August 19, 2026
Terje Sparby, Jerron Chan, Oliver Andersson Hugemark et al.
preprint
Meditation research has grown considerably, yet its clinical implications for advanced and long-term practitioners remain poorly understood. Meditation’s mental health implications extend beyond benefit, encompassing psychiatric risk, adverse experiences, and differentiating between meditative progress and psychopathology. This review synthesizes evidence on how advanced and long-term...
Mindfulness
August 15, 2026
Rosalind McAlpine, Merve Utanğaç, Joanna Kuć et al.
Abstract Objectives Emerging research suggests that meditation may support more beneficial psychedelic experiences while reducing the likelihood of lasting negative effects, yet its specific preparatory benefits remain underexplored. This study aimed to investigate the perceived utility of meditation as a preparatory tool for enhancing positive outcomes and reducing negative effects during...
Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews
August 1, 2026
Clarita Bonamino, Clara Hausen, Matthew D. Sacchet
Consciousness can persist, transform, and dissolve across wakefulness, sleep, and advanced meditation. Despite empirical and theoretical advances within each domain, these states are rarely examined within an integrated scientific framework. An interdisciplinary perspective reveals converging phenomena that challenge binary accounts of consciousness and highlight its graded, dynamic, and...
IBRO Neuroscience Reports
August 1, 2026
Remko Van Lutterveld, Thomas Cahaly, Lukas van Herk et al.
Advanced meditation includes meditative endpoints that are outcomes of meditation practice and occur with time and mastery of meditation. The “cessation” event (c.f. nirodha in Theravada Buddhism) is a meditative endpoint characterized by a loss of consciousness followed by a sense of mental reset and deep clarity. In general, organization of brain activity exists along a “criticality”...
Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews
July 1, 2026
Caitlin Baten, Arielle S Keller, Chris H. Miller et al.
The study of meditation has grown considerably in academic research, including robust findings demonstrating its positive impact on several domains of psychological well-being. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have provided evidence for neural correlates underlying these effects; however, there has not yet been a comprehensive whole-brain meta-analytic synthesis across...
June 17, 2026
Terje Sparby, Vanessa Naughton, Batool Abbasi et al.
preprint
Despite rapidly growing interest in meditation, research has disproportionately emphasized short-term outcomes in novices and mindfulness-based practices, leaving advanced and long-term meditation largely unexplored. This review examines how sustained and skill-developed meditation practices positively shape well-being, interpersonal relationships, and emotion regulation. Following PRISMA...
PsyArXiv
May 28, 2026
Oliver Andersson Hugemark, Terje Sparby, Andrea Grabovac et al.
preprint
Processes of embodied sense-making and integration in challenging experiences of advanced meditation – A reflexive thematic analysis of destabilization, rigidification, and social negotiation
PsyArXiv
May 27, 2026
Asiya Gul, Sebastian Ehmann, Catherine Prueitt et al.
preprint
Extending the Scientific Study of Advanced Meditation Across Contemplative Traditions to Sufism within Islam: A Comparison Case of Self-Attenuation including Theravāda Buddhism and Tibetan Dzogchen
Neuron
May 6, 2026
Matthew D. Sacchet, Jonathan M. Lieberman
Third wave meditation research-the study of advanced meditation-investigates states, stages, and endpoints of meditation practice that emerge with increasing mastery. We review current neuroscientific progress, outline future research directions, and highlight far-reaching implications of this emerging scientific subfield.
BMJ Open
March 12, 2026
Rosalind McAlpine, Magdalena Jaglinska, Krisztina Jedlovszky et al.
Psychedelic-assisted therapy shows promise for treating various mental health conditions; however, its reliance on intensive psychological preparation limits its broader application. Digital health interventions have the potential to address this limitation by providing structured, accessible and scalable preparation solutions. This randomised controlled feasibility trial aims to evaluate the...
March 2, 2026
Andrea Grabovac, Nickolas Grabovac, Winson F.z. Yang et al.
preprint
This paper presents the Insight Development Process (IDP), a theoretical framework of propositional insight development to facilitate its scientific investigation. This framework formulates three empirically-testable propositions: transience, self-lessness, and incongruence, each defined as a perceptual mode that individuals report during advanced insight meditation. These propositions parallel...
Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews
March 1, 2026
Hagar Tal, Malcolm Wright, Shawn Prest et al.
2 citations
Computational phenomenology has emerged as a powerful framework for investigating advanced meditation states and stages, and meditative development and endpoints. Various models have been proposed to mechanistically explain the diverse experiences associated with these practices, including enhanced well-being, shifts in attentional control, the loosening or 'defabrication' of perceptual...
Progress in Neuro-psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry
February 27, 2026
Chris H. Miller, Angela Hickman, Caitlin Baten et al.
2 citations
Ketamine pharmacotherapy provides a novel treatment option for major depressive disorder (MDD) and has generated a large, growing body of research regarding its biochemical and clinical properties. This narrative review summarizes the history of ketamine's development, beginning as a general anesthetic, continuing with a discovery of its antidepressant properties, and leading up to its landmark...
arXiv.org
February 13, 2026
Puneet Kumar, W. F. Yang, Alakhsimar Singh et al.
Jhana advanced concentration absorption meditation (ACAM-J) is related to profound changes in consciousness and cognitive processing, making the study of their neural correlates vital for insights into consciousness and well-being. This study evaluates whether functional MRI-derived regional homogeneity (ReHo) can be used to classify ACAM-J using machine-learning approaches. We collected...
bioRxiv Preprint Server
February 10, 2026
David Zarka, Winson F.z. Yang, Abel Rassat et al.
preprint
Extended cessation (EC) is a rare, non-ordinary meditative endpoint characterized by a temporary absence of reportable phenomenal experience, followed by an extraordinary perceptual vividness, openness, equanimity and affective balance. EC thus offers a unique, non-pharmacological window into the brain dynamics underlying suspension of conscious experience and the subsequent psychological...
Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews
February 1, 2026
Jonathan M. Lieberman, Matthew D. Sacchet
2 citations
Despite decades of progress in the neuroscience of consciousness, prevailing empirical paradigms remain largely anchored in the study of typical, content-rich states that are characterized by layered perceptual, cognitive, affective, and self-referential processes. Such complexity may obscure the neural mechanisms that give rise to conscious experience. Here, we propose that advanced...
Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging
January 13, 2026
Caitlin Baten, Gladys Zamora, Amanda M. Klassen et al.
Major depressive disorder (MDD) is a highly prevalent psychiatric disorder with limited treatment success in both youth and adults. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have reported partially differential patterns of activation in youth and adults diagnosed with MDD that may be attributable to age or length of illness. Following PRISMA guidelines, we searched PubMed through...
Imaging Neuroscience
2026
Hagar Tal, Winson F.z. Yang, Matthew D. Sacchet
Neurofeedback (NF) has been proposed as a tool to support and expand access to meditation practice. Despite growing interest, no comprehensive review has examined neurofeedback for meditation-based interventions (NF-MED) across the full spectrum of practices. Here, we conducted a scoping systematic review according to PRISMA guidelines, mapping the NF-MED field across both clinical and...
December 9, 2025
Sebastian Ehmann, Terje Sparby, Vanessa Naughton et al.
preprint
Mindfulness is increasingly recognized for its mental health benefits, with evidence supporting efficacy across clinical and non-clinical contexts. However, little research has explored deeper psychological and even existential transformations related to advanced meditation, which meditative traditions regard as essential to actualize the most profound states of well-being. Given the global...
arXiv (Cornell University)
November 26, 2025
Jonas Mago, Josh Brahinsky, Mark Miller et al.
Criticality describes a regime between order and chaos that supports flexible yet stable information processing. Here we examine whether neural dynamics can be volitionally shifted toward criticality through the self-regulation of attention. We examined ten experienced practitioners of meditation during a 10-day retreat, comparing refined states of meditative absorption, called the jhanas, to...
November 23, 2025
Terje Sparby, Matthew D. Sacchet
preprint
Meditation, in particular advanced meditation, develops toward meditative endpoints (MEND), sometimes referred to metaphorically as awakening, enlightenment or salvation. A well-known instance of such an endpoint is called nibbāna (Pali) or nirvana (Sanskrit). Contemporary mindfulness teachers and diverse Buddhist traditions present differing views of nirvana. Some define nirvana as the...
Neuroimage
November 19, 2025
Sebastian Ehmann, Idil Sezer, Arielle S Keller et al.
2 citations
Attention regulation is a core mechanism of mindfulness meditation and has been proposed to underlie many of its health-related benefits. Here, we review and synthesize behavioral findings on attentional outcomes in long-term meditators, integrating neurocognitive evidence within a meditative development framework. Key findings indicate trait-level improvements across attentional...
bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology
November 13, 2025
Winson F.z. Yang, Ruby M. Potash, Grace Mackin et al.
preprint
Humans can experience a rich array of conscious experience, including highly stable, positive, and refined states of non-ordinary perception that can be elicited through advanced meditation. Here, we present the first group-level, ultra-high-field (7T) fMRI study of jhana advanced concentration absorption meditation (ACAM-J). We combined local (regional homogeneity), mesoscale (connectivity...
October 16, 2025
Sebastian Ehmann, Terje Sparby, Daniel M. Ingram et al.
2 citations
preprint
That meditation is similar to mental training is a widely used analogy that seeks to capture thegrowth-oriented processes that unfold through the intentional performance of mental activities.However, despite its intuitive appeal, this notion remains conceptually underdeveloped. To ourknowledge, no interdisciplinary dialogue has been established with training science—a fielddedicated to the...
October 8, 2025
Sebastian Ehmann, Brian Lord, Erica Cook et al.
preprint
Emerging research suggests some of the most profound meditation-induced psychological transformations require mastery of mental skills that enable access to advanced meditative states, stages, and endpoints. Such development, however, often demands years of sustained practice and expert guidance. Transcranial focused ultrasound (tFUS) offers a novel means of potentially supporting meditative...