Psychosomatic Medicine
July 1, 2003
Richard J. Davidson, Jon Kabat‐zinn, Jessica R. Schumacher et al.
2,924 citations
An 8-week mindfulness meditation training program for healthy employees increased left-sided anterior brain activation, a pattern linked to positive emotion, and boosted antibody titers after an influenza vaccine compared with a wait-list control group. The magnitude of the brain activation increase predicted the size of the antibody response. These results indicate that a brief meditation intervention can measurably alter brain and immune function.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
November 8, 2004
Antoine Lutz, Lawrence L. Greischar, Nancy B. Rawlings et al.
1,325 citations
Long-term Buddhist practitioners can self-induce sustained, high-amplitude gamma-band oscillations and phase-synchrony in the brain during meditation, as measured by electroencephalography. These EEG patterns differ from those of non-practitioners, especially over lateral frontoparietal electrodes. Before meditation, practitioners already show a higher ratio of gamma-band activity (25-42 Hz) to slow oscillatory activity (4-13 Hz) over medial frontoparietal electrodes compared to controls. This ratio increases sharply during meditation across most of the scalp and remains elevated afterward. The findings suggest that mental training involves temporal integrative mechanisms and may produce both short-term and long-term neural changes.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
June 28, 2007
Julie A. Brefczynski‐Lewis, Antoine Lutz, Hillary S. Schaefer et al.
988 citations
Meditation is a family of mental training practices that familiarize practitioners with specific mental processes. In age-matched participants, using functional MRI, activation in brain regions involved in sustained attention showed an inverted u-shaped curve: expert meditators with an average of 19,000 hours of practice had more activation than novices, but experts with an average of 44,000 hours had less activation. In response to distracter sounds, experts versus novices had less brain activation in regions related to discursive thoughts and emotions and more activation in regions related to response inhibition and attention. Correlation with hours of practice suggests possible plasticity in these mechanisms.
PLoS ONE
March 25, 2008
Antoine Lutz, Julie Brefczynski-Lewis, Tom Johnstone et al.
942 citations
During loving-kindness-compassion meditation, expert practitioners show greater brain activation in the insula and limbic regions when hearing emotional sounds, especially negative ones, compared to novices. This enhanced response correlates with self-reported meditation intensity. Experts also exhibit increased activity in the amygdala, temporo-parietal junction, and posterior superior temporal sulcus, suggesting improved detection of emotional vocalizations and mental state reasoning. The findings indicate that training in cultivating positive emotion alters neural circuits associated with empathy and theory of mind.
American Psychologist
October 1, 2015
Richard J. Davidson, Alfred W. Kaszniak
778 citations
Research on mindfulness and meditation has grown rapidly, but interpreting findings is difficult due to unique conceptual and methodological challenges. Key issues include studying first-person experience, the impossibility of true double-blinding in intervention trials, designing appropriate control conditions, adequately describing training protocols, measuring mindfulness, limitations of self-report measures, and study design and data analysis considerations. These topics affect both basic science and clinical studies and have important implications for future understanding.
PLoS Biology
May 4, 2007
Heleen A. Slagter, Antoine Lutz, Lawrence L. Greischar et al.
762 citations
Intensive meditation training reduces the attentional blink—a phenomenon where a second target in a rapid stream is often missed when it appears shortly after a first target. Three months of daily mental practice led to a smaller attentional blink and decreased brain-resource allocation to the first target, measured by a smaller P3b brain potential. Individuals with the largest reduction in resource allocation to the first target showed the greatest improvement in detecting the second target. These findings indicate that mental training enhances control over limited attentional resources and supports lifelong brain plasticity.
Mind Brain and Education
August 16, 2013
Lisa Flook, Simon B. Goldberg, Laura Pinger et al.
677 citations
A modified Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course adapted for teachers reduced psychological symptoms and burnout, improved classroom organization as rated by observers, enhanced performance on a computer task measuring affective attentional bias, and increased self-compassion among participants. Control group participants showed declines in cortisol functioning over time and marginally significant increases in burnout. Changes in mindfulness correlated in the expected direction with changes in psychological symptoms, burnout, and sustained attention in the intervention group. The course appears promising for supporting teacher well-being and classroom effectiveness.
Developmental Psychology
November 10, 2014
Lisa Flook, Simon B. Goldberg, Laura Pinger et al.
561 citations
A 12-week mindfulness-based Kindness Curriculum delivered in a public school setting improved social competence and report card grades in learning, health, and social-emotional development among 68 preschool children, while the control group showed more selfish behavior over time. Small to medium effects favoring the intervention group were found on measures of cognitive flexibility and delay of gratification. Children initially lower in social competence and executive functioning showed larger gains in social competence. The findings support the program's promise for promoting self-regulation and prosocial behavior in young children.
Journal of Neuroscience
October 21, 2009
Antoine Lutz, Heleen A. Slagter, Nancy B. Rawlings et al.
499 citations
Three months of intensive meditation training improved the ability to sustain attention, as measured by dichotic listening task performance and electroencephalography. Training reduced variability in attentional processing of target tones, shown by enhanced theta-band phase consistency of neural responses over anterior brain areas and reduced reaction time variability. Individuals with the greatest increase in neural response consistency showed the largest decrease in behavioral response variability. Reduced variability in neural processing also occurred for unattended deviant tones, suggesting meditation affects both distracter and target processing, possibly by enhancing entrainment of neuronal oscillations to sensory input rhythms.
Perspectives on Psychological Science
February 16, 2021
Simon B. Goldberg, Kevin M. Riordan, Shufang Sun et al.
492 citations
Mindfulness-based interventions show superiority to passive controls across a wide range of populations, problems, interventions, comparisons, and outcomes, with effect sizes ranging from 0.10 to 0.89. Effects are typically smaller and less often statistically significant compared with active controls, though mindfulness-based interventions are similar or superior to specific active controls and evidence-based treatments. Heterogeneity is typically moderate, few consistent moderators are found, and results are generally robust to publication bias. Reporting of adverse effects is inconsistent, and statistical power may be lacking in meta-analyses, particularly for comparisons with active controls.
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.
Psychosomatic Medicine
June 1, 1978
Gary E. Schwartz, Richard J. Davidson, Daniel J. Goleman
398 citations
Anxiety comprises both cognitive (worry) and somatic (bodily tension) components, and different relaxation techniques may target these components differently. In a retrospective comparison of 77 people—44 who regularly practiced physical exercise and 33 who regularly practiced meditation for similar periods—those who exercised reported less somatic anxiety and more cognitive anxiety than meditators. The findings suggest that physical exercise and meditation are differentially associated with somatic and cognitive subcomponents of anxiety. The authors propose that relaxation involves both a generalized reduction across multiple physiological systems and technique-specific patterns of change. Prospective studies are needed to clarify the mechanisms.
Emotion
February 1, 2010
Richard J. Davidson
370 citations
Mindfulness practice primarily targets emotion, with transformation in trait affect being a key goal across contemplative traditions. The term "mindfulness" is used in multiple ways—referring to states, traits, and experimentally manipulated variables—so it is essential to specify how it is operationalized in each context. Methodological issues include the duration of training and how it should be measured, as well as the nature of control and comparison groups in studies of mindfulness-based interventions. The commentary also considers which targets within emotion processing are likely to be impacted by mindfulness, highlighting substantial progress in the empirical study of the field.
Frontiers in Psychology
October 24, 2014
Daniel B. Levinson, Eli L. Stoll, Sonam D. Kindy et al.
297 citations
A behavioral measure of mindfulness, breath counting, was validated across four studies involving over 400 participants. Breath counting was reliable, correlated with self-reported mindfulness, distinguished long-term meditators from age-matched controls, and was distinct from measures of sustained attention and working memory. Greater skill in breath counting was associated with more meta-awareness, less mind wandering, better mood, and greater non-attachment. A randomized online training study found that four weeks of breath counting training improved mindfulness and decreased mind wandering compared to working memory training and no training controls. These findings support breath counting as a behavioral measure of mindfulness.
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
January 1, 2011
Heleen A. Slagter, Richard J. Davidson, Antoine Lutz
295 citations
The adult brain remains changeable through experience, but learning typically improves performance only on the trained task, not on similar new ones. This perspective argues that systematic mental training, such as meditation, can produce learning that is not specific to a particular stimulus or task but instead enhances core cognitive processes. Meditation practices are designed to improve defined mental functions, and several features of meditation regimens—including variable stimulus input, metacognitive focus, task difficulty, arousal regulation, and training duration—may foster this process-specific learning. The authors discuss key neuroimaging findings and methodological challenges in studying meditation training effects.
Current Directions in Psychological Science
April 1, 2005
Paul Ekman, Richard J. Davidson, Matthieu Ricard et al.
295 citations
Enduring happiness, or sukha in Tibetan Buddhism, is a state of flourishing that arises from mental balance and well-being, not from transient pleasures. Destructive emotions, such as hatred and craving, are seen as afflictive states that disrupt this balance, while nonafflictive emotions like compassion and loving-kindness support it. The Buddhist perspective challenges Western psychology to consider that lasting happiness can be cultivated through mental training and that emotions are not simply automatic reactions but can be transformed. This view raises questions for empirical research about how to measure and study such cultivated states and traits.
IEEE Signal Processing Magazine
January 1, 2008
Richard J. Davidson, Antoine Lutz
282 citations
Neuroplasticity refers to the brain's ability to change in response to experience. This article reviews how different styles of meditation practice produce distinct changes in brain structure and function. The authors describe evidence that meditation can alter brain regions involved in attention, emotion regulation, and self-awareness, with variations depending on the specific meditation technique, such as focused attention or open monitoring. The findings suggest that meditation induces measurable neuroplastic changes, but the exact nature of these changes varies by practice style.
Psychophysiology
May 22, 2008
Sahib S. Khalsa, David Rudrauf, António R. Damásio et al.
276 citations
Meditation traditions claim that paying attention to internal body sensations increases awareness of them, but scientific evidence is lacking. Experienced meditators (Tibetan Buddhist and Kundalini) were compared to nonmeditators matched for age and body mass index on a heartbeat detection task, a standard measure of interoceptive awareness. Contrary to predictions, meditators showed no superior performance across several sessions and respiratory conditions. However, meditators consistently rated their interoceptive performance as better and the task as easier. These results suggest that practicing attention to internal body sensations, a core feature of meditation, does not enhance the ability to sense the heartbeat at rest.
Emotion
January 1, 2010
D. Perlman, Tim V. Salomons, Richard J. Davidson et al.
203 citations
Pain can be regulated through different cognitive mechanisms. Two meditation practices were compared during noxious heat: Focused Attention, which may regulate negative affect via sensory gating, and Open Monitoring, which may regulate negative affect through nonjudgmental awareness. Long-term meditators, compared to novices, reported significantly less unpleasantness, but not intensity, of pain while practicing Open Monitoring. No significant effects were found for Focused Attention. This finding highlights a possible regulatory mechanism underlying meditation-based clinical interventions such as Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction.
Psychological Assessment
October 13, 2015
Simon B. Goldberg, Joseph Wielgosz, Cortland J. Dahl et al.
180 citations
A randomized trial with 130 participants tested whether the Five Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire (FFMQ) validly measures dispositional mindfulness. The study included three groups: mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), an active control condition (Health Enhancement Program, HEP) that did not teach mindfulness meditation, and a waitlist control. At baseline, FFMQ facets correlated with measures of psychological symptoms and well-being, providing partial evidence for convergent validity. FFMQ scores increased for MBSR relative to the waitlist, but they also increased for HEP relative to the waitlist, and MBSR and HEP did not differ from each other. The FFMQ thus failed to show discriminant validity, raising questions about its ability to specifically measure mindfulness.
Journal of Traumatic Stress
August 1, 2014
Emma Seppälä, Jack B. Nitschke, Dana Tudorascu et al.
180 citations
A breathing-based meditation called Sudarshan Kriya yoga reduced posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms, anxiety, and respiration rate in male U.S. veterans of the Iraq or Afghanistan wars. Twenty-one veterans were randomly assigned to either the active meditation group or a waitlist control group. The active group showed large reductions in PTSD scores and anxiety symptoms, while the control group did not. Reductions in startle response correlated with reduced hyperarousal symptoms immediately after the intervention and at one-year follow-up. The findings suggest Sudarshan Kriya yoga may be a useful alternative treatment for PTSD.
Cognitive Behaviour Therapy
February 8, 2019
Simon B. Goldberg, Raymond P. Tucker, Preston Greene et al.
174 citations
Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) is effective for reducing current depressive symptoms in adults with major depressive disorder immediately after treatment, but its long-term benefits remain unclear. In a meta-analysis of 13 randomized clinical trials with 1,046 participants, MBCT outperformed non-specific control conditions at post-treatment (effect size d = 0.71), though this advantage was not statistically significant at an average follow-up of 5.70 months. MBCT showed no difference compared to other active therapies at either post-treatment or follow-up. Studies with higher methodological quality tended to show smaller effects, and publication bias appeared minimal.
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
September 29, 2008
Heleen A. Slagter, Antoine Lutz, Lawrence L. Greischar et al.
135 citations
The human mind has limited information processing capacity, as shown by the attentional blink—a failure to identify the second of two targets presented close together. This deficit is thought to arise from overinvesting limited resources in processing the first target. Previous research found that intensive meditation training aimed at reducing elaborate object processing decreased brain resource allocation to the first target and improved identification of the second.
PLoS ONE
October 31, 2017
Simon B. Goldberg, Raymond P. Tucker, Preston A. Greene et al.
134 citations
A systematic review of 142 randomized clinical trials of mindfulness-based interventions for clinical disorders, published between 2000 and 2016, found no statistically significant increases in six key methodological quality indicators over that period, though changes generally trended toward improvement. When analyses were restricted to studies from Europe and North America, a significant increase in reporting of intent-to-treat analyses emerged. Excluding one early high-quality study revealed improvements in sample size, treatment fidelity assessment, and intent-to-treat reporting. Overall, the findings indicate only modest adoption of recommended methodological improvements across the field.
PLoS ONE
August 28, 2013
Fabio Ferrarelli, Richard Smith, Daniela Dentico et al.
125 citations
Long-term Buddhist meditators with about 8,700 mean lifetime hours of practice show increased gamma power (25-40 Hz) in parietal-occipital regions during non-rapid eye movement sleep compared to meditation-naive individuals. This increase is specific to gamma frequencies, unrelated to spontaneous arousal levels during NREM sleep, and positively correlated with the length of lifetime daily meditation practice. The findings indicate that meditation practice produces measurable changes in spontaneous brain activity and suggest that EEG gamma activity during sleep may serve as a sensitive marker of long-lasting plastic effects of meditative training on brain function.