Behaviour Research and Therapy
August 10, 2026
Otto Simonsson, Christian A. Webb, Mini Ruiz et al.
Despite decades of meditation research, there is a lack of preregistered and well-powered studies that investigate the effects of brief meditation practices on subjective wellbeing and use data-driven approaches to predict response to these interventions. Using representative samples of the US and UK adult populations with regards to age, sex, and ethnicity (N = 5049), we conducted a...
Cognitive, affective & behavioral neuroscience
June 23, 2026
Isaac N Treves, Clare Shaffer, Alexandra Decker et al.
Mind‑body practices, such as meditation and yoga, involve paying attention to breathing sensations. During these practices, individuals report "interoceptive lapses," moments when attention drifts away from internal bodily sensations. While lapses in attention to the external world have been widely studied, little is known about the physiological and neural mechanisms of interoceptive lapses....
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
February 10, 2026
Isaac N Treves, Clare Shaffer, Alexandra Decker et al.
Mind body practices like meditation and yoga, which are widely used to support mental health, involve paying attention to internal bodily sensations like the breath. During these practices, individuals often report "interoceptive lapses," moments when attention drifts away from the body. While lapses in attention to the external world have been widely studied, far less is known about...
Psychophysiology
May 1, 2025
Isaac N Treves, Anna O Tierney, Simon B. Goldberg et al.
5 citations
Objective measurement of mindfulness could help us understand the mechanisms of meditation interventions and how individuals vary in their disposition to be mindful. One proposed measure is the breath-counting task (BCT), which measures how accurately one can count cycles of their breath. Breath counting, which involves sustained attention, meta-awareness, and an internal locus of attention,...
Brain Imaging and Behavior
April 1, 2025
Jovan Jande, Isaac N Treves, Samantha L Ely et al.
4 citations
This systematic narrative review examines neuroimaging studies that investigated the neural correlates of mindfulness-based interventions in youth (ages 0-18). We extracted 13 studies with a total of 467 participants aged 5-18 years from the MEDLINE database on February 21st, 2024. These studies included both typically developing youth and those at risk of developing or recovering from...
Behaviour Research and Therapy
April 1, 2025
Nur Hani Zainal, Christian A. Webb, Lauren S. Hallion
Although uncontrollability is the core feature of perseverative thought that best accounts for its relationship to psychopathology, other features - for example, valence and content - have also been identified as potentially clinically relevant in their own right. We describe results from a proof-of-concept study that examined the extent to which major underlying features of worry could be used...
PLoS One
February 12, 2025
Zishan Jiwani, Simon B. Goldberg, Jack Stroud et al.
3 citations
INTRODUCTION: Meditation practice and psychedelic use have attracted increasing attention in the public sphere and scientific research. Both methods induce non-ordinary states of consciousness that may have significant therapeutic benefits. Thus, there is growing scientific interest in potential synergies between psychedelic use and meditation practice with some research suggesting that...
Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991)
February 5, 2025
Isaac N Treves, Aaron Kucyi, Anna O Tierney et al.
1 citation
Breathing meditation typically consists of directing attention toward breathing and redirecting attention when the mind wanders. As yet, we do not have a full understanding of the neural mechanisms of breath attention, in particular, how large-scale network interactions may be different between breath attention and rest and how these interactions may be modulated during periods of on-task and...
October 17, 2023
Christian A. Webb, Lori M. Hilt, Caroline M. Swords et al.
1 citation
preprint
Ecological momentary assessment (EMA) is increasingly being incorporated into intervention studies to acquire a more fine-grained and ecologically valid assessment of change. The added utility of including relatively burdensome EMA measures in a clinical trial hinges on several psychometric assumptions, including that these measure are: (1) reliable, (2) related but not redundant with...
Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology
September 28, 2023
Christian A. Webb, Matthew J. Hirshberg, Oscar González et al.
6 citations
OBJECTIVE: they work. Mechanisms of change may be obscured due to prior research collapsing across heterogeneous subgroups of patients with differing underlying mechanisms of response. Studies identifying baseline individual characteristics that predict differential response (i.e., moderation) may inform research on why (i.e., mediation) a particular subgroup has better outcomes to an...
Journal of Medical Internet Research
September 26, 2022
Christian A. Webb, Matthew J. Hirshberg, Richard J. Davidson et al.
26 citations
BACKGROUND: Meditation apps have surged in popularity in recent years, with an increasing number of individuals turning to these apps to cope with stress, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. Meditation apps are the most commonly used mental health apps for depression and anxiety. However, little is known about who is well suited to these apps. OBJECTIVE: This study aimed to develop and test...
July 31, 2022
Christian A. Webb, Matthew J. Hirshberg, Richard J. Davidson et al.
1 citation
BACKGROUND Meditation apps have surged in popularity in recent years, with an increasing number of individuals turning to these apps to cope with stress, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, meditation apps now represent the most commonly used mental health apps for depression and anxiety. However, little is known regarding who is well-suited to these apps. OBJECTIVE The aim of this...
July 29, 2021
Christian A. Webb, Matthew J. Hirshberg, Richard J. Davidson et al.
1 citation
preprint
Meditation apps are popular and may reduce psychological distress, including during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, it is not clear who is most likely to benefit. Using randomized controlled trial data comparing a 4-week meditation app (Healthy Minds Program; HMP) with an assessment-only control in school system employees (n=662), we developed an algorithm predicting who is most likely to...
Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
June 12, 2020
Christian A. Webb, Elana S. Israel, Emily L. Belleau et al.
Objective: Understanding the fluctuating emotional and cognitive states of adolescents with depressive symptoms requires fine-grained and naturalistic measurements. This study used ecological momentary assessment (EMA) to investigate the affective correlates and consequences of mind-wandering in adolescents with anhedonia (AH) and typically developing (TD) controls. In addition, we examined the...