Todd S. Braver

Washington University in St. Louis

2 papers in the library · 3 citations · publishing 2024-2026

Papers

ENIGMA-Meditation: Worldwide consortium for neuroscientific investigations of meditation practices

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.

DOI: 10.31234/osf.io/f2rvx Meditation Psychology Psychotherapist Philosophy +1

Neural dynamics of mindfulness training: A longitudinal EEG network analysis of focused attention and open monitoring meditation

Network Neuroscience March 13, 2026 Yanli Lin, Marne White, Jihong Zhang et al. 1 citation

Alpha and theta brain rhythms have been linked to mindfulness, but connecting brain activity to subjective experience is difficult. This study used network analysis on data from 16 novices who completed up to 24 sessions of focused attention and open monitoring meditation, with EEG and self-reported mindfulness collected. Distinct network structures emerged for each practice, supporting their theoretical differences. Shared features included strong autoregressive effects for mindfulness—consistent with skill learning—and opposing influences of frontal versus posterior alpha power. The results challenge simple interpretations of meditation-related EEG, suggesting the functional meaning of neural activity depends on the specific practice and training stage.

DOI: 10.1162/netn.a.555 Full text Mindfulness Meditation Default mode network Electroencephalography +12