gordon, Paul Gilbert
During the last four decades there has been a significant growth of interest in mindfulness-based practices and their potential to foster improvements in health, wellbeing and human functioning in a variety of clinical and nonclinical populations. With this growth has come a renewed interest in understanding the psychological processes involved as well as the neuropsychological mechanisms by...
Mindfulness
September 4, 2023
Paul Gilbert, Jaskaran Basran, Ptarmigan Plowright et al.
10 citations
Abstract Objectives The aim of the study was to develop a new self-report scale to explore the “fears, blocks and resistances of mindfulness”. Currently, there is no scale to identify individuals who may struggle with engaging in mindfulness. Method A total of 522 participants were invited to take part in the study from three countries: Australia (n = 199), Portugal (n = 160), and the UK (n =...
Mindfulness
August 3, 2023
Paul Gilbert, William van Gordon
49 citations
Abstract The editors to this volume posed a series of fascinating questions relating to how seeing compassion as a skill can help us understand its nature, cultivation and effects within secular contexts. This paper addresses these questions by comparing evolutionary with contemplative approaches to compassion. Recent scientific approaches have explored the evolved roots and biopsychosocial...
Mindfulness
June 21, 2023
Paul Gilbert, Malcolm Huxter, Choden Choden
12 citations
Abstract This paper explores the overlap and relationship between Compassion-Focused Therapy (CFT) as an evolution-informed, biopsychosocial approach to the mind and two Buddhist approaches to the development of insight and meditation. We present this exploration in terms of a three-way exposition between PG (Paul Gilbert), a clinical psychologist and compassion-focused therapist, MH (Malcolm...
Frontiers in Psychology
2023
Paul Gilbert, Jaskaran Kaur Basran, Ptarmigan Plowright et al.
The last 20 years have seen considerable research on the nature and biopsychosocial impacts of compassion training on self and others. This training is usually focused on calming and slowing the mind and body and on individual imagery practices and mantras. This study explored the effects of three variations: 1. The impact of using energizing music to generate activation and "drive" for...
Journal of Psychopharmacology
May 18, 2015
Sunjeev K. Kamboj, Emma J. Kilford, Stephanie Minchin et al.
43 citations
3,4-methylenedioxy- N-methylamphetamine (MDMA) produces diverse pro-social effects. Cognitive training methods rooted in Eastern contemplative practices also produce these effects through the development of a compassionate mindset. Given this similarity, we propose that one potential mechanism of action of MDMA in psychotherapy is through enhancing effects on intrapersonal attitudes (i.e....