ReviewAnnals of the New York Academy of Sciences2014
Awakening is not a metaphor: the effects of Buddhist meditation practices on basic wakefulness.
Review in Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 50 papers, 3 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
50 citing papers in PubMed, 3 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 137 citations in OpenAlex.
- A network meta-analysis of mind-body exercise interventions for internet addiction symptoms in young adults.Frontiers in public health · 2025Pooled it
- A systematic review and activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis of fMRI studies on arousing or wake-promoting effects in Buddhist meditation.Frontiers in psychology · 2023Pooled it
- The effect of mindfulness meditation on sleep quality: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences · 2019Pooled it
- Treatment of chronic primary sleep onset insomnia with Kundalini yoga: a randomized controlled trial with active sleep hygiene comparison.Journal of clinical sleep medicine : JCSM : official publication of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine · 2021Trial
- A Closer Look at Yoga Nidra: Sleep Lab Protocol.International journal of yoga therapy · 2021Trial
- Neural Oscillatory and Sympathetic Arousal Dynamics During Mindfulness Meditation: Characterizing Relaxed Alertness.Psychophysiology · 2026Article
- Non-duality in brain and experience of advanced meditators-key role for intrinsic neural timescales.Communications biology · 2026Article
- Impact of the mindfulness-based blood pressure reduction (MB-BP) program on cardiovascular health: A randomized clinical trial.American journal of preventive cardiology · 2026Article
- Neural dynamics of mindfulness training: A longitudinal EEG network analysis of focused attention and open monitoring meditation.Network neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2026Article
- Illuminating consciousness.Frontiers in psychology · 2026Review
- Autonomic indicators of self-transcendence: insights from the numadelic VR paradigm.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2026Article
- Advanced and long-term meditation and the autonomic nervous system: A review and synthesis.Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews · 2025Review
- Neurophysiological mechanisms of focused attention meditation: A scoping systematic review.Imaging neuroscience (Cambridge, Mass.) · 2025Article
- Neurofeedback Training Facilitates Awareness and Enhances Emotional Well-being Associated with Real-World Meditation Practice: A 7-T MRI Study.Mindfulness · 2025Article
- Article
- Adverse Effects of Meditation: Autonomic Nervous System Activation and Individual Nauseous Responses During Samadhi Meditation in the Czech Republic.Journal of religion and health · 2024Observational
- High-precision neurofeedback-guided meditation training optimises real-world self-guided meditation practice for well-being.bioRxiv : the preprint server for biology · 2024Article
- The relationship between alpha power and heart rate variability commonly seen in various mental states.PloS one · 2024Article
- Arousal coherence, uncertainty, and well-being: an active inference account.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2024Review
- Documenting and defining emergent phenomenology: theoretical foundations for an extensive research strategy.Frontiers in psychology · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Buddhist meditation practices have become a topic of widespread interest in both science and medicine. Traditional Buddhist formulations describe meditation as a state of relaxed alertness that must guard against both excessive hyperarousal (restlessness) and excessive hypoarousal (drowsiness, sleep). Modern applications of meditation have emphasized the hypoarousing and relaxing effects without as much emphasis on the arousing or alertness-promoting effects. In an attempt to counterbalance the plethora of data demonstrating the relaxing and hypoarousing effects of Buddhist meditation, this interdisciplinary review aims to provide evidence of meditation's arousing or wake-promoting effects by drawing both from Buddhist textual sources and from scientific studies, including subjective, behavioral, and neuroimaging studies during wakefulness, meditation, and sleep. Factors that may influence whether meditation increases or decreases arousal are discussed, with particular emphasis on dose, expertise, and contemplative trajectory. The course of meditative progress suggests a nonlinear multiphasic trajectory, such that early phases that are more effortful may produce more fatigue and sleep propensity, while later stages produce greater wakefulness as a result of neuroplastic changes and more efficient processing.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.