Frontiers in Psychology
June 10, 2026
Guy W. Fincham, Edward Caddye, Amy Kartar et al.
A single session of high ventilation breathwork produced larger altered states of consciousness—including mystical experience, emotional breakthrough, and feelings of oneness—than body scan meditation in 24 healthy adults. One week later, breathwork was associated with greater psychological insight and self-reported behavioral change. Both groups showed improvements in stress, anxiety, depression, and well-being over time. These preliminary findings suggest breathwork can induce psychedelic-like effects and support further confirmatory research.
Frontiers in Psychology
June 4, 2026
David O. Avruch
Ketamine-assisted psychotherapy (KAP) is increasingly used in mainstream mental healthcare, but its application in couple therapy is underexplored. Interviews with nine psychotherapists from four couple therapy modalities revealed diverse strategies for using ketamine to facilitate attachment processes. Respondents reported that ketamine helps couples reduce fearfulness, deepen emotional expression, communicate frankly, enhance trust, gain perspective on relational dysfunction, and address trauma. Different therapeutic modalities conceptualize ketamine's role uniquely. The study, limited by its small sample, contributes to the emerging field of psychedelic-assisted couple therapy.
Frontiers in Psychology
June 2, 2026
Marina Weiler, Marieta Pehlivanova, Philip J. Cozzolino
Out-of-body experiences (OBEs) sometimes involve reports of veridical perception—accurate information obtained from a vantage point outside the body without conventional sensory input. While case collections and early laboratory studies suggest this possibility, replication under standard protocols has been challenging. This review argues that typical target-identification paradigms, conducted in sterile settings with inexperienced participants, misalign with the dynamics of the OBE state. Five key determinants constrain laboratory outcomes: the participant's mental/emotional state, the participant-researcher relationship, researcher intention, variability in participant skill, and the intrinsic purpose of the experience. Reframing methodology around these determinants and complementing lab tasks with rigorously vetted spontaneous cases can increase ecological validity while preserving falsifiability, offering a pathway toward more effective investigation of veridical perception in OBEs and implications for models of consciousness.
Frontiers in Psychology
May 29, 2026
Gianluca Castelnuovo
Clinical psychology and psychotherapy face a paradigm shift toward more individualized, mechanism-oriented, and transdiagnostic approaches. Recent umbrella reviews show that both psychotherapies and pharmacotherapies for adult mental disorders have only minor effect sizes when only the best studies are considered, with small differences between them and few extra benefits from combining them. New challenges include integrating psychedelic-assisted therapy, using neuroimaging to define psychopathology based on shared neurobiological mechanisms rather than traditional diagnostic categories, expanding digital and mHealth interventions, and applying the biopsychosocial model more effectively in clinical practice. The field must move from disorder-specific protocols to dimensional, person-centered care that combines neuroscience with psychosocial formulation.
Frontiers in Psychology
May 28, 2026
Lidia Venero-Hidalgo, Francisca Carvajal, Fernando Rodrı́guez de Fonseca et al.
Cannabis use during adolescence and young adulthood is linked to memory problems, especially in episodic and working memory, but effects on executive functions are less consistent and depend on age, how much cannabis is used, and the type of cognitive test. Studies from the Americas, many of which followed participants over time, more often found negative associations between cannabis use and cognitive performance. European studies showed mixed results, possibly due to differences in cannabis products, patterns of co-use, and measurement methods. Evidence from Asia was limited. Overall, cognitive differences are more reliably seen in adolescents than in young adults, shaped by developmental, methodological, and contextual factors.
Frontiers in Psychology
May 20, 2026
Keisuke Suzuki
Altered states of consciousness—such as hallucinations, psychedelic experiences, and ego dissolution—differ qualitatively, but no unified computational framework describes what varies and along which dimensions. This paper proposes the C × G × D framework, drawing on three functional roles in deep neural networks: a Classifier (C) that extracts features from sensory input, a Generator (G) that synthesises internal representations, and a Discriminator (D) that judges whether a representation originates externally or internally. Phenomenological differences across altered states are redescribed as variations in objective functions, constraints, and thresholds of these components.
Frontiers in Psychology
May 19, 2026
Cora Zeng
A formless, persistent inner dialogue partner called Dialogical Inner Voice Personification (DIVP) emerges spontaneously in childhood, operates through linguistic turn-taking, and is experienced as part of the self. Drawing on eight autoethnographic interview sessions with an AI research assistant and parental accounts, the author—a 14-year-old gifted bilingual student—traces DIVP's phenomenology and development from early childhood to adolescence. Five literatures (inner speech, imaginary companions, Dialogical Self Theory, giftedness and overexcitability, and non-pathological voice-hearing) each explain a component, but none captures the full configuration. A dual-overexcitability mechanism (intellectual × imaginational) is proposed as a candidate explanation, and the clinical risk of misdiagnosis in gifted children reporting such experiences is examined.
Frontiers in Psychology
May 15, 2026
Hiroko Tanabe, Minami Nakajima, Mai Shiratori et al.
The pleasurable urge to move to music, known as groove, is not simply enhanced by stronger synchronization between body movement and musical rhythm. In a study where participants listened to rhythms with varying syncopation under free, static, or dynamic movement conditions, the urge to move increased synchronization at a beat-level frequency (2 Hz) even when movement was restricted. However, stronger synchronization did not uniformly boost groove; in free and dynamic conditions, overly rigid temporal alignment reduced ratings of urge-to-move and pleasure. The functional role of synchronization depended on movement context: slower metrical synchronization (1 Hz) was key in the free condition, while beat-level synchronization (2 Hz) dominated in the dynamic condition. Groove emerges from a context-dependent balance between entrained bodily engagement and the degree of temporal stabilization.
Frontiers in Psychology
May 12, 2026
Xi Zhang, Hongyan Wang, Xiaohui Wang et al.
A meta-analysis of 10 randomized controlled trials involving 563 participants found that mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) improved depressive symptoms in family caregivers of dementia patients, with a moderate effect size. The benefit persisted at 3 months post-intervention but was not significant at 6 months. Subgroup analyses showed that 8-week MBSR, mindfulness meditation, and acceptance and commitment therapy were effective, while 10-week MBCT was not. The authors conclude that the format, duration, and follow-up timing of MBIs influence their effectiveness, and they recommend that clinicians select appropriate protocols and ensure continuity of care. The certainty of evidence was rated as moderate.
Frontiers in Psychology
April 28, 2026
Gilles Ambresin, Tamara Fischmann, Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber
For chronically depressed patients with early trauma, intensive psychoanalysis can produce lasting structural change by transforming traumatic embodied memories within the analytic relationship. A longitudinal case from the LAC Depression Study illustrates how high-frequency psychoanalysis enabled a patient to discover and understand embodied memories of early trauma through the transference relationship, with changes in dream processes—measured by the Zurich Dream Process Coding System—showing a shift from helplessness-dominated nightmares to dreams with greater affect regulation, symbolic capacity, and self-agency. These transformations persisted more than a decade after treatment termination. The article integrates psychoanalytic theory, dream research, and neurobiological models of memory reconsolidation to explain how psychoanalysis uniquely fosters sustained therapeutic change in this treatment-resistant population.
Frontiers in Psychology
April 24, 2026
Daliang Zhao
A process-based, closed-loop model of mindfulness-based psychological regulation explains how athletes maintain attentional stability and functional operation under continuous performance pressure. Drawing on sport psychology, cognitive science, and Chan Buddhism, the model establishes a hierarchical framework where attentional control serves as the proximal mechanism of performance, disrupted by mental proliferation. It integrates four functional dimensions—Meaning Construction, Process Orientation, Attention Anchoring, and Psychological Re-centering—organized across the initiation, propagation, execution, and recovery phases of proliferation. These dimensions are coordinated through a Reference Chain (Identification-Referencing-Returning) acting as a recursive control mechanism for real-time recalibration. The model shifts sport mindfulness research from outcome-based descriptions toward process-level understanding.
Frontiers in Psychology
April 10, 2026
Natalie R. Beylin, Matthew J. Zawadzki
Mindfulness-based interventions show mixed results for people with histories of adverse childhood experiences. This paper proposes the Mindfulness Recalibration Model, a framework that reinterprets mindfulness practice as a process of biopsychological recalibration driven by experience, rather than just skill acquisition. The model distinguishes somatic practices that regulate physiology through bottom-up pathways from cognitive-affective practices that support top-down control, and emphasizes their coordinated, reciprocal engagement to reshape stress-regulatory systems. It offers a unifying explanation for inconsistent findings and a roadmap for developing interventions tailored to adversity-shaped regulatory systems.
Frontiers in Psychology
March 25, 2026
Amira Arora
correction
Consciousness is not a byproduct of brain activity but is ontologically fundamental, with the brain acting as a filter or receiver for a more pervasive, nonlocal consciousness. This view, supported by transpersonal psychology, contemplative traditions, and empirical findings such as near-death experiences and psychedelic studies where reduced brain activity corresponds to heightened subjective richness, challenges materialist assumptions. The paper argues for integrating first-person methodologies and cross-cultural wisdom into scientific inquiry, proposing that consciousness is a participatory field central to reality, with implications for psychology, spirituality, and a more holistic science.
Frontiers in Psychology
March 19, 2026
Richard W. Maxwell
Devotion in Tantric Yoga meditation is strongly linked to trait mindfulness, more so than to mysticism, self-actualization, or positive and negative affect. In a cross-sectional study of practitioners, trait mindfulness was the only variable that predicted devotion, even after accounting for age. This connection may stem from both secular mindfulness and traditional Buddhist and bhakti (devotional) practices emphasizing a one-pointed focus of attention.
Frontiers in Psychology
March 17, 2026
Ingeborg van den Bold, Sanneke De Haan, Jenny Slatman
Verbalizing body awareness during Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) training is difficult; participants often talked about emotions or made rational judgments instead of expressing bodily sensations. Analyzing a full MBSR course transcript with interpretative phenomenological analysis and applying Wittgenstein's concept of language-games and Austin's speech acts, the authors suggest that learning to verbalize body awareness involves learning a language-game of 'reporting sense perceptions.' The findings align with emotion regulation therapy, where the first step is feeling bodily sensations rather than making rational judgments. The authors hypothesize that mindfulness apps and recorded body scans, lacking live trainer-participant dialogue, may hinder this learning process.
Frontiers in Psychology
March 6, 2026
Neil Dagnall, Andrew Denovan, Claire Murphy-Morgan et al.
People who hold strong scientific beliefs tend to rely on analytical-rational thinking, while those who hold paranormal beliefs tend to rely on intuitive-experiential thinking. In a sample of 300 adults, traditional and New Age paranormal beliefs correlated positively with intuitive processing and negatively with analytical processing; belief in science showed the opposite pattern. Two subgroups emerged: Higher Evidence-based Thinking (55% of participants) with high scientific and low paranormal belief, and Lower Evidence-based Thinking (45%) with low scientific and high paranormal belief. Cognitive rigidity (dogmatism and need for closure) did not differ between groups, suggesting these traits are belief-neutral characteristics of strongly held convictions rather than specific to scientific or paranormal worldviews.
Frontiers in Psychology
February 26, 2026
Eiko Matsuda
People with perceptual forms of synesthesia—where sensations like visualized colors or spatial sequences are triggered—report more frequent and vivid lucid dreams, including greater control, insight, and positive emotion. Conceptual synesthesia, such as associating letters with colors or personalities, showed the opposite pattern, reducing dream lucidity. A survey of 616 adults identified four synesthesia subtypes and found that perceptual synesthesia likely boosts dream clarity by enhancing the brain's ability to generate rich sensory possibilities during sleep. Personality traits like openness and extraversion were also linked to more lucid dreaming. The findings suggest synesthesia and lucid dreaming share underlying cognitive mechanisms involving perceptual presence and counterfactual richness.
Frontiers in Psychology
February 25, 2026
Natalie L. Dyer, Meredith Sprengel, Ivo V. Stuldreher et al.
A feasibility study monitored 23 adults with multiple sensors during guided loving kindness meditation and breathwork. Biofield measures changed as expected for some participants. After meditation, participants reported lower arousal and increased control, boundarylessness, and non-duality. After breathwork, participants reported increased arousal and decreased boundarylessness, connectedness, and non-duality. Strong correlations (r > 0.5) appeared between ultraweak photon emission from both hands, and moderate correlations (r > 0.4) between infrared nose temperature and left hand ultraweak photon emission. The authors conclude that simultaneous multi-sensor monitoring is feasible and that meditation and breathwork produce nearly opposite effects, but larger samples and control groups are needed.
Frontiers in Psychology
February 9, 2026
Akbota Tleuberdinova
A unified framework called Earth Universal BioConsciousness proposes that consciousness originates from pre-existing cell bioconsciousness, not spontaneously, and is a primary causal agent directing genetic adaptations. The framework integrates several theories: Cellular Basis of Consciousness, Cognition-Based Evolution, Universal Genome Evolution (where DNA is a structural correlate of universal bioconsciousness), and Ontogenetic Evolution of Universal Bioconsciousness (beginning at zygote formation). It reinterprets Descartes' 'Cogito ergo sum' by arguing verbal thought depends on bioconsciousness and serves communication, not independent thinking. Unicellular and multicellular bioconsciousness exist in positive and negative forms. Human-like artificial consciousness is deemed highly unlikely because bioconsciousness is tied to biological lineage.
Frontiers in Psychology
February 4, 2026
Juan Camilo Benítez-Agudelo, Eduardo Navarro-Jiménez, Vicente Javier Clemente-suárez
A 13-week mindfulness-based intervention for Colombian university students produced selective improvements in emotional and autonomic regulation but did not significantly affect stress, sleep, physical activity, or academic performance. After adjusting for covariates, no between-group effects remained significant after correction for multiple testing. Within the intervention group, participants showed increased conscientiousness, psychological flexibility, and reduced loneliness, while anxiety and depressive symptoms remained stable compared to increases in the control group, suggesting a protective effect. The findings support a psychobiological model linking mindfulness to enhanced self-regulation and adaptive autonomic modulation, though broader effects were limited.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 30, 2026
Nina Zech, Martin Busch, Veronika K. Jaeger et al.
A mind-body intervention modified from the Feldenkrais method produces measurable changes in electrical brain activity similar to those seen during hypnotic induction. In 54 adult volunteers, the Bispectral Index (BIS), an EEG-derived parameter used in anesthesia, decreased from an awake value of 97.5 to values of 88-92 during both a hypnotic susceptibility test and the mind-body intervention. Significant drops occurred with each break during the intervention. Age, sex, suggestibility, and daytime did not significantly influence the changes. The findings suggest that such interventions induce a non-ordinary state of consciousness, which may be relevant for therapeutic change by engaging unconscious processes.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2026
Felix M G Woolford, Keisuke Suzuki
Intentional binding, a measure of how people perceive time between their actions and outcomes, was tested in individual, human-computer, and human-human joint button-pressing tasks using haptic devices. Contrary to expectations from we-agency theory, the overall strength of binding did not differ between partner types. However, within human pairs, participants who reported a stronger sense of agency showed stronger binding, linked to leader-follower movement dynamics. No such link appeared in human-computer interactions. The findings indicate that temporal binding primarily reflects sensorimotor predictability rather than social context or intentionality, and may serve as a signature of how partners co-regulate their actions.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2026
Recai Kayış
Near-death experiences and end-of-life visions may be final internally generated simulations—dying dreams—produced by the brain's own activity rather than evidence of an afterlife. The hypothesis proposes that a surge of terminal neural activity, combined with memory integration, a breakdown in time perception, and neurochemical changes, generates a vivid, culturally shaped experience. Under oxygen deprivation, subjective time can dilate, so seconds of brain activity may feel timeless. Because the person never wakes, this simulation becomes their last conscious experience. The framework draws on studies of near-death experiences, brain recordings at death, dream science, cultural beliefs, psychedelic research, and hospice observations, and it offers testable predictions.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2026
Robert Worden
Consciousness may arise from un-encoded information in an analogue model of 3-D space, specifically a wave excitation in the thalamus that stores information as a Fourier transform, similar to a hologram. Neurons couple to this wave, but the wave itself is the source of consciousness, not neural computation. The theory avoids the decoding problem inherent in neural theories, where encoded information requires external decoding not present in the brain. Although such a wave has not been detected, indirect evidence exists in the mammalian thalamus and insect central body. The theory is an initial conceptual outline, potentially falsifiable, and could explain why consciousness evolved, with many details remaining to be worked out.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2026
Giorgio Marchetti
Emotions arise when an object triggers an affective response that shifts attention from the object to the sense of self, activating an area of the organ of attention (aOA) related to the self and adopting a corresponding set-point. Deviations from this set-point generate the conscious experience of emotion, informing the individual about internal equilibrium and the integrity of the sense of self. The AME theory of consciousness proposes that phenomenal consciousness results from modulation of energy levels in the aOA, manifesting through five dimensions: qualitative, quantitative, hedonic, temporal, and spatial. Emotions emerge from interactions among core affect, cognitive appraisal, and physiological-behavioral manifestations, cycling through conscious and unconscious processing. Emotions act as adaptive regulators of behavior and as operations for monitoring, defining, and reconstructing the sense of self.