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.
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
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...
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....