Frontiers in Psychology
November 5, 2025
Ming Yuan, Zhe Hu
5 citations
A four-week mindfulness training program enhanced academic resilience among 200 Chinese university students by increasing self-compassion and psychological flexibility, which independently mediated the effect. The intervention group showed stronger positive relationships between these factors compared to the control group. The authors propose that mindfulness-based training is a culturally adaptable, low-cost approach to supporting student well-being in higher education, though they note limitations including self-reported data, a single-institution sample, and the short intervention period.
Frontiers in Psychology
June 3, 2025
Ruchi Bhati, M. P. Mandal, Tripti Singh
5 citations
Ancient Indian texts such as the Vedas, Upanishads, Bhagavad Gita, and Ayurveda contain holistic mental health concepts and practical psychological remedies that contemporary approaches often overlook. This work reviews and organizes these diverse practices to propose evidence-based self-help techniques for improving overall mental well-being, addressing gaps in modern mental health care that focuses on symptoms rather than holistic wellness.
Frontiers in Psychology
May 15, 2025
Jake Hooper, Emily L Gyongyosi, Kent E. Hutchison et al.
5 citations
Aesthetic qualities of psychedelic experiences are linked to better psychological outcomes, including greater emotional breakthroughs, psychological insight, behavioral change, and mystical experiences, while also being associated with less fear and paranoia. In a survey of 96 people who used classic psychedelics in the past year, aesthetic experience predicted improvements in depression, anxiety, and quality of life independently of age, gender, or mystical experience. The findings suggest that the aesthetic environment in psychedelic-assisted therapy may actively contribute to therapeutic benefits rather than being merely perceptual enhancements.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2025
Reut Paz, Nitza Davidovitch
5 citations
Mindfulness training and trait mindfulness are linked to greater psychological well-being and resilience among Orthodox Jewish teachers in Israel. Trait mindfulness was negatively associated with perceived stress. Ultra-Orthodox teachers reported higher stress than national religious teachers. The study suggests that mindfulness programs should consider participants' religious and cultural backgrounds to improve effectiveness, as generic international models may overlook these needs.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2025
Alberto Chiesa, Cristiano Crescentini, Fabio D'Antoni et al.
5 citations
A nine-month mindfulness teacher training program enhanced the ability to perceive and interpret bodily signals—known as interoceptive awareness—in 38 individuals training to become mindfulness-based intervention teachers, compared with 24 matched controls. The trained group showed significantly greater increases in awareness of mind-body integration. Although overall emotional distress did not differ between groups, increases in self-regulation scores within the training group were linked to decreases in depression and total emotional distress. The findings suggest that mindfulness training for future teachers further improves their capacity to attend to, regulate, and interpret bodily signals.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2025
Xiao Han, Mingmu Jiao, Gemma M Perey
5 citations
Over 12 months, 216 secondary school educators in mainland China reported reduced emotional exhaustion and depersonalization, while their emotional intelligence remained stable. More daily mindfulness practice was linked to less emotional exhaustion. Interviews with 35 participants revealed themes of heavy burnout, the perceived value of emotional intelligence, mindfulness as a coping strategy, personal coping methods, high self-awareness paired with difficulty regulating emotions, and systemic pressures. Practical barriers limited sustained mindfulness engagement. The findings suggest mindfulness can help reduce emotional exhaustion in educators, but systemic and practical constraints affect its use.
Frontiers in Psychology
December 6, 2024
Sean Noah, Earth Erowid, Fire Erowid et al.
5 citations
Psychedelic compounds like LSD, psilocybin, mescaline, and DMT can dramatically alter visual perception, but whether these visual effects consistently differ between substances is unclear. Using the large Erowid experience report dataset, researchers analyzed narrative self-reports for 103 psychoactive substances, including 30 psychedelics and 73 comparison substances. They used an AI embedding model to classify sentences describing visual effects. The proportion of visual-effect sentences varied significantly and consistently across substances, even among psychedelics. Further analysis of visual effect categories—such as movement, color, and pattern—also showed reliable variation. The findings indicate that different psychedelic substances have distinct propensities to affect vision and produce qualitatively different visual experiences.
Frontiers in Psychology
May 9, 2024
Hang Sun, Eunyoung Kim
5 citations
Archetype symbols in shamanic rituals significantly influence participants' conscious state, leading to a conscious dissolution of the self. A survey of 75 participants found that these symbols have different effects across stages of consciousness change, with the strongest impact during the "Visionary Restructuralization" stage. Patterns, masks, totems, and music brought consciousness to a peak and caused significant changes. The metaphoric function of archetype symbols connects individuals to the collective unconscious through visual and symbolic imagery, prompting emotional resonances that transcend personal experience and alter consciousness.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2024
Hugo Toriz, Antonella Fagetti, Guadalupe Terán-pérez et al.
5 citations
An 81-year-old Mexican shaman, who recognized her gift in childhood, underwent electroencephalographic recording while performing three activities: reading cards for diagnosis, performing a limpia (cleansing) with eggs, stones, and bells, and entering an incorporation trance believed to allow a deceased entity to use her body as a communication channel. Alpha activity appeared when she was concentrated, suggesting a hypnagogic-like state. Predominant beta and gamma oscillations were observed, indicating a potential plastic phenomenon that modulates the assimilation of external and internal referents, guiding action, attention, and integration of mnemonic, sensory, and imaginative elements. The authors interpret shamanic trance as a biological potential of the human brain to induce non-ordinary states of consciousness shaped by cultural beliefs and practices.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2024
Robert Prentner, Donald D Hoffman
5 citations
Consciousness science is at an impasse, and the physicalist worldview is blamed. Conscious agent theory (CAT) posits that consciousness is fundamental and exists outside spacetime, with agency and mathematical structure as core features. For CAT to become a robust scientific framework, it must integrate with the interface theory of perception (ITP), an evolutionary model of perception. ITP suggests that perception is an interface that hides reality, not a window onto it. The authors argue that we live inside a simulation instantiated in consciousness, not digitally, where the simulation is an interface representation of conscious agents' dynamics. This implies AI could be used in consciousness science by customizing this interface.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2024
Michele Ferreira Rodrigues, Laiana Quagliato, Jose Carlos Appolinario et al.
5 citations
About 30% of people with major depressive disorder have treatment-resistant depression (TRD), which responds poorly to standard therapies. Online mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (eMBCT) delivered via live video sessions was tested in a small feasibility trial at a Brazilian institute. Twenty-eight outpatients with TRD were randomly assigned to either an 8-week eMBCT program or a control group. The eMBCT group showed large improvements in depression and anxiety symptoms, while the control group showed no significant changes. Between-group comparisons also favored eMBCT for reducing depression and improving clinical global impressions. eMBCT combined with medication appears feasible for TRD, though a future trial with a manualized control is needed.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2023
Stefano Goretti, Cecilia Maria Esposito, Gilberto Di Petta
5 citations
Psychiatric urgency involves serious mental suffering and behavioral change requiring prompt treatment, while emergency is life-threatening. Although phenomenological psychopathology has neglected this area, the phenomenological method is essential for clinical management. The manuscript explores the phenomenological perspective of psychiatric emergencies, emphasizing the centrality of the encounter between clinician and patient as two subjects, not just doctor and patient. The affective space of intersubjectivity and intercorporeality enables transformative understanding. The emergency room atmosphere—full of haste, anxiety, and expectation—hinders authentic encounter, which must be recovered for diagnosis and therapy. Clinicians should immerse themselves in the patient's life-world, using the phenomenological method to grasp the crisis's meaning and help re-inscribe it within the patient's history.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2023
Lise Juul, Emilie Hasager Bonde, Lone Overby Fjorback
5 citations
In a randomized controlled trial across 110 Danish schools, 191 teachers received Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) or were placed on a wait-list. After 3 and 6 months, MBSR reduced perceived stress, anxiety, depression, and improved well-being. These improvements were partly explained by changes in self-reported resting state: less mind wandering (Discontinuity of Mind), more planning, and greater comfort. Changes in sleepiness also partially explained effects on stress and anxiety. No mediating effects were found for theory of mind, self-awareness, or somatic awareness. The findings suggest that altering resting state is one mechanism through which MBSR benefits mental health.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2023
Yuanyuan Mo, Zhiying Lei, Mei Chen et al.
5 citations
Self-help mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT-SH) improved mindfulness, reduced depression symptoms, and lowered suicidal ideation in patients with depression compared with a control group. In a randomized trial, 97 patients were assigned to MBCT-SH or a control condition. By week 8 and at a 3-month follow-up, the MBCT-SH group showed significantly greater mindfulness and lower depression and suicidal ideation scores. At a 6-month follow-up, per capita treatment costs were 5,298 RMB lower in the MBCT-SH group, while readmission rates did not differ significantly between groups. The findings suggest MBCT-SH is feasible and effective.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2023
Oiana Echabe-Ecenarro, Izaskun Orue, Esther Calvete
5 citations
Pregnant women with higher levels of dispositional mindfulness, particularly those who are non-judgmentally aware, report fewer symptoms of depression and anxiety. A study of 535 women in their 26th week of pregnancy identified three mindfulness profiles: low mindfulness (53.8%), moderate mindfulness (34.3%), and non-judgmentally aware (11.9%). Compared to the low mindfulness group, women in the moderate and non-judgmentally aware profiles had fewer depression and anxiety symptoms, and these relationships were partly explained by higher dyadic satisfaction with their partner. Analyzing a pregnant woman's mindfulness profile may help tailor prevention and intervention efforts for anxiety and depression.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2023
Julia C. Basso, Medha K. Satyal, Kevin L Mckee et al.
5 citations
Depersonalization and trauma symptoms are linked to heightened impulsivity, increased risk-seeking, impaired emotional states, and a history of traumatic experiences. Using the Competing Neurobehavioral Decisions System theory, the study modeled survey and task data from 557 English-speaking U.S. adults. Results show that an imbalance favoring impulsive over executive systems—marked by lower valuation of future rewards, greater risk-seeking, and worse affective states—predicts more severe depersonalization and PTSD symptoms. This is the first evidence connecting dissociation to delay discounting, the tendency to prefer immediate over delayed rewards. Interventions such as episodic future thinking or mindfulness meditation may help reduce dissociative symptoms.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2021
Valentin Forch, Fred H Hamker
5 citations
Two research movements—cognitive science and cognitive robotics—pursue different agendas in studying the minimal self. Cognitive science creates abstract models that predict human experimental data, while cognitive robotics builds embodied learning machines that develop a self from scratch, like human infants. Although both approaches can produce causal mechanistic models, building a minimal self in a robot is not the same as understanding the human minimal self. Conclusions drawn from robotic models about humans, or vice versa, require caution. Incorporating constraints from multiple levels of analysis is essential for models that predict, generate, and causally explain real-world behavior.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2021
Marvin Liesner, Wilfried Kunde
5 citations
Perceptual changes caused by an agent's own actions can contribute to the minimal self, but these changes occur across different sensory modalities and vary in temporal and spatial proximity to the agent. Some changes affect the biological body and are conveyed by private sensory signals, while others occur in the environment and are conveyed by public sensory signals. The authors argue that although these signals have considerable functional overlap in generating self-experience, they should be distinguished in theories and empirical research on self-development.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2020
Constantinos Picolas
5 citations
Patients in a Minimally Conscious State (MCS) show minimal signs of awareness, unlike those in a Vegetative State who show none. Existing research on self-awareness in MCS patients has focused only on higher-order, reflective self-awareness. This paper argues that a more basic, pre-reflective (or minimal) self-awareness—the implicit awareness of our embodied subjectivity that permeates all experiences—has been neglected. The author suggests that neuroimaging studies using First-Person Perspective-taking paradigms could assess minimal self-awareness in MCS patients, even when they lack self-reflective abilities. Such evidence would have theoretical implications for the concept of self-awareness and practical medical, social, and legal implications for managing awareness-impaired patients.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2025
David Martínez-pernía, Alejandro Troncoso, Sergio E Chaigneau et al.
4 citations
ChatGPT can process large qualitative datasets for phenomenological analysis while preserving depth and nuance. The tool follows four stages: preparing phenomenological data, individual analysis highlighting experiential nuances, global analysis synthesizing narratives, and structuring shared experience components. Custom prompts ensure alignment and precision. ChatGPT organizes themes reflecting sensation intensity and variations in empathetic encounters, transforming raw input into detailed phenomenological accounts. Its proficiency combines precision with scalability for consciousness studies. Further research is needed to understand AI's capacity in phenomenological analysis and strengthen the methodological framework.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2025
Lis Johles, Peter Molander, Carolina Lundqvist
4 citations
A 4-week body scan intervention did not improve quality of life among Swedish student-athletes compared with a relaxation control. The study, involving 99 student-athletes from six high schools, found no significant differences between the two groups in quality-of-life change, and no evidence that changes in five facets of mindfulness (acting with awareness, describing, non-judgment, non-reactivity, and observing) mediated any effect. The results indicate that body scans had no effect on student-athletes' quality of life in this pilot study, suggesting that future research should refine mindfulness interventions and explore other practices.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2025
Jenny Moix, Isabel Nieto, Anna Yue De la Rua
4 citations
People who have had out-of-body experiences (OBEs) often describe them as more vivid and authentic than everyday reality. In interviews with 10 participants without mental or neurological disorders, five interpreted their OBEs through concepts like "other planes or dimensions" and "universal consciousness," aligning with non-local or expanded consciousness theories. Four had no explanation, and one gave a physiological account. The findings suggest that theories of non-local consciousness could be enriched by incorporating these firsthand experiential perspectives.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2025
Cheng Wang
4 citations
Buddhist meditation practices—Samatha (focused attention), Vipassana (open monitoring), and Metta (loving-kindness)—offer distinct pathways for transforming consciousness beyond conventional mindfulness. These techniques systematically cultivate meta-cognitive insight, emotional regulation, and self-inquiry, leading to shifts in awareness and personal growth. Neuroscience and psychology studies indicate that these practices strengthen attentional stability, reshape self-referential thinking, and reorganize emotional patterns, as seen in altered default-mode network activity and characteristic EEG patterns. While sharing parallels with Western mindfulness and hypnosis, Buddhist meditation uniquely emphasizes ethical integration and profound introspection. Challenges remain in objectively measuring advanced states like "no-self" (anattā) due to reliance on subjective self-report, suggesting future research incorporate culturally sensitive methods and neurophenomenology.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2025
Lanjuan Liu, Cheng Liu, Lijun Tang et al.
4 citations
Yoga meditation reduces anxiety, depression, and perceived stress while improving emotional regulation and self-awareness in female college students. The practice positively influences neuroplasticity, inducing beneficial changes in brain regions associated with emotional control and cognitive flexibility. Improved autonomic nervous system function was observed, with increased parasympathetic activity and reduced sympathetic response. Meditation strengthened psychological resilience, improved stress-coping strategies, and sustained positive mental health benefits even after the intervention. Integrating yoga meditation into campus mental health programs is recommended.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2025
Lawrence Fischman
4 citations
MDMA-assisted therapy for trauma is unusually effective, partly because the therapist's full trust in the participant's inner healing intelligence—analogous to the body's self-healing—helps trauma survivors who struggle with trust to engage the therapist as a witness. The medication enhances trust subjectively. This therapeutic attitude parallels how a relational psychoanalyst acts as witness in resolving dissociative enactment. Trusting one's inner healing intelligence is dynamically equivalent to trusting the relational process, making it a process of feeling witnessed. The therapist's willingness to acknowledge limitations, coupled with conviction that the participant's primary need is to feel witnessed, facilitates integration of dissociated experience.