Acute and Longitudinal Effects of Meditation on Student Anxiety

Abstract

In the last two decades, traditional neuroscience has increasingly sought to investigate the so-called neural correlates of conscious states, with a growing scientific interest into contemplative practices such as meditation. Phenomenological accounts of such experiences have likewise been studied in depth, frequently by the use of rating scales or questionnaires. Yet, first- and third-person accounts of the dynamics of such practices have rarely been combined, leaving the fine grained, moment-to-moment link between experience and brain dynamics understudied. This study addresses that gap by utilising a neurophenomenological approach to explore how meditation may modulate intrusive or worrisome thoughts in university students with varying levels of anxiety, and how the experience of anxious thought unfolds around and during the practice. To do so, we adopt Temporal Experience Traces (TET), an innovative method allowing participants to graph the temporal evolution of their inner experience, alongside neural measurement through EEG. In an at-home naturalistic design, university students will use a mobile app to complete 14 days of counterbalanced guided breathing and open-monitoring meditation sessions, with short mind-wandering blocks before and after each meditation, while wearing a portable textile EEG headband. After each session, participants will retrospectively trace the intensity of dimensions such as worry, rumination, effort, and mental clarity across time, creating quantitative maps of how their conscious experience unfolded during the practice. By linking each session's EEG dynamics to these introspective traces, this study aims to characterise how brain dynamics correspond to shifts in anxious thoughts around and during meditation.