Annual Review of Clinical Psychology
December 11, 2018
Joseph Wielgosz, Simon B. Goldberg, Tammi R. A. Kral et al.
441 citations
Mindfulness meditation is increasingly used in mental health interventions and has influenced basic research on psychopathology. This review examines mindfulness meditation through clinical neuroscience, linking its core capacities to cognitive and affective constructs from the National Institute of Mental Health's Research Domain Criteria. Effective applications are noted for depression, anxiety, chronic pain, and substance abuse, with emerging work on attention disorders, traumatic stress, dysregulated eating, and serious mental illness. Priorities for future research include identifying mechanisms, refining methods, and improving implementation. Mindfulness meditation shows promise for interventions, especially for psychiatric comorbidity, and its successes and challenges offer lessons for integrating contemplative traditions with clinical science.
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
June 13, 2024
Christopher R. Nicholas, Matthew I. Banks, Richard Lennertz et al.
3 citations
preprint
Co-administering the amnestic benzodiazepine midazolam with psilocybin in 8 healthy participants partially impaired memory for the psychedelic experience while still allowing a conscious experience to occur. The degree of memory impairment was inversely associated with salience, insight, and well-being induced by psilocybin. These results suggest that memory of the acute psychedelic experience contributes to therapeutically relevant behavioral effects. Because midazolam blocks memory by blocking cortical neural plasticity, it may also help evaluate how the pro-neuroplastic properties of psychedelics contribute to their therapeutic activity.
American Psychologist
January 1, 2015
Anne Harrington, John D. Dunne
Over the past two decades, mindfulness-based therapies have become widely accepted in clinical practice and popular culture, but with that acceptance has come growing criticism. Critics worry that stripping mindfulness from its original ethical frameworks turns it into a commodity for goals like weight loss, workplace productivity, or better school performance—uses it was never intended to serve. Yet the clinical and religious communities have long used meditation pragmatically for healing. This essay steps back to ask why these concerns are surfacing now, aiming to understand the historical roots of the current discontent rather than simply joining the critique.