Frontiers in Psychology | Consciousness Research and Mindfulness section | New and Recent Articles

Human consciousness has evolved under the constant pull of terrestrial gravity, yet its role in shaping perception and awareness has received limited theoretical attention. As spaceflight transitions from short missions to long-duration habitation, understanding how consciousness responds to non-terrestrial gravity becomes increasingly urgent. In this perspective, we synthesise behavioural, neuro…

Mindfulness has been widely conceptualized and measured across various fields. With increasing attention to the healthy usage of social media, the present study aims to develop a measurement scale for social media mindfulness, intended to guide users towards purposeful and intentional usage, thereby alleviating the adverse effects on mental health caused by obsessive or addictive use of social me…

This pilot mixed-methods case study investigates the mindfulness levels and perceptions of secondary school EFL teachers as the initial phase of a larger intervention project aimed at enhancing teacher wellbeing and professional competence. Acknowledging the emotional, cognitive, and relational demands of language teaching, this study assesses teachers’ mindfulness skills and examines conditions …

IntroductionMusic performance anxiety (MPA) can substantially impair musicians’ learning, performance, and psychological functioning. Although mindfulness- and acceptance-based interventions (MABIs) have shown promise for MPA, their pooled effects, boundary conditions, and mechanism-related commonalities remain insufficiently understood. Grounded in a dual-path explanatory framework emphasizing d…

BackgroundBreathwork that increases ventilatory rate or depth represents an accessible non-pharmacological modality for potentially inducing altered states of consciousness (ASCs). Despite gaining traction as a potential therapeutic tool, empirical controlled research on breathwork and ASCs remains limited.MethodsWe examined the effects of a single session of high ventilation breathwork, compared…

ObjectivesOver recent decades, Western psychology has drawn extensively from Buddhism to create effective mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs). To identify opportunities for deeper integration, this study compared the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta, a foundational Buddhist text on mindfulness, with two established MBIs for mental health.MethodsTemplate analysis was used to systematically compare the Satipa…

This treatise presents a provisional interdisciplinary framework that synthesizes established findings from physics, neuroscience, and information theory to address questions that orthodox disciplines have addressed only in isolation. The argument unfolds in layers, each building on the last, and asks the reader to hold conclusions provisionally until the full architecture is visible. The central…

IntroductionMeditation offers a tractable model for probing altered states of consciousness, yet consistent physiological markers remain elusive. This study characterized within-subject autonomic and respiratory modulation across pre-meditation, during-meditation, and post-meditation states in trained Rajyoga practitioners using multiscale heart rate variability (HRV) metrics and HRV–respiration …

Out-of-body experiences (OBEs) are altered states sometimes accompanied by reports of veridical perception—accurate information seemingly obtained from a vantage point outside the body and ostensibly without conventional sensory input. While case collections and early laboratory studies suggest this possibility, replication under conventional laboratory protocols has been challenging. This articl…

Trauma-related distress in adult women often extends beyond posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to include depressive symptoms and dissociation, yet the roles of mindfulness and self-compassion across these symptom domains remain insufficiently clarified. This study examined mindfulness and self-compassion as psychological resources associated with trauma-related symptoms among trauma-exposed ad…

The Hemispheric Disparity Theory conceptualizes one facet of consciousness, defined as the “conscious-mind” experience. Rather than a unified agent, conscious experience arises from the dynamic interplay between a left hemisphere specialized in order and abstraction through dynamic temporal modeling, and a right hemisphere specialized in contextual integration, coherence, and model updating throu…

Altered states of consciousness, including hallucinations, psychedelic experiences, and ego dissolution, differ qualitatively, yet no unified computational framework describes what varies and along which dimensions. Computational phenomenology (CP) has emerged as a promising bridge between first-person experience and computational models, yet current formalisations rely predominantly on the free …

This paper introduces Dialogical Inner Voice Personification (DIVP): a formless, persistent inner dialogue partner that emerges spontaneously in childhood, operates through linguistic turn-taking, and is experienced as part of the self. Drawing on eight autoethnographic interview sessions conducted with an AI research assistant and corroborated by parental accounts, the author — a 14-year-old gif…

Folk attributions of consciousness to non-human systems often reveal what may be termed double bias. Within the standard distinction between phenomenal and access consciousness, non-human animals often receive low attributions of consciousness despite convergent behavioral and neurobiological evidence treated as relevant to subjective experience. By contrast, disembodied artificial intelligence (…

What consciousness is, and how it relates to the body and nature at large, are among the most enduring questions in human history. Notable thinkers have long grappled with its definition, mechanisms, and purpose. In this review, we examine both historical and contemporary perspectives on consciousness across philosophy, science, medicine, and practice. By integrating diverse perspectives and line…

This article presents a framework for identifying the neural correlates of a low-level component of visual consciousness, base experience, defined as the spatial arrangement of colors experienced across the visual field. We propose a content-matching method that compares the content of base experience with that represented by candidate neural systems, treating content matches and mismatches as ev…

BackgroundClinical trials of brief mindfulness interventions (BMIs) for chronic pain frequently report small average effect sizes, which may mask substantial heterogeneity in treatment responses. Rather than testing general efficacy, this exploratory study investigated whether a BMI is associated with concurrently coupled psychological and sensory improvements within individuals, potentially refl…

Explaining subjective experience (the “hard problem”) remains a central challenge in consciousness science. Research on “quantum consciousness” has grown rapidly in recent years, yet a substantial subset merely links terms such as collapse, superposition, and entanglement to qualia in verbal maneuvers that lack testable mechanistic commitments. This article adopts a theory-first critical-review f…

Meditation research has focused primarily on secular forms of mindfulness meditation rather than spiritual forms of meditation, and rarely on devotion in meditation. This study sought to gain broader understanding of the psychological characteristics (mindfulness, mysticism, self-actualization, positive affect and negative affect) and practice characteristics (minutes per day and years of practic…