bioRxiv Preprint Server
June 30, 2026
Mihir Nath, Nicco Reggente, Neil Bailey et al.
preprint
Deep meditation is associated with heightened mental clarity, which corresponds to a measurable increase in the brain's functional signal-to-noise ratio (f-SNR). In experienced Vipassana practitioners, deeper meditative states produced stronger and more consistent neural responses to auditory tones, as measured by event-related potentials and single-trial decodability. The findings suggest that deep meditation enhances the brain's ability to faithfully represent sensory signals while reducing irrelevant background neural activity.
Mindfulness
June 26, 2026
Jiaxiong Irvin Li, Brian M. Galla, Michael J. Tumminia
Adolescents who attended a six-day mindfulness retreat reported applying mindfulness skills in both personal and social contexts one month later. All 15 participants described intrapersonal benefits such as self-awareness, emotional regulation, self-compassion, and broader perspective. Many also described interpersonal applications: 73% used mindfulness to navigate social anxiety and build connections, 67% engaged in more compassionate communication including active listening and emotional support, and 53% reported greater empathy and perspective-taking. The findings suggest that an immersive retreat can help adolescents transfer mindfulness skills to real-world developmental challenges, supporting both internal well-being and social relationships.
medRxiv
June 23, 2026
Paulina Clara Dagnino, Anne Maj van der Velden, Henricus G. Ruhé et al.
In people with major depressive disorder, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) plus treatment as usual, compared to treatment as usual alone, increased the hierarchical organization of brain activity during rumination but not at rest. Greater hierarchy—meaning more directional information flow and less recurrent looping—was linked to improvements in clinical and behavioral outcomes. This shift away from self-reinforcing negative mental loops toward more differentiated cognitive and bodily cycles may help explain how MBCT interrupts ruminative thought patterns. Hierarchical brain dynamics could serve as a treatment-sensitive marker and potential mechanism of therapeutic change in MBCT for depression.
Mindfulness
June 23, 2026
Pankhuri Aggarwal, Blessing S. Johnson, Christian Garcia et al.
College students in India and the United States define and practice mindfulness in culturally distinct ways. In a survey of 512 Indian and 508 U.S. students, U.S. students more often defined mindfulness as awareness of self, environment, and consideration of others. Indian students more commonly practiced meditation, while U.S. students favored physical activity, reflective practices, spiritual or religious practices, and consideration of others. Distraction was the main barrier for Indian participants, whereas U.S. participants reported emotional and interpersonal difficulties. Strategies to overcome challenges also varied culturally. The findings emphasize the need for culturally informed mindfulness interventions for college students.
Religions
June 22, 2026
Evanne Nowak
Contemplative practices like dialogue and walking can help people perceive and process ecological grief. A study of the Lab Landschapspijn Veluwe in the Netherlands found that these practices function as contemplative witnessing, making ecological loss more perceptible, grievable, and emotionally acknowledged. Participants articulated tangible losses and their emotional, moral, and spiritual dimensions. The practices foster an open-ended engagement where grief, wonder, uncertainty, and care coexist without demanding immediate resolution. Contemplative ecology may thus cultivate the emotional, existential, and relational capacities needed to remain engaged with ecological crisis.
Clinical Social Work Journal
June 16, 2026
Chase M. Bryer, Marinna Okawa, Sherente Harris et al.
A culturally grounded mindfulness intervention, IndigenousMIND-crafts, paired Elders and youth from a Northeastern tribal nation in weekend workshops that combined mindfulness with traditional crafts like corn husk dolls and finger weaving. Rapid Qualitative Analysis of interviews with 24 tribal citizens revealed three themes: cultural crafts fostered openness and affirmed identity, intergenerational engagement enhanced emotional well-being and community connection, and cultural transmission was seen as a vital responsibility linked to survival and ancestral ties. Participants reported immediate emotional benefits and a desire for sustained, culturally rooted programming, suggesting the intervention's potential for adaptation across tribal contexts.
Contemporary School Psychology
June 16, 2026
Karl N. Prevost, Ashley Baer, Andrew Roach et al.
A new grassroots mindfulness program called the Mindful Breathing Program (MBP) was tested in a K–12 public school district in the United States. Students showed increases in mindfulness, positive emotions, and helpful behaviors, along with decreases in negative emotions, emotional symptoms, hyperactivity, inattention, and conduct problems. Teachers improved in acting with awareness, describing and accepting inner experiences, nonreactivity, mindful teaching, and self-efficacy for managing stress, supporting student behavior, and using responsive instruction. The findings suggest MBP supports self-regulation, emotional balance, and well-being for both students and educators.
Actas espanolas de psiquiatria
June 15, 2026
Xinrong Zheng, Qijun Zhang, Hesheng Zhuang
Patients with pneumonia-induced sepsis who received personalized nursing combined with Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) showed greater reductions in anxiety and depression, and greater improvements in self-efficacy, quality of life, and self-care ability compared with those receiving routine nursing alone. The combined nursing group (68 patients) had significantly lower scores on the Hamilton Anxiety Scale and Hamilton Depression Scale, and significantly higher scores on measures of self-efficacy, quality of life, and self-care ability than the routine nursing group (59 patients). The findings suggest that integrating personalized nursing with MBSR may be a beneficial strategy for improving psychological and functional outcomes in this patient population.
International Journal of Behavioral Medicine
June 12, 2026
Carter Minnick, Adam W. Hanley, Eric L. Garland
A brief, Spanish-language adaptation of Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (Spanish B-MORE) was tested in a pilot randomized controlled trial with 20 Spanish-speaking adults experiencing chronic pain. Participants rated the intervention as highly acceptable, averaging 9.4 out of 10, and would recommend it to others. Immediately after sessions, pain intensity, pain unpleasantness, and anxiety all decreased with large effect sizes. At six weeks, those who received B-MORE showed greater improvements across all clinical outcomes compared to a waitlist control group. The intervention appears to be a brief, scalable, and culturally responsive option for chronic pain in Spanish-speaking populations, warranting further study in larger trials.
Communications Biology
June 12, 2026
Saketh Malipeddi, Arun Sasidharan, Bianca Ventura et al.
Advanced meditators from the Isha Yoga tradition report stronger non-dual experiences—where the boundary between self and environment dissolves—during breath-watching meditation compared to novices and meditation-naïve controls. Using EEG-based intrinsic neural timescales (INT), researchers found that across all participants, INTs are longer during internal attention (breath-watching) than during an external cognitive task. However, advanced meditators show similar INT durations between internal and external attention, and this reduced difference correlates with stronger reported non-dual experiences. The findings suggest that similar intrinsic neural timescale durations across internal and external attention may be a neural signature of non-duality.
Psychotherapy and Psychosomatics
June 12, 2026
Thorsten Barnhofer, Maria Niemi, Johannes Michalak et al.
1 citation
For adults with difficult-to-treat depression—those who have not responded to prior treatments, have treatment-resistant depression, or have a chronic course—mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) is likely superior to usual care, reducing depressive symptoms by a standardized mean difference of -0.40 at post-treatment and -0.41 at medium-term follow-up. There was a 92% and 85% probability, respectively, that these benefits exceeded a minimal important difference. However, MBCT did not show clear superiority over other active psychosocial interventions, and no robust moderators of outcome were identified across baseline severity, chronicity, or comorbidity.
Frontiers in Psychiatry
June 10, 2026
Wesley H. Fleming
Moral injury involves disruptions in self-referential processing, including rigid negative self-appraisals and impaired meaning-making after morally injurious events. This paper proposes self-transcendence—a metacognitive state of reduced self-focus, expanded awareness, and prosocial meaning—as a mechanism for recovery. Drawing on Mindfulness-to-Meaning Theory, mindfulness practice is theorized to cultivate self-transcendence via decentering and meta-awareness, which broaden attentional scope and modulate habitual self-processing. The integrative review suggests that fostering self-transcendence through mindfulness-based and contemplative practices may reduce rigid self-focus, expand interpretive frameworks of meaning, and support moral identity repair. Implications for designing interventions that cultivate self-transcendence are discussed, along with limitations in measurement and reliable induction of such states.
JMIR mHealth and uHealth
June 8, 2026
Julia Adams, Jonathan Davies, Prai Wattanatakulchat et al.
Meditation app use is generally low: half of users engage for 16 minutes or less in the first month after download, and fewer than 20% continue past 14 days. Intended use far exceeds actual use. Higher engagement is associated with expectation match, expectations for anxiety and attention, conscientiousness, satisfaction with life, and well-being, while neuroticism, perceived stress, psychological distress, and lower quality of life are linked to lower engagement. Readiness to change uniquely predicts higher engagement. Acute stress motivates use, but chronic stress disrupts it. Engagement is best when experiences match expectations and users are prepared to change.
Front Psychol
June 4, 2026
Meditation in trained Rajyoga practitioners produces a consistent physiological signature: heart rate variability (HRV) increases, respiration slows, and the coupling between breathing and heart rate strengthens, indicating greater parasympathetic nervous system engagement. The study measured 55 practitioners across three 10-minute states—before, during, and after meditation—using multiscale HRV metrics. Time-domain and frequency-domain HRV indices rose during meditation and partially recovered afterward, while non-linear measures also shifted significantly. Exploratory sex-stratified analyses suggested possible differences in effect magnitude that require further study. The findings support multiscale cardiorespiratory analysis as an operational marker of altered consciousness during Rajyoga meditation.
Future oncology
June 1, 2026
Minqing Huang, Guiling Huang, Fang Wang et al.
An 8-week mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program, including mindful breathing, body scan, and meditation, significantly reduced chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting, depression, and anxiety in patients with colorectal cancer. In a retrospective cohort of 301 patients, those who completed MBSR had higher FLIE nausea and vomiting scores and lower PHQ-9 and GAD-7 scores over four chemotherapy cycles compared to those receiving routine care only. The MBSR group showed declining symptom scores from baseline through treatment, indicating that MBSR effectively alleviates both physical and psychological distress and improves quality of life.
Journal of religion and health
June 1, 2026
Siliana Maria Duarte Miranda, Gabriela Patrus Ananias De Assis Pires, Eliane Viana Mancuzo et al.
Patients with interstitial lung diseases (ILDs) expressed gratitude in five main areas during a mindfulness-based intervention: religious belief and reliance on God as a coping strategy, the ability to perform simple daily tasks autonomously, the presence of family and friends, assurance from the health care team and treatment, and changes from mindfulness training. Despite the severity of their progressive disease, participants found meaning in relationships, spirituality, medical care, and meditation.
Complementary therapies in medicine
June 1, 2026
Moirangthem Joychand Singh, Sunil Singh Yadav, Sangeeth Somanadhapai et al.
Meditation-based interventions for people with epilepsy show promise for improving depression, anxiety, concentration, and quality of life. Neurophysiological changes include modulation of gamma power, beta burst duration, and interictal epileptiform discharges, suggesting a potential stabilizing effect on neural networks. However, evidence for reducing seizure frequency is inconsistent and generally not statistically significant. The review included five studies: two randomized controlled trials, two open-label studies, and one case report. Meditation appears to be a promising adjunctive therapy for psychological well-being and possibly cortical excitability, but well-powered randomized controlled trials with standardized protocols and longer follow-up are needed to confirm effects on seizure control.