JAMA Neurology
October 10, 2022
Gaël Chételat, Antoine Lutz, Olga Klimecki et al.
45 citations
An 18-month randomized trial of meditation training versus non-native language training or no intervention in cognitively unimpaired adults aged 65 and older found no significant changes in brain volume or perfusion of the anterior cingulate cortex or insula from meditation. Meditation did produce superior improvements in a composite score of attention regulation, socioemotional capacities, and self-knowledge compared with language training. The findings confirm the feasibility of both meditation and language training in older adults, with high adherence and low dropout, but the positive behavioral effects of meditation were not accompanied by measurable changes in the targeted brain structures.
Consciousness and cognition
February 1, 2019
Oussama Abdoun, Jelle Zorn, Stefano Poletti et al.
44 citations
A meditation training protocol helped novices accurately describe their mental states during two types of meditation: focused attention and open monitoring. After several weeks of daily practice, participants' self-reported ratings of their experience (i) differed between the two meditation states, (ii) reflected how much they had practiced and how tired they felt, and (iii) matched changes in their reaction times during a task. These patterns were better explained by features of daily practice than by a tendency to give socially desirable answers. The results suggest that novice practitioners can reliably report their inner experience, supporting further study of this training approach.
Frontiers in human neuroscience
January 1, 2013
Omar T Khachouf, Stefano Poletti, Giuseppe Pagnoni
34 citations
Neurophenomenology aims to bridge subjective experience and brain data by treating the body as central to consciousness. This paper argues that the Kantian concept of a priori structures, which make experience possible, can be grounded in biology through an extended theory of autopoiesis. Examples from simple models, bacteria, the immune system, mirror neurons, and the default mode network illustrate how knowledge is enacted. The free-energy principle is presented as a neural framework that fits these ideas. The authors maintain that first-person experience remains essential for understanding brain function because it shares the same transcendental structure, and they discuss how meditation can contribute to this research.
European Journal of Pain
April 2, 2021
Stefano Poletti, Oussama Abdoun, Jelle Zorn et al.
25 citations
How people respond to pain depends on psychological mechanisms, beliefs, and expectations. Comparing 32 novices who received short meditation training with 30 experts (over 10,000 lifetime hours of meditation), five phenomenological clusters emerged from interviews describing pain response strategies: experiential avoidance-suppression, volitional agency-distanciation, positive cognitive reappraisal and flexibility, metacognitive insights about mental processes, and deconstructing suffering through insights while recognizing shared human suffering. Expert meditators predominantly populated the last two clusters. Each cluster correlated with a unique profile of self-reported pain intensity, unpleasantness, avoidance, openness, vividness, and blissfulness during an experimental thermal pain task. The findings suggest meditation expertise shapes the meaning and experience of pain through metacognitive mechanisms.
Scientific Reports
November 2, 2024
Marco Schlosser, Julie Gonneaud, Stefano Poletti et al.
2 citations
Older adults who spent more time practicing meditation perceived greater benefits from an 18-month meditation program. The study involved 90 healthy adults aged 65-84 years who were randomly assigned to either meditation training or a non-native language training. Higher levels of formal practice were associated with higher combined ratings of self- and teacher-perceived responsiveness across measures of connection, emotions, and meta-awareness during sessions and in daily life. Global responsiveness scores were not correlated with actual changes in well-being. The findings suggest that engagement, rather than baseline characteristics like personality or expectancy, predicts perceived response to meditation training.
Scientific reports
May 15, 2025
Florence Requier, Hamed Mohammadi, Harriet Demnitz-King et al.
Expert meditators in older age reported less external distraction and performed better on memory tasks compared to non-meditators, while no differences were found in attention, executive function, or global cognitive scores. These cross-sectional findings from 135 non-meditators and 27 expert meditators suggest that prolonged meditation practice may help preserve memory and manage distractions, two cognitive capacities important for healthy aging.
February 13, 2024
Marco Schlosser, Stefano Poletti, Fabienne Collette et al.
preprint
More time spent practicing meditation is linked to greater perceived benefits from training, according to a study of 90 healthy older adults aged 65-84 who took part in an 18-month meditation program or a language training program. Higher engagement, measured as hours of formal practice, was the only factor associated with higher ratings of responsiveness by participants and teachers, including measures of connection, emotions, and meta-awareness during sessions and in daily life. Baseline traits like sex, education, personality, and cognition did not predict responsiveness. The findings suggest that adherence and practice time are key to perceived intervention effects, and future studies should track engagement and reasons for disengagement.
December 30, 2023
Stefano Poletti, Prisca R. Bauer, Antoine Lutz
preprint
Worldviews—the beliefs underlying how people conceive reality and selfhood—differ between novice mindfulness meditators and long-term Tibetan Buddhist practitioners. Interviews with 32 novices and 30 experts (over 20,000 hours of practice) revealed a gradient of dereification: experts showed less identification with thoughts and emotions, treating them as mental components. This gradient applied to views on subjectivity, agency, linear time, causality, and ontological substantialism (the belief in inherent essences). Experts also shifted from content-oriented to process-oriented thinking, with greater meta-cognitive awareness during interviews. The findings suggest meditative experience shapes worldviews through metacognitive functions, supporting the Buddhist emphasis on questioning beliefs through direct observation.
November 7, 2020
Stefano Poletti, Oussama Abdoun, Jelle Zorn et al.
preprint
People respond to pain based on psychological mechanisms, beliefs, and expectations. Mindfulness meditation helps regulate pain through positive reappraisal and emotional regulation, but how people subjectively experience pain in connection with meditation is not well understood. In a mixed-methods study combining qualitative interviews with an experimental thermal pain task, 32 novices who received short meditation training and 30 experts with over 10,000 lifetime hours of practice described their pain experiences. Five phenomenological clusters emerged: pain as an unpleasant sensation prompting avoidance-suppression, volitional agency-distanciation, or positive cognitive reappraisal and flexibility; and, mainly among experts, pain as an opportunity for metacognitive insights about mental processes and for deconstructing suffering, with the fifth cluster integrating shared human suffering and compassion. Each cluster correlated with distinct self-reports during the pain task.