Research published in Progress in Brain Research

Neuroanatomy of dreaming and REM phenomenology.

Progress in Brain Research July 14, 2026

Neuroanatomy of dreaming and REM phenomenology.

DOI: 10.1016/bs.pbr.2026.07.005

Expressive resource in a clinical psychedelic study: Art as an integration tool.

Progress in Brain Research 2025 Handersson Barros, Marcelo Falchi-Carvalho, Lucas O. Maia et al. 2 citations

Psychedelic experiences, especially those induced by substances such as N,N-Dimethyltryptamine (DMT), are often characterized by high subjective intensity, complex visual content, and notable ineffability-that is, the difficulty of being fully expressed in words. This expressive limitation poses a significant challenge to the integration of the experience, which is essential for the therapeutic...

DOI: 10.1016/bs.pbr.2025.07.004 Full text Clinical trials Expressive resource Mandala N,N-Dimethyltryptamine DMT +2

Mindfulness and meditation: Promoting emotional and cognitive health.

Progress in Brain Research 2025 Nethmini Navoda Sirimanne, Nupur Dahiya, Garbis Papazian et al. 1 citation

The global rise in age-related neuropsychiatric disorders, including depression, anxiety, mild cognitive impairment (MCI), and dementia, significantly impacts healthcare systems and quality of life. Mindfulness and meditation (MM), rooted in ancient philosophical traditions, are gaining attention as promising non-pharmacological treatments. This chapter examines the historical evolution,...

DOI: 10.1016/bs.pbr.2025.08.015 Full text Meditation Neuroplasticity Mindfulness-based interventions mbis

Psychedelic-assisted therapies for existential and spiritual suffering in palliative care.

Progress in Brain Research 2025 Ana Cláudia Mesquita Garcia, Lucas Oliveira Maia

Existential and spiritual suffering are frequently reported by individuals facing serious illnesses, particularly at the end of life, and are associated with diminished quality of life, increased psychological distress, and requests for hastened death. While Palliative Care (PC) aims to provide holistic support, existing therapeutic options often fail to adequately address the profound...

DOI: 10.1016/bs.pbr.2025.07.002 Full text End-of-life care Existential suffering Palliative care Psychedelics +2

Philopsychedelia beyond the West: The decolonial reflorescence of psychedelic philosophy.

Progress in Brain Research 2025 Jan Clefferson Costa de Freitas, Nathalia Cristina Medeiros Maia, Markone Brandão Da Silva Shanenawa et al.

The main purpose of this work is to identify the intersections between decolonial thought and psychedelic philosophy. By "psychedelic" we mean a pharmacological category, the effects of substances that modulates perception, a myriad of consciousness states, a set of ecstatic practices, a variety of countercultural movements, a constellation of artistic avant-gardes, and a plurality of ways of...

DOI: 10.1016/bs.pbr.2025.07.001 Full text Decolonial thought Entheogenic wisdoms Psychedelic philosophies

The roots of happiness: How love and memory shape the core of our brain.

Progress in Brain Research 2025 Mohamad Alfateh Abou Haykal

This chapter explores the profound impact of love and joyful memories on the brainstem, emphasizing their significance for mental and emotional well-being. It introduces the brainstem's role in essential life functions and its connection to higher emotional processes. Topics delve into the neurobiology of love, detailing how chemicals like oxytocin, dopamine, and serotonin interact with...

DOI: 10.1016/bs.pbr.2025.03.002 Full text Meditation Neuroplasticity Brainstem Hormones +13

Silence between words: Is solitude important for relatedness?

Progress in Brain Research 2024 Rui Miguel Costa 4 citations

Chronic loneliness is a risk factor for physical and health problems, in part due to dysfunction of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and sympathetic nervous system. In contrast, temporary moments of positive solitude (passing good times alone and not feeling lonely) appear to have positive effects on mental health, social life, and creativity, and seems to be a buffer against...

DOI: 10.1016/bs.pbr.2024.05.013 Full text Daydreaming Interoceptive awareness Loneliness Mental health +6

Increased wakefulness as measured by the WAKE-16 is related to mindfulness and emotional self-regulation in experienced Buddhist meditators.

Progress in Brain Research 2024 Christine Flatten, Damisela Linares Gutierrez, Sebastian L. Kübel et al. 1 citation

We tested and validated the German version of a new instrument for measuring "wakefulness," defined as "an expansive, higher-functioning, and stable state of being in which a person's vision of and relationship to the world are transformed, along with their subjective experience, their sense of identity and their conceptual outlook" (Taylor, 2017, p. 22). In order to test the construct validity...

DOI: 10.1016/bs.pbr.2024.04.005 Full text Meditation Mindfulness Awakening Self-regulation +2

When the body fosters empathy: The interconnectivity between bodily reactivity, meditation, and embodied abstract concepts.

Progress in Brain Research 2024 Fabio Marson, Revital Naor-Ziv, Patrizio Paoletti et al.

Empathy is a fundamental social ability that allows humans to infer others' emotions and intentions. Empathy is thought to be rooted in bodily sensations coming from the autonomic nervous system. In parallel, the functionality and perceptions coming from the autonomic nervous system could be improved by practicing activities that involve mind-body interactions, such as meditation. Furthermore,...

DOI: 10.1016/bs.pbr.2024.05.004 Full text Meditation Abstract concepts Autonomic nervous system Autonomic reactivity +3

Evaluating brain spectral and connectivity differences between silent mind-wandering and trance states.

Progress in Brain Research May 26, 2023 Helané Wahbeh, Cedric Cannard, Michael Kriegsman et al.

Trance is an altered state of consciousness characterized by alterations in cognition. In general, trance states induce mental silence (i.e., cognitive thought reduction), and mental silence can induce trance states. Conversely, mind-wandering is the mind's propensity to stray its attention away from the task at hand and toward content irrelevant to the current moment, and its main component is...

DOI: 10.1016/bs.pbr.2022.12.011 Full text Humans Electroencephalography Brain mapping Cognition +6

Cessations of consciousness in meditation: Advancing a scientific understanding of nirodha samāpatti.

Progress in Brain Research 2023 Ruben Laukkonen, Matthew D. Sacchet, Henk Barendregt et al. 56 citations

Absence of consciousness can occur due to a concussion, anesthetization, intoxication, epileptic seizure, or other fainting/syncope episode caused by lack of blood flow to the brain. However, some meditation practitioners also report that it is possible to undergo a total absence of consciousness during meditation, lasting up to 7 days, and that these "cessations" can be consistently induced....

DOI: 10.1016/bs.pbr.2022.12.007 Full text Meditation Active inference Awareness Cessation +5

Overview of treatment-resistant depression.

Progress in Brain Research 2023 Cheng-Ta Li 25 citations

Patients with major depressive disorder (MDD) often exhibit an inadequate treatment response or failure to achieve remission following treatment with antidepressant drugs. Treatment-resistant depression (TRD) is proposed to identify this clinical scenario. Compared to those without TRD, patients with TRD have significantly lower health-related quality of life in mental and physical dimensions,...

DOI: 10.1016/bs.pbr.2023.03.007 Full text Ketamine Treatment-resistant depression Difficult-to-treat depression Maudsley staging method +7

Functional MRI markers for treatment-resistant depression: Insights and challenges.

Progress in Brain Research 2023 Vasileia Kotoula, Jennifer W. Evans, Claire Punturieri et al. 17 citations

Imaging studies of treatment-resistant depression (TRD) have examined brain activity, structure, and metabolite concentrations to identify critical areas of investigation in TRD as well as potential targets for treatment interventions. This chapter provides an overview of the main findings of studies using three imaging modalities: structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), functional MRI...

DOI: 10.1016/bs.pbr.2023.04.001 Full text Ketamine Psilocybin Treatment-resistant depression Electroconvulsive therapy +7

Conscious entry into sleep: Yoga Nidra and accessing subtler states of consciousness.

Progress in Brain Research 2023 Prakash Chandra Kavi 7 citations

Human sleep is a dynamic and complex process comprising sleep stages with REM and NREM sleep characteristics that come in cycles. During sleep, there is a loss of responsiveness or a perceptual loss of conscious awareness with increasing thresholds for wakefulness as sleep progresses. There are brief bursts of wakefulness or Wake After Sleep Onset (WASO) throughout a nocturnal sleep. Conscious...

DOI: 10.1016/bs.pbr.2022.12.012 Full text Lucid dreaming Meditation Advaita Clear light +6

Next generation antidepressants with novel mechanisms for treatment resistant depression.

Progress in Brain Research 2023 Mu-Hong Chen, Pei-Chi Tu, Tung-Ping Su 3 citations

Evidence has suggested that the modulation of N-methyl-d-aspartate receptors (NMDARs) and 5-hydroxytryptamine receptors (5-HTRs) via the psychedelic drugs, such as ketamine and psilocybin, rapidly alters the state of consciousness and the neuroplasticity. The United State Food and Drug Administration approved the indications of esketamine for treatment-resistant depression (TRD) in 2019 and...

DOI: 10.1016/bs.pbr.2023.02.005 Full text Depression Ketamine Psilocybin Consciousness +7

The cloud of unknowing: Cognitive dedifferentiation in whole-body perceptual deprivation.

Progress in Brain Research 2023 Michele Pellegrino, Joseph Glicksohn, Fabio Marson et al. 3 citations

An altered sensory environment, especially a homogeneous one like a ganzfeld, can induce a wide range of experiences in people immersed in it. The ganzfeld of our current focus is the OVO Whole-Body Perceptual Deprivation chamber (OVO-WBPD). Previous literature has found this specific immersive environment to be capable of softening and dissolving perception of boundaries across time and...

DOI: 10.1016/bs.pbr.2022.12.004 Full text Mindfulness Cognitive dedifferentiation Ganzfeld Ovo-wbpd +4

Neuroinflammation through the vagus nerve-dependent gut-microbiota-brain axis in treatment-resistant depression.

Progress in Brain Research 2023 Kenji Hashimoto

Neuroinflammation plays a key role in the pathogenesis of major depressive disorder (MDD), including treatment-resistant depression (TRD). Patients with TRD have higher levels of inflammatory biomarkers compared with responders to antidepressants. Multiple lines of evidence suggest that the gut-microbiota-brain axis via the vagus nerve plays a key role in neuroinflammation. Preclinical and...

DOI: 10.1016/bs.pbr.2023.01.003 Full text Arketamine Depression Neurogenesis Fecal microbiota transplantation +2

Letting it go: The interplay between mind wandering, mindfulness, and creativity.

Progress in Brain Research 2023 Aswini Madhira, Narayanan Srinivasan

A creative idea is always appreciated. However, it is still unclear as to what helps people in coming up with creative ideas. The current chapter explores how mind wandering, mindfulness and meditation influence creative ideation. Most specifically, we explore the cognition behind each of these faculties and how they interact to enable us in navigating across our internal and external...

DOI: 10.1016/bs.pbr.2022.12.003 Full text Meditation Mindfulness Convergent thinking Creativity +2

Quadrato motor training (QMT) influences IL-1β expression and creativity: Implications for inflammatory state reduction and cognitive enhancement.

Progress in Brain Research 2023 Loredana Verdone, Fabio Marson, Micaela Caserta et al.

Mind-body practices and meditation have been increasingly studied in recent years due to their beneficial effects on cognition, and physical and psychological health. Growing evidence suggests that these practices could be utilized as interventions to impact age-related biological processes, such as cognitive decline, inflammation, and homeostatic dysregulation. Indeed, it has been reported...

DOI: 10.1016/bs.pbr.2022.12.008 Full text Cognitive improvement Creativity Il-1β Inflammation +3

5-HT2A and 5-HT2C receptors as potential targets for the treatment of nicotine use and dependence.

Progress in Brain Research 2021 Guy A. Higgins, Edward M. Sellers 10 citations

Nicotine use and dependence, typically achieved through cigarette smoking, but increasingly through vape products, is the leading cause of preventable death today. Despite a recognition that many current smokers would like to quit, the success rate at doing so is low and indicative of the persistent nature of nicotine dependence and the high urge to relapse. There are currently three main forms...

DOI: 10.1016/bs.pbr.2021.01.007 Full text 5-ht2a receptor Psilocybin Serotonin 5-ht2c receptor +5

The neuroscience of meditation: classification, phenomenology, correlates, and mechanisms.

Progress in Brain Research 2019 Tracy Brandmeyer, Arnaud Delorme, Helané Wahbeh 143 citations

Rising from its contemplative and spiritual traditions, the science of meditation has seen huge growth over the last 30 years. This chapter reviews the classifications, phenomenology, neural correlates, and mechanisms of meditation. Meditation classification types are still varied and largely subjective. Broader models to describe meditation practice along multidimensional parameters may...

DOI: 10.1016/bs.pbr.2018.10.020 Full text Meditation Phenomenology

The contemplative exercise through the lenses of predictive processing: A promising approach.

Progress in Brain Research 2019 Giuseppe Pagnoni 59 citations

The theory of predictive processing in the comprehensive articulation proposed by Karl Friston is a framework that boasts an impressively wide explanatory power in neurobiology, where processes apparently as diverse as perception, action, attention, and learning unfold, and are coherently orchestrated, according to the single general mandate of free-energy minimization. In the present opinion...

DOI: 10.1016/bs.pbr.2018.10.022 Full text

Training attention for conscious non-REM sleep: The yogic practice of yoga-nidrā and its implications for neuroscience research.

Progress in Brain Research 2019 Stephen Parker 15 citations

The study of consciousness within cognitive neuroscience has been dominated in recent years by investigations originating from collaborations between neuroscientific investigators and Buddhist meditation practitioners. The results have been remarkable, particularly when quantitative and qualitative research methods have been combined as they are in the neurophenomenological methodology...

DOI: 10.1016/bs.pbr.2018.10.016 Full text Meditation Conscious non-rem sleep Consciousness Neurophenomenology +2

Nondual awareness: Consciousness-as-such as non-representational reflexivity.

Progress in Brain Research 2019 Zoran Josipovic 8 citations

I introduce arguments toward a non-representational reflexivity theory of consciousness-as-such to address one of the key issues in the science of consciousness today: lack of understanding of the nature of consciousness itself. An expanded map of consciousness is outlined, which includes, in addition to the well-known contents of awareness and levels of arousal, the indeterminate substrate and...

DOI: 10.1016/bs.pbr.2018.10.021 Full text Meditation Mindfulness Consciousness-as-such Nondual awareness +1

Toward a brain theory of meditation.

Progress in Brain Research 2019 Antonino Raffone, Laura Marzetti, Cosimo Del Gratta et al.

The rapidly progressing science of meditation has led to insights about the neural correlates of focused attention meditation (FAM), open monitoring meditation (OMM), compassion meditation (CM) and loving kindness meditation (LKM), in terms of states and traits. However, a unified theoretical understanding of the brain mechanisms involved in meditation-related functions, including mindfulness,...

DOI: 10.1016/bs.pbr.2018.10.028

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