PLoS One
December 6, 2017
Eric L. Garland, Adam W. Hanley, Phillipe R. Goldin et al.
161 citations
A reanalysis of longitudinal data provides evidence for the mindfulness-to-meaning theory, which proposes that mindfulness promotes positive emotion regulation by increasing the ability to notice and savor positive experiences. The findings suggest that mindfulness training enhances positive emotions through this mechanism, supporting the theory's predictions about how mindfulness fosters well-being.
Ann N Y Acad Sci
April 1, 2016
Eric L. Garland
136 citations
Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE) restructures reward processing to remediate hedonic dysregulation in addiction, stress, and pain. The approach targets novel therapeutic mechanisms that address how the brain processes pleasure and reward, offering a potential intervention for conditions where this system is disrupted.
Journal of Psychopharmacology
March 1, 2022
Gabrielle Agin-Liebes, Richard J. Zeifman, Jason B. Luoma et al.
51 citations
People who participated in ayahuasca retreats in Central and South America reported reduced negative mood and increased positive mood and psychological flexibility three months later. Acute experiences of cognitive reappraisal during the ceremony were the strongest predictor of improvements in positive mood and flexibility. Increases in psychological flexibility statistically accounted for the link between acute psychological factors, including reappraisal, and later mood improvements. The findings suggest that acute reappraisal and subsequent gains in psychological flexibility are key mechanisms behind psychedelic-assisted therapy's benefits, supporting the integration of mindfulness-based and third-wave therapy approaches with such interventions.
Neuropsychopharmacology
September 12, 2020
Justin Hudak, Adam W. Hanley, William R. Marchand et al.
46 citations
Among people receiving Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement for opioid misuse, those who showed higher levels of endogenous theta brainwave activity during meditation subsequently required lower doses of opioids. Theta oscillations, which are linked to relaxation and focused attention, may serve as a neural marker predicting treatment response.
World Psychiatry
June 1, 2024
Matthew D. Sacchet, Maurizio Fava, Eric L. Garland
35 citations
Meditation and psychedelics both appear to alter self-referential processing, potentially leading to experiences of self-transcendence. This review examines whether scientific investigation of self-transcendence through these methods has clinical relevance. The authors suggest that changes in self-referential processing may underlie therapeutic benefits for mental health conditions, though the exact mechanisms remain unclear. The paper argues that understanding how meditation and psychedelics modulate the sense of self could inform new treatments for disorders characterized by maladaptive self-focus, such as depression and anxiety.
Journal of Psychedelic Studies
January 18, 2023
Benjamin R. Lewis, Kevin Byrne, John Hendrick et al.
22 citations
Psilocybin-assisted psychotherapy is usually given one-on-one, but group formats might offer unique benefits and help scale treatment. The HOPE trial tested psilocybin-enhanced group therapy in cancer patients with depression. Three cohorts of 4–6 participants each received three group preparatory sessions, one high-dose (25 mg) group psilocybin session, and three group integration sessions. This report presents qualitative survey data from participants and therapist observations, offering guidelines for protocol design, screening, space, therapist team structure, group process, music, and timeline. Primary clinical outcomes are still being analyzed.
Psychotherapy
April 30, 2020
Simon B. Goldberg, Adam W. Hanley, Scott A. Baldwin et al.
22 citations
Mindfulness practice time and psychological outcomes are linked on the same day, but practicing more on one day does not predict better outcomes the next day. Instead, feeling better or more mindful on a given day predicts more practice the following day. Over 12 weeks, 25 participants in a standardized mindfulness program completed daily diaries. Same-day relationships showed expected patterns: more practice was associated with higher positive affect and mindfulness and lower negative affect. However, lagged analyses found no evidence that practice time drives next-day outcomes. Post hoc analysis indicated that practice time moderated the connection between day-to-day affect, strengthening the positive affect link and weakening the negative affect link. The findings suggest that the causal direction may flow from outcome to practice time, not the reverse.
medRxiv
September 8, 2023
Patrick H. Finan, Carly Hunt, Michael L. Keaser et al.
6 citations
preprint
A brief Savoring Meditation intervention, compared to Slow Breathing, reduced experimental pain intensity ratings in patients with rheumatoid arthritis. It increased cerebral blood flow in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and connectivity between that region and the caudate during painful thermal stimulation. Participants also reported increased positive emotions and reduced anhedonic symptoms from before to after the intervention. These results suggest that Savoring Meditation engages reward-related brain circuits during pain, which may inform future work on clinical pain outcomes.
PLoS Medicine
September 19, 2025
Benjamin R. Lewis, John Hendrick, Kevin Byrne et al.
5 citations
Adding a single 25 mg dose of psilocybin to an 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program led to a significantly larger reduction in depressive symptoms among frontline healthcare workers than MBSR alone, with no serious adverse events. In a small randomized trial of 25 physicians and nurses with depression and burnout related to the COVID-19 pandemic, the combination group showed a 4.6-point greater drop on the Quick Inventory of Depressive Symptoms at two weeks post-intervention. This advantage diminished by six months. Secondary measures of burnout, demoralization, and connectedness also favored the psilocybin group but did not survive statistical correction. Larger trials are needed to confirm durability and generalizability.
Behaviour research and therapy
April 1, 2024
Eric L. Garland, Thupten Jinpa
4 citations
A randomized clinical trial compared Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE) with supportive psychotherapy for people with both chronic pain and opioid misuse. Participants who received MORE showed greater increases in self-transcendence during a mindfulness task, which led to stronger feelings of universal love. Those increased feelings of love, in turn, predicted lower opioid craving and reduced odds of opioid misuse over follow-ups up to nine months. The findings suggest that mindfulness practices may work partly by fostering self-transcendent experiences that enhance love and compassion, with potential benefits for reducing addictive behavior.
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.
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.
Psychology of Consciousness Theory Research and Practice
May 11, 2026
Kush V. Bhatt, Adam W. Hanley, Chantal Martin-Soelch et al.
Mindfulness-based interventions reduce chronic pain, and a secondary analysis of two randomized controlled trials (480 patients on long-term opioid therapy) suggests that nondual awareness—a state of attenuated self-other distinction—partly explains this effect. Participants in an 8-week mindfulness program (MORE) showed significantly lower pain severity and interference than a supportive therapy control group, along with greater increases in nondual awareness. Path analyses indicated that gains in nondual awareness mediated the reductions in pain severity and interference, and nondual awareness was a stronger mediator than the mindfulness facet of nonreactivity. The findings link mindfulness-induced nondual awareness to chronic pain relief, and future work should explore neurobiological mechanisms and other interventions that foster nondual awareness.
medRxiv Preprint Server
February 23, 2026
Fernando A. Wilson, Eric L. Garland
preprint
Opioid misuse causes widespread harm, and Mindfulness-Oriented Recovery Enhancement (MORE) has been shown to be an effective treatment for it. However, the cost-effectiveness of this intervention has not yet been determined.