Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2017
Rahil Rojiani, Juan F Santoyo, Hadley Rahrig et al.
232 citations
Women who took a 12-week college meditation course showed greater decreases in negative affect and larger increases in mindfulness and self-compassion than men. Women's improvements in negative affect were linked to gains in both mindfulness skills and self-compassion, while men showed non-significant increases in negative affect and their affect changes correlated only with the ability to describe emotions, not with experiential or self-acceptance measures. The findings suggest that women may respond more favorably than men to school-based mindfulness training and that tailoring interventions by gender could improve effectiveness.
Journal of school psychology
June 1, 2018
Yoona Kang, Hadley Rahrig, Kristina Eichel et al.
143 citations
Sixth graders who practiced short mindfulness meditation sessions four to five times per week for six weeks reported greater improvement in emotional wellbeing than those in an active control group. Gender moderated the effect: female meditators showed larger increases in positive affect compared to control females, while males in both groups improved equally. Among females only, gains in self-compassion were linked to better affect. The results suggest school-based mindfulness training benefits early adolescents, with distinct responses by gender.
Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging
April 1, 2025
Saampras Ganesan, Fernando A Barrios, Ishaan Batta et al.
6 citations
Meditation practices, which have shown therapeutic benefits for conditions like depression, pain, addiction, and anxiety, have been studied with neuroimaging over the past decade. However, existing neuroscientific models are based on small, heterogeneous datasets, limiting generalizability and replicability. The ENIGMA-Meditation consortium is the first worldwide collaborative effort to conduct systematic meta- and mega-analyses of globally distributed neuroimaging data using standardized methods. This framework aims to improve statistical power and address multidomain heterogeneity in meditation practice types, experience, and experimental design. The consortium will generate rigorous neuroscientific insights into the mechanisms underlying meditation's therapeutic effects on psychological and cognitive attributes.
April 8, 2024
Saampras Ganesan, Aki Tsuchiyagaito, Greg J. Siegle et al.
2 citations
preprint
Meditation practices, which have been adapted into manualized interventions for conditions like depression, pain, addiction, and anxiety, show therapeutic promise, but their neuroscientific basis remains unclear. Current neuroimaging studies rely on small, heterogeneous datasets that vary in practice types, participant experience, clinical targets, and imaging methods, limiting generalizability and replicability. To address this, the ENIGMA-Meditation consortium was formed as a global collaboration to conduct systematic meta- and mega-analyses of distributed neuroimaging data using standardized methods. This framework aims to improve statistical power and rigorously characterize the neural mechanisms underlying meditation's effects on psychological and cognitive attributes, advancing the field of contemplative neuroscience.
October 18, 2023
Hadley Rahrig, Liangsuo Ma, Kirk Warren Brown et al.
preprint
A brief mindfulness induction altered functional brain networks in intimate partner dyads, reducing coherence within the Default Mode Network and increasing connectivity within the Frontoparietal Control and Salience Networks, while decoupling primary visual and attention-linked networks. However, these neural changes did not translate into reduced intimate partner aggression, and aggression was broadly unassociated with any network indices. The findings suggest that minimal doses of focused attention meditation can produce transient changes in large-scale brain networks, but their implications for aggressive behavior remain uncertain.