Parole outcomes for California Department of Corrections parolees who had voluntarily learned the Transcendental Meditation (TM) technique while incarcerated at Folsom Prison, Deuel Vocational Institution, and San Quentin Prison in California were compared to parole outcomes for nonmeditating parolees matched for offense, prior commitment record, age, ethnic group, institution, and parole year....

UNLABELLED This study investigated the effects of brief mindfulness meditation training on ratings of painful electrical stimulation. In Experiment 1, we used a 3-day (20 min/d) mindfulness meditation intervention and measured pain ratings before and after the intervention. Participants' numerical ratings of pain to "low" and "high" electrical stimulation significantly decreased after meditatio...

Although meditation and mindfulness practices are widely discussed in the scientific literature, there is little formal theory about the cognitive mechanisms that comprise it. Here we begin to develop such a theory by creating a computational cognitive model of a particular type of meditation: focused attention meditation. This model was created within Prims, a cognitive architecture similar to...

The overall goal of this chapter is to explore the initial findings of neuroscientific research on meditation; in doing so, the chapter also suggests potential avenues of further inquiry. It has three sections that, although integral to the chapter as a whole, may also be read independently. The first section, “Defining Meditation,” notes the need for a more precise understanding of meditation ...

Over the past two decades, there has been a growing interest in the use of meditation to improve cognitive performance, emotional balance, and well-being. As a consequence, research into the psychological effects and neural mechanisms of meditation has been accumulating. Whether and how meditation affects decision making is not yet clear. Here, we review evidence from behavioral and neuroimagin...

PURPOSE To evaluate the impact of guided meditation and music interventions on patient anxiety, pain, and fatigue during imaging-guided breast biopsy. METHODS After giving informed consent, 121 women needing percutaneous imaging-guided breast biopsy were randomized into three groups: (1) guided meditation; (2) music; (3) standard-care control group. During biopsy, the meditation and music gro...

UNLABELLED To identify the effects of mindfulness meditation on older adults with chronic low back pain (CLBP), we conducted a qualitative study based on grounded theory and used content analysis of diary entries from older adults who had participated in a clinical trial of an 8-week mindfulness meditation program. Participants were 27 adults > or = 65 years of age with CLBP of at least moderat...

OBJECTIVE To test whether a brief mindfulness meditation training intervention buffers self-reported psychological and neuroendocrine responses to the Trier Social Stress Test (TSST) in young adult volunteers. A second objective evaluates whether pre-existing levels of dispositional mindfulness moderate the effects of brief mindfulness meditation training on stress reactivity. METHODS Sixty-s...

The effects of two kinds of meditation (open presence and focused) on the facial and physiological aspects of the defensive response to an aversive startle stimulus were studied in a Buddhist monk with approximately 40 years of meditation experience. The participant was exposed to a 115-db, 100-ms acoustic startle stimulus under the 2 meditation conditions, a distraction condition (to control f...

We investigated state effects of two forms of meditation on electroencephalography prefrontal α-asymmetry, a global indicator of approach versus withdrawal motivation and related affective state. A clinical series of previously depressed individuals were guided to practice either mindfulness breathing meditation (N = 8) or a form of meditation directly aimed at cultivating positive affect, lovi...