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MeditationEvidence & Dosage

Mindfulness, concentration, loving-kindness meditation — effects and practice.

Evidence at a glance

Total studies
457
With abstract
50
Meta / Systematic / RCT
3
Highly cited
34
Publication years
1978–2026

Meditation in the context of Mental

This topic is part of our "Mental" world. There you'll find methodology, evidence and the highest-impact levers — plus the order in which they sensibly build on each other.

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Top studies on Meditation

Ranked by influential-citation count and publication year.

  1. Mindful practice.

    JAMA1999200 influential citations

    Mindful practitioners attend in a nonjudgmental way to their own physical and mental processes during ordinary, everyday tasks. This critical self-reflection enables physicians to listen attentively to patients' distress, recognize their…

  2. Meditation experience is associated with increased cortical thickness.

    Neuroreport2005n=20200 influential citations

    Previous research indicates that long-term meditation practice is associated with altered resting electroencephalogram patterns, suggestive of long lasting changes in brain activity. We hypothesized that meditation practice might also be…

  3. Meditation, mindfulness and cognitive flexibility.

    Consciousness and cognition2009149 influential citations

    This study investigated the link between meditation, self-reported mindfulness and cognitive flexibility as well as other attentional functions. It compared a group of meditators experienced in mindfulness meditation with a…

  4. Neural correlates of attentional expertise in long-term meditation practitioners.

    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2007147 influential citations

    Meditation refers to a family of mental training practices that are designed to familiarize the practitioner with specific types of mental processes. One of the most basic forms of meditation is concentration meditation, in which sustained…

  5. Long-term meditators self-induce high-amplitude gamma synchrony during mental practice.

    Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2004137 influential citations

    Practitioners understand "meditation," or mental training, to be a process of familiarization with one's own mental life leading to long-lasting changes in cognition and emotion. Little is known about this process and its impact on the…

  6. Effect of compassion meditation on neuroendocrine, innate immune and behavioral responses to psychosocial stress.

    Psychoneuroendocrinology2009n=33108 influential citations

    Meditation practices may impact physiological pathways that are modulated by stress and relevant to disease. While much attention has been paid to meditation practices that emphasize calming the mind, improving focused attention, or…

  7. Regulation of the neural circuitry of emotion by compassion meditation: effects of meditative expertise.

    PloS one2008102 influential citations

    Recent brain imaging studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have implicated insula and anterior cingulate cortices in the empathic response to another's pain. However, virtually nothing is known about the impact of the…

  8. Investigation of mindfulness meditation practitioners with voxel-based morphometry.

    Social cognitive and affective neuroscience200894 influential citations

    Mindfulness meditators practice the non-judgmental observation of the ongoing stream of internal experiences as they arise. Using voxel-based morphometry, this study investigated MRI brain images of 20 mindfulness (Vipassana) meditators…

  9. Functional brain mapping of the relaxation response and meditation.

    Neuroreport200085 influential citations

    Meditation is a conscious mental process that induces a set of integrated physiologic changes termed the relaxation response. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to identify and characterize the brain regions that are…

  10. The measurement of regional cerebral blood flow during the complex cognitive task of meditation: a preliminary SPECT study.

    Psychiatry research200158 influential citations

    This study measured changes in regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) during the complex cognitive task of meditation using single photon emission computed tomography. Eight experienced Tibetan Buddhist meditators were injected at baseline…

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