Spiritual care occupations-spiritual direction and professional chaplaincy chief among them-occupy a professional jurisdiction whose cognitive foundation is not a body of techniques but an ontological commitment: the claim that the phenomena they address (vocation, discernment, encounter, the experience of being addressed by something exceeding the self) are real in a manner not exhaustively...
The brain shifts frequently between distinct regimes of neural activity with associated electrophysiological and behavioral features. These many brain states have different functions and subserve different goals of the animal. No understanding of the brain can be complete without characterization of its states, of how they are affected by disorders of the brain, and of how treatments are...
The mechanisms underlying recovery of consciousness after its transient loss remain incompletely understood. Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) induced generalized seizures disrupt responsiveness and orientation-key functional dimensions related to consciousness-and are followed by a stereotyped postictal state of temporary unresponsiveness, offering a unique model to study the dynamics of...
Treatment-resistant depression (TRD) poses a significant challenge, with many patients failing to achieve remission with conventional therapies. While repetitive Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (rTMS) is an established and effective neuromodulatory treatment for TRD, a notable proportion of patients do not fully respond. Despite the clinical utility of rTMS, response variability remains a...
Much of a typical individual's mental life is characterized by spontaneous thoughts that occur independently of external stimuli. In prior studies, ongoing mental experiences and their neural correlates have been captured using thought probes presented at random intervals during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). However, this approach results in temporally imprecise estimates of...
These days, students experience a significant amount of stress at university. According to the planetary health concept, internal transformative qualities, such as connectedness, may be essential for enhancing individual well-being and promoting sustainable behaviour. This randomised controlled study investigated whether online mindfulness training can enhance well-being and connectedness. One...
This article presents a narrative review of contemporary scientific studies published between 2015 and 2025, focusing on the analysis of the effects of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program on stress and depressive symptoms among young people. The review synthesizes findings from national and international metaanalyses, as well as randomized controlled trials. The analysis of...
Brief mindfulness meditation induction effectively reduces addictive behaviors in clinical populations, yet their impact on non-addicted individuals remains unclear. This study investigated whether brief mindfulness practice amplifies alcohol enjoyment and consumption in healthy young adults. Across two randomized controlled trials (Study 1:N = 67; Study 2:N = 89), participants with low-risk...
The successful execution of time-based prospective memory (TBPM) tasks demands self-initiation attentional resources. Mindfulness meditation can enhance attention, which may promote TBPM performance. This study investigates whether mindfulness meditation can facilitate TBPM via the improvement of attentional resources and whether such facilitation is modulated by time-monitoring conditions. The...
Music performance anxiety (MPA) can substantially impair musicians' learning, performance, and psychological functioning. Although mindfulness- and acceptance-based interventions (MABIs) have shown promise for MPA, their pooled effects, boundary conditions, and mechanism-related commonalities remain insufficiently understood. Grounded in a dual-path explanatory framework emphasizing decentering...