Research on mindfulness meditation has largely relied on reductionist decomposition, which isolates discrete components and mechanisms but fails to capture how change emerges from continuous, nonlinear, and recursive interactions across multiple timescales. Dynamical Systems (DS) theory and methods offer a powerful framework to address this gap. A DS organizational framework structured around complex interaction dynamics, nonlinear causality, and multiscale temporal dynamics can inform theory-building, empirical research, and intervention science. Leading psychological and neuroscientific theories align with DS theory, unlike much empirical research. Future directions include developing formal DS models, collecting high-dimensional multiscale data, and using analytic tools for complex dynamical change.
Mindfulness meditation research has largely used reductionist methods that isolate individual components and mechanisms, which is ill-suited for studying how change emerges from continuous, nonlinear, and recursive interactions across multiple timescales. Dynamical systems theory and methods offer a powerful alternative framework. The authors propose an organizational framework structured around complex interaction dynamics, nonlinear causality, and multiscale temporal dynamics. They examine how leading psychological and neuroscientific theories align with dynamical systems theory, unlike most empirical research. Future directions include developing formal dynamical systems theory and computational models, collecting high-dimensional multiscale data, and using analytic tools that model complex dynamical change.
A nonrandomized open trial tested the feasibility of Mindfulness-SOS, a lay- and minimally guided mobile health mindfulness- and compassion-based intervention adapted for diverse forcibly displaced people, among 60 Eritrean asylum-seekers in an unstable urban setting in Israel during the COVID-19 pandemic. Fifty-eight participants showed high adherence to session modules and moderate overall adherence. Higher pre-intervention post-traumatic stress symptoms and post-migration living difficulties predicted lower engagement with meditation practice exercises. Greater engagement with meditation exercises was associated with less deterioration in depression and anxiety, but not with change in post-traumatic stress symptoms, from pre- to post-intervention. Mindfulness-SOS may be a feasible selective preventive intervention for asylum-seekers in stressful post-displacement settings.
A machine learning algorithm classified electroencephalography (EEG) recordings from 26 experienced meditators as either a focused attention meditation state or a mind-wandering control state with 83% accuracy. The model identified 10 EEG features associated with increased power and coherence of high-frequency brain oscillations during meditation relative to mind-wandering. The findings help characterize the complex, systemic oscillatory activity underlying meditation states.