UNLABELLED Mindfulness meditation reduces pain in experimental and clinical settings. However, it remains unknown whether mindfulness meditation engages pain-relieving mechanisms other than those associated with the placebo effect (e.g., conditioning, psychosocial context, beliefs). To determine whether the analgesic mechanisms of mindfulness meditation are different from placebo, we randomly a...

A rapidly growing body of research suggests that meditation can change brain and cognitive functioning. Yet little is known about the neurochemical mechanisms underlying meditation-related changes in cognition. Here, we investigated the effects of meditation on spontaneous eyeblink rates (sEBR), a noninvasive peripheral correlate of striatal dopamine activity. Previous studies have shown a rela...

The practice of meditation has seen a tremendous increase in the western world since the 60s. Scientific interest in meditation has also significantly grown in the past years; however, so far, it has neglected the idea that different type of meditations may drive specific cognitive-control states. In this study we investigate the possible impact of meditation based on focused-attention (FA) and...

In this study, the performance of Sevcik’s algorithm that calculates the fractal dimension and permutation entropy as discriminants to detect calming and insight meditation in electroencephalographic (EEG) signals was assessed. The proposed methods were applied to EEG recordings from meditators practicing insight meditation and calming meditation before as well as during both types of meditatio...

Objective: Meditation is one type of mental training that has been shown to produce many cognitive benefits. Meditation practice is associated with improvement in concentration and reduction of stress, depression, and anxiety symptoms. Furthermore, different forms of meditation training are now being used as interventions for a variety of psychological and somatic illnesses. These benefits are ...

This study compared acute (15 min) yoga posture and guided meditation practice, performed seated in a typical office workspace, on physiological and psychological markers of stress. Twenty participants (39.6 ± 9.5 yr) completed three conditions: yoga, meditation, and control (i.e., usual work) separated by ≥24 hrs. Yoga and meditation significantly reduced perceived stress versus control, and t...

T he term meditation encompasses a broad variety of mental-training practices that vary between cultures and traditions, ranging from techniques designed to promote physical health, relaxation, and improved concentration, to exercises performed with farther-reaching goals, such as developing a heightened sense of well-being, cultivating altruistic behaviors, and, for some, attaining enlightenme...

Anxiety is the cognitive state related to the inability to control emotional responses to perceived threats. Anxiety is inversely related to brain activity associated with the cognitive regulation of emotions. Mindfulness meditation has been found to regulate anxiety. However, the brain mechanisms involved in meditation-related anxiety relief are largely unknown. We employed pulsed arterial spi...

This paper discusses clinical application of meditation in chronic pain. Chronic pain is an unpleasant feeling and it disrupts physical and emotional wellbeing. Chronic pain often triggers depression anxiety and addictions. Treating chronic pain could be challenging. Some therapists have proposed meditation as an alternative pain management modality. Meditation is a researched proven effective ...

BACKGROUND Despite a growing body of scientific literature exploring the nature of meditation there is limited information on the characteristics of individuals who use it. This is particularly true of comparative studies examining prevalence and predictors of use of various forms of meditation. METHODS A secondary analysis was conducted using data from the 2012 National Health Interview Surv...