Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2024
Valeria Sebri, Silvia Francesca Maria Pizzoli, Chiara Marzorati et al.
14 citations
A study protocol will test whether an eight-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program helps breast cancer survivors become more aware of inner body sensations (interoception) and improves their mood, body perception, anxiety, and depression. Changes will be measured at three time points to track effects over time. The authors suggest MBSR may promote emotional well-being by enhancing body awareness and regulating interoceptive feelings, offering directions for future psychological interventions.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2023
Marco Masi
14 citations
The causal relationship between phenomenal consciousness, mentation, and brain states remains debated. Material monism, which views consciousness and mind as brain epiphenomena, relies on a 'loss-of-function lesion premise': brain lesions and neurochemical changes cause cognitive impairment and altered consciousness, suggesting mind-brain identity. Dualism or idealism, however, regards consciousness and mind as distinct from cerebral activity, pointing to the ineffable nature of subjective experience. This review examines neuroscientific findings that question phenomenal experience as an emergent property of brain activity, arguing that material monism's premise commits a correlation-causation fallacy. Considered integrally, these findings support an ontology where mind and consciousness are primal phenomena.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2020
Melina Gastelum
14 citations
Affordances—opportunities for action in the environment—should be understood across three different timescales, unifying enactive and ecological approaches to cognition. At the elementary scale, affordances relate to the constantly changing sensorimotor contingencies of embodied assemblies. At the integrative scale, affordances become solicitations that are actualized and constitute an umwelt, with perception structured by the intrinsic temporality of experience. At the narrative scale, affordances operate over developmental time and explain learning, as proposed in Chemero's dynamicist account. These three scales are always intertwined, as learning and perception are ongoing, inseparable processes. The paper argues that considering affordances as synergies—where abilities and environmental aspects constrain system trajectories—helps explain behavior across macro to micro levels.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2024
Brian Galla, Aishwarya Karanam, Avital Pelakh et al.
13 citations
A reanalysis of 22 randomized controlled trials (16,558 adolescents) found that universal school-based mindfulness interventions do not reliably improve adolescent mental health. Compared to passive controls, mindfulness training actually reduced trait mindfulness slightly (d = -0.10). Compared to active controls, it improved anxiety/stress (d = 0.17) and wellbeing (d = 0.10), but against all controls combined, no outcomes—including anxiety, depression, attention, or social behavior—showed significant benefit (effect sizes ranged from 0.01 to 0.26). No effects persisted at follow-up. These results question the value of existing school-based mindfulness programs as a universal prevention strategy for adolescents.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2023
Shaun Gallagher
13 citations
The concept of minimal self-consciousness, a basic form of first-person pre-reflective self-awareness tied to bodily awareness and phenomenal experience, is central to discussions of sense of ownership, agency, Buddhist no-self, the Rubber Hand Illusion, and schizophrenia. However, the concept lacks clear definition. To clarify it, this paper revisits Avicenna's 11th-century Flying Man thought experiment, which isolates self-awareness from sensory input. The paper then reviews contemporary debates on the minimal self, focusing on the roles of bodily and social processes.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2022
Stephan Schleim
13 citations
The hard problem of consciousness—explaining subjective experience through third-person science—has historical roots in Leibniz, du Bois-Reymond, and Wundt's concerns about introspection. Recent research on long-term meditators, who can sustain stable conscious states, offers a promising paradigm for studying consciousness. This perspective article traces the problem historically and examines how neurophenomenology, as advocated by Varela, can guide contemporary meditation research toward addressing the hard problem.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2022
Zhuo Job Chen, Richard G Cowden, Heinz Streib
13 citations
People who identify as more spiritual than religious form a notable and growing segment in North America and Europe. Two complementary studies examined how four religious/spiritual self-identity groups—more religious than spiritual, more spiritual than religious, equally religious and spiritual, and neither religious nor spiritual—differ across sociodemographic traits, personality, well-being, generativity, mystical experiences, and religious schemata. Study 1, a cross-sectional analysis of 3,491 German and U.S. adults, and Study 2, a longitudinal analysis of 751 adults assessed about three years later, both found strong evidence that the more spiritual than religious group is particularly associated with mysticism.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2019
Luca Simione, Enrico Di Pace, Salvatore G Chiarella et al.
13 citations
A distinction between phenomenal and access consciousness has been influential in consciousness studies. Phenomenal consciousness is linked to iconic memory and a fragile short-term memory store with larger capacity than working memory, while access consciousness is linked to limited-capacity working memory. Visual attention was thought to affect only access consciousness, but some evidence suggests earlier attentional effects. An experiment using a change-detection task with delayed cueing and high- and low-priority colored objects found an attentional bias toward high-priority objects at longer cueing delays (600 and 1,200 ms) associated with fragile visual short-term memory, but not at shorter delays (16.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2023
Keke Shi, Guoyan Feng, Qiyong Huang et al.
12 citations
Among more than 3,000 Chinese college students, higher mindfulness was linked to fewer negative emotions, less rumination, and greater resilience. Rumination and resilience each partially explained how mindfulness relates to negative emotions, and they also worked together as a chain: mindfulness was associated with lower rumination and higher resilience, which in turn were associated with fewer negative emotions. The findings suggest that mindfulness may reduce negative emotions both directly and indirectly by decreasing rumination and strengthening resilience.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2022
Kenneth Graham Drinkwater, Neil Dagnall, Stephen Walsh et al.
12 citations
People who claim to have paranormal abilities—such as psychic powers or mediumship—describe their experiences as deeply tied to their personal history, beliefs, and sense of self. In interviews with 12 participants, four main themes emerged: formative influences like gifted family members or unusual childhood events; subjective experiences of transcendence or extra-sensory perception; embodied processes, especially a sense of control; and perceptions of reality involving self-awareness and surreal experiences. Participants used autobiographical evidence to validate their abilities and often dismissed conventional explanations. The findings suggest that belief in paranormal ability is inseparable from how individuals interpret and make sense of their own experiences.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2020
Tal Dotan Ben-Soussan, Fabio Marson, Claudia Piervincenzi et al.
12 citations
Silence-related experiences during meditation are linked to changes in brain structure and reduced attentional effort. In a study of Quadrato Motor Training (QMT), participants who reported increased silence-related experiences after six weeks of practice also showed decreased attentional effort and increased fractional anisotropy in the left uncinate fasciculus, a white-matter tract. The findings suggest that silence in meditation involves specific neuroanatomical changes and may reduce the cognitive effort required to maintain attention.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2020
Jonathan Mckinney
12 citations
The enactive and ecological approaches to embodied cognitive science, despite sharing roots in psychology and phenomenology, have historically held conflicting views. Early enactivists valued ecological psychology but insisted on keeping the approaches distinct, critiquing that ecological psychology undermined agent autonomy. Conversely, ecological psychologists focused on the organism-environment system, sometimes dismissing enactivism. Both schools now use dynamic systems theory, leading some scholars to propose an ecological-enactive synthesis. This paper argues that such a synthesis risks losing valuable aspects of each approach, analogous to hasty comparisons in early East-West comparative philosophy. Instead, the relationship is best understood as one of complementarity, a concept explored through Japanese Philosophy to illuminate both agent-environment and ecological-enactive complementarities.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2020
Manuel De Pinedo García
11 citations
Recognizing that living, cognitive agents require normative language to be understood properly—rather than purely factual or descriptive terms—frees us from having to choose sides in ontological debates about whether such agents are eliminable, reducible, or emergent. Treating life only as something to be predicted and controlled strips it of dignity, and a purely factualist view risks making ethical judgments dependent on discovering alleged biological or mental facts, a form of representationalism that undermines democratic ideals by granting technocratic experts authority over values. The argument draws on early analytic philosophy, neglected in post-cognitivist discussions, to show that normative vocabulary is essential for making sense of life and agency.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2018
Michał Bola, Paweł Orłowski, Karolina Baranowska et al.
11 citations
Brain signal diversity is a marker of consciousness, being lower in unconscious states and higher during psychedelic states. This study tested whether increasing the information rate of speech would increase signal diversity, reflecting richer experience. Nineteen participants listened to an audiobook at five speeds (65–135% of original) and to backward (unintelligible) speech, plus a resting-state condition. EEG Lempel-Ziv diversity was measured. The main hypothesis was not supported: Bayes Factor showed evidence for no effect of speech speed on diversity. Resting-state diversity was greater than during any speech condition. Diversity also gradually declined over the experiment, possibly due to decreasing vigilance, suggesting that unconstrained rest allows more varied experiences like mind wandering.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2017
Johannes Wagemann
11 citations
Thinking and perceiving have alternated between convergence and divergence throughout the history of science and philosophy; today they appear more separated than ever, contributing to scientific crises. Drawing on the consciousness phenomenology of Rudolf Steiner and Herbert Witzenmann, this article shows how methodical first-person observation can integrate thinking and perceiving. Through skilled introspective or meditative self-observation, individuals can observe their own mental micro-actions of separating and integrating, which jointly constitute thinking and perceiving. This approach combines conceptual and perceptual dimensions, aligning with the methodological core of modern natural science, and may enable further development of human consciousness and its scientific study.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2023
Nicolas Langlitz
10 citations
Psychedelic research has been largely shaped by biomedical science, but it raises questions beyond what labs and clinics can answer. The emerging field of psychedelic humanities examines the historical assumptions, philosophical gaps, and political dimensions of different approaches to psychedelics. Scholars can either evaluate these alternatives normatively or instead increase complexity by opening new perspectives, leaving readers to reduce that complexity in novel ways. This allows practitioners to use or abuse such scholarship for their own ends. The article describes the institutionalization of this work at The New School's Psychedelic Humanities Lab.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2023
Raquel Ruiz-íñiguez, Ana Carralero Montero, Francisco A Burgos-Julián et al.
10 citations
A randomized crossover trial with 104 mental health professionals in Havana, Cuba compared two brief mindfulness-based interventions for reducing anxiety, work stress, and burnout. One intervention used body-centered practices (body scan and Hatha yoga); the other used mind-centered practices (focused attention and open monitoring meditation). Groups received the interventions in opposite orders. After the first intervention, there was a between-group difference for burnout syndrome, but effect sizes were similar. After both practices were implemented, groups showed the largest effect sizes, and a between-group difference emerged for antecedents of burnout. Results were partially maintained at 6-month follow-up. Mind-centered practices can be as effective as body-centered ones; combining both may be most effective, and teaching mind-centered practices first may reduce antecedents of burnout.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2020
Carlos Avilés, José A Navia, Luis-Miguel Ruiz-Pérez et al.
10 citations
Learning in sports and physical education can be understood through enactive and ecological psychology. The enactive perspective emphasizes sense-making and sensorimotor schemes, while natural learning environments support human development. Research methods like neurophenomenology and self-confrontation interviews reveal the meanings, sensations, and emotions performers experience. The ecological approach focuses on attunement, calibration, education of intention, and representative experimental designs. The paper compares both approaches and advocates for a common project combining their main elements.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2024
Constance Karing
9 citations
A combined mindfulness intervention (face-to-face sessions plus the 7Mind app) was compared to single interventions (face-to-face only or app only) and an active control group among 177 university students over 12 months. At post-intervention and at 4- and 12-month follow-ups, the combined intervention did not produce better outcomes than the single interventions or the active control on mindfulness, mental health, emotion regulation, or attentional abilities. No statistically significant differences were found between any intervention group and the active control. All groups, including the active control, improved in mindfulness, body awareness, emotion regulation, stress, and attentional abilities over time. Higher app usage was linked to increased body awareness but also to higher stress, suggesting that greater reliance on a mindfulness app may negatively affect stress.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2023
Jaime Navarrete, Marta Fontana-Mcnally, Ariadna Colomer-Carbonell et al.
9 citations
The Spanish versions of the Toronto Mindfulness Scale (TMS) and the State Mindfulness Scale (SMS) show adequate reliability and validity for measuring state mindfulness, though the SMS specific factors have poor reliability when controlling for the general factor. Data from six non-clinical Spanish samples (TMS n=119, SMS n=223) were analyzed using confirmatory factor analysis. The best-fitting model for the TMS was a correlated two-factor structure (curiosity and decentering). For the SMS, a bifactor structure (general factor, mindfulness of body, and mindfulness of mind) fit best. Both scales detected changes in state mindfulness after meditation practices. The patterns of correlations with measures of trait mindfulness, decentering, non-attachment, depression, anxiety, stress, affect, self-criticism, and self-reassurance were mostly as expected.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2021
Giancarlo Frigato
9 citations
A growing number of authors argue that the neural correlates of consciousness have no selective or executive function; instead, attention unconsciously selects contents for consciousness, which then formats them for high-level processors like working memory and language. Dehaene locates the correlates of access consciousness in a widespread fronto-parieto-temporal network, while Tononi places phenomenal consciousness in a posterior temporo-parietal hot zone. Close examination of their work suggests these correlates coincide, making the two consciousnesses two aspects of a single consciousness with both cognitive and subjective contents.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2025
Antonio Crego, José Ramón Yela, María Ángeles Gómez-martínez et al.
8 citations
Standard 8-week Mindful Self-Compassion and Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction trainings both produced benefits on anxiety, depression, perceived stress, positive and negative affect, and psychological flexibility compared with a control group. These gains were maintained over a year of continuous practice. The two programmes showed a similar trajectory over the measurement periods. The 8-week MSC programme and regular practice of mindfulness and self-compassion appear to be an effective intervention for promoting mental health in the general population, with benefits similar to those from MBSR.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2025
Farah R Zahir, M Walid Qoronfleh
8 citations
Spiritual meditative practices from the Islamic tradition, such as dhikr and Quran recitation, have historically demonstrated efficacy as treatments for addiction and anxiety. While rigorous empirical research in epigenomics and neuroscience has confirmed that religious and spiritual experiences impact psychology and physiology, Islamic practices have received less scientific attention compared to traditions like mindfulness. A millennium and a half of historical data supports their use as psychotherapy, and they show potential for integration into modern mental health treatments for people of all faiths. Listening to Quranic recitation and forms of dhikr therapy are noted for ease of administration and uniformly positive results, though more empirical studies are needed to translate them into modern complementary and alternative medicine.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2024
Nathaniel J Johnson, Ryan J Smith, Hali Kil
8 citations
A Canadian lifespan sample aged 14 to 90 years completed questionnaires on five facets of mindfulness, life satisfaction, existential well-being, and symptoms of anxiety, depression, and stress. Using latent profile analysis, five mindfulness profiles emerged: high mindfulness, moderate mindfulness, low mindfulness, nonjudgmentally aware, and judgmentally observing. People in the high mindfulness and nonjudgmentally aware profiles tended to be older and reported the best mental health and well-being. Those in the low mindfulness and judgmentally observing profiles had worse mental health. The moderate mindfulness profile fell between these groups on age and well-being outcomes.
Frontiers in psychology
January 1, 2024
Zoran Josipovic
8 citations
The real achievement of evolution is not merely phenomenal consciousness but consciousness that recognizes itself—a non-conceptual, nondual awareness whose core property is non-representational reflexivity. This review examines reflexivity from the perspective of consciousness itself, proposing that different types of reflexivity in current theories form a gradation of relational distances between consciousness as knower and consciousness as known. This spectrum ranges from fully representational and dual forms, through various qualified monisms, to fully non-representational and nondual reflexivity.