EXCLI journal2026Chun-Hua Xu, Bi-Lan Zhang, Chun-Lan Guan et al.
Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) demonstrates significant efficacy in improving depressive symptoms and modulating metabolic profiles. However, the specific metabolite biomarkers and metabolic pathways underlying MBCT's therapeutic effects in adolescent depression remain unclear. This study aims to identify potential metabolite biomarkers and metabolic regulation pathways associated...
Despite growing interest in mindfulness-based interventions (MBI) for Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), robust evidence for their adjunctive use alongside first-line pharmacotherapy is scarce. This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of MBI as adjunct to pharmacotherapy in adults with GAD, assessing multidimensional outcomes. In this randomized controlled trial, 106 adults diagnosed with...
This study aimed to evaluate the effects of a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program on depression, anxiety, stress, and hopelessness among parents of children with autism (Autism Spectrum Disorder [ASD]). A pre-test-post-test, parallel-group randomized controlled trial was conducted in two institutions providing education for children with ASD in Konya, Türkiye. The sample included...
Depression is a common complication after stroke. Although prior studies suggest that mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) may alleviate depressive symptoms in post-stroke patients, the evidence remains inconclusive. This meta-analysis aimed to synthesize randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to evaluate the effects of MBSR on depressive symptoms after stroke. PubMed, Web of Science, Embase,...
Depression constitutes a major global public health burden, with university students exhibiting a disproportionately high prevalence of depressive symptoms. Although Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) has demonstrated efficacy in alleviating depressive symptomatology, its underlying neurobiological mechanisms remain incompletely understood. This randomized controlled trial investigated...
This study aimed to evaluate the impact of an 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program on sleep quality and academic stress among Chinese school adolescents. A total of 46 students were recruited and randomly assigned to either the experimental group (n=22), which participated in the 8-week MBSR program, or the control group (n=24), which received no intervention. Assessments...
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...
Mindfulness meditation is a robust and rapidly growing area of inquiry in the psychological sciences. However, core questions remain about how mindfulness develops, how it exerts its effects, and what conditions amplify or attenuate these effects. We argue that empirical research on mindfulness has predominantly relied on reductionist decomposition-a foundational scientific approach that...
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...
Clinical nurses face notable chronic stress due to work-related stressors, exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic, leading to somatic symptoms and low-grade inflammation. Mindfulness meditation has shown promise in reducing stress and improving health outcomes, but its effects on somatic symptoms and inflammatory biomarkers in nurses remain underexplored. To assess the impact of mindfulness...
High stress and low wellbeing pose severe individual, societal and economic threats, and there is a pressing demand for non-invasive stress reduction tools. This exploratory pilot study assessed the efficacy of speech prosody as a biosignal for stress elicitation, when comparing relaxation outcomes of two interventions with a control group. Thirty participants were divided into three treatment...
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...
Attention is theorized to have a definitive role in mindfulness and its salutary effects. Yet, findings from more than two decades of research testing this central theoretical premise have been surprisingly mixed. To account for this paradoxical disparity between theory and findings, we propose the Mindfulness Internal Attention (MIA) framework. We theorize and review initial findings...
The human brain constructs a boundary between self and world by distinguishing self-generated sensory events from external ones. For events that are self-initiated, the brain attenuates its response, what is known as the sensory suppression effect. This effect is regarded as a proxy of the sense of agency, i.e., our feeling of being subjective agents controlling our actions and ensuing events...
Explore2026Nachum Plonka, Scott Davies, Mike Atkinson et al.
The Global Consciousness Project 2.0 (GCP 2.0) is an initiative investigating the relationship between human consciousness and the behavior of the project's random number generators (RNGs). This was explored via a series of meditation workshops led by Dr. Joe Dispenza with between 1000-2200 participants. They are run almost monthly and include meditative practices and 3 separate Coherence...
As global crises deepen, there is growing recognition that social transformation requires not only structural change but also a shift in consciousness toward interconnection and collective care. Mindfulness-especially as rooted in cultural, spiritual, and justice-based traditions-offers a powerful pathway for both personal and societal transformation. In this introductory article to the special...
This paper explores pranayama, the ancient yogic practice of breath control, as a promising natural method of neuromodulation. Pranayama aims to regulate the flow of prana (life force) to enhance mental clarity, emotional balance, and physiological resilience. We synthesize evidence from clinical, neuroimaging, and psychophysiological studies, illustrating how various pranayama techniques -...
Visual stimuli-induced "narrowband" gamma oscillations (30-70 Hz) are generated due to excitation-inhibition interactions and are linked to attention/binding. These oscillations attenuate with aging and neurodegeneration, potentially indicating declining inhibitory function. In contrast, meditation enhances endogenous stimulus-free gamma (power in a broad frequency range above 25 Hz). However,...
Yogic meditation, involving focused awareness, is gaining scientific attention for its impact on brain function and neurochemical balance. It enhances autonomic control and influences neurotransmitters related to emotional and cognitive health. This narrative review explored scientific studies on the effects of yogic meditation on EEG patterns and neurotransmitter levels. 21 peer-reviewed...
Meditation and spiritual practices have moved from the margins of medical interest into the center of contemporary mental health research, with a rapidly growing body of randomized trials, neuroimaging studies, and systematic reviews. Evidence from programs such as Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, yoga based interventions, Transcendental Meditation, loving kindness practices, and mantra...