Investigate the relationship between metacognitive

The gap

Evidence profile

Sourced from the limitations and future-work section and stated challenges of the source papers, classified as general, all from Mindfulness.

Supporting evidence — 4 representative gaps

• Differential Effects of Meditation States on Neural Pain Processing in Novice and Long-Term Meditators (2026) · Mindfulness · doi

  The present study has several limitations. According to the experimental design, sequential meditation states had to be entered and sustained for approximately 2 min. Whereas expert meditators often show near-instantaneous transition into the target state (OMM or LKM) during short blocks, suggesting automatic access (Lutz et al., 2004; Kerr et al., 2013), the brief sessions may have prevented a successful transition or state achievement in short-term meditators. Yet, post-session verbal reports indicated, at the level of sub- jective experience, that meditative states were effectively maintained. Control analyses of theta-alpha power per- formed to verify meditative state fidelity further suggest that participants from each group engaged in the instructed meditation process. Also, it cannot be fully excluded that the requirement to give subjective ratings of pain stimuli (intensity, aversion, identification) on each trial might have interfered with the adopted non-evaluative attitude during meditative states, especially during OMM. Finally, the con- clusions from statistical analyses should be considered with caution since both positive and negative outcomes may have been affected by low sensitivity or statistical power stem- ming from large individual variance and limited sample size. Analysis of neural pain responses during meditation in novice and experienced practitioners demonstrated that the maintenance of specific meditation states does not alter the sensory processing of pain, possibly not affecting bottom- up mechanisms. However, it does alter in state-dependent ways the cognitive/evaluative component of pain processing associated with top-down mechanisms. These state-depend- ent changes are also trait-related as they differ according to meditation expertise. In novice meditators, only the compassion meditation (LKM) characterized by intentional shifts towards positive emotional reflection appeared effective in modulating the sensation and top-down mechanisms of pain processing. This result suggests that the meditation-induced positive emotional state may reduce the subjective experience of pain (intensity, unpleasantness, and self-identification) by atten- uating the communication and limiting affective-cognitive appraisal of nociceptive signals. Notably, the two meditation types that primarily emphasize sustained attentional focus did not significantly alter pain processing in novices. In contrast, in experienced meditators, the maintenance of meditative states appears to modulate top-down processing of pain primarily through the regulation of internal atten- tional focus as imposed during FAM and OMM practices. Neural correlates during attention-control meditative states imply (a) a proactive reduction in the excitability of soma- tosensory regions, (b) a distinct reactivity within the fronto- medial cognitive control network that may be tentatively associated with a suppressed communication of nocicep- tive signals and a concurrent enhancement of awareness, and (c) a lateralized functional activation of attentional net- works probably reflecting the specialized control of different attentional modes. Although these neural modulations are not consistently associated with changes in subjective pain ratings, they suggest fine-grained tuning and functional dif- ferentiation within cognitive control and attention networks during meditation states in LTM. Such neurofunctional pat- terns in long-term meditators probably stem from neuroplas- tic reorganization of large-scale cognitive and pain-process- ing systems resulting from extensive meditative training, not present in less experienced practitioners.

  generallimitationsevidence 5/5
  Keywords: pain meditation states state meditative meditators control processing cognitive subjective positive neural experienced alter mechanisms
• Meditation-Specific Neural Predictors of State Mindfulness During Eyes Open Meditation (2026) · Mindfulness · doi

  The proof-of-concept nature of this study necessitates consideration of its limitations, which in turn point to potentially important future directions. First, the findings are based on a relatively modest sample size (87 sessions of data across 29 participants), and while useful for providing a proof-ofconcept demonstration, will need replication to establish their generalizability. Second, our reliance on the State Mindfulness Scale, administered retrospectively at the end of each session, is susceptible to recall bias and fundamentally reduces assessment to a singular value. This further constrains the temporal granularity of identified mind-brain relationships, necessitating averaging spectral power indices across the full 10-min induction to maintain temporal alignment with SMS scores. Future work utilizing repeated experience sampling probes within a session could better characterize the temporal dynamics of practice. Furthermore, the SMS is not designed to provide highly granular differentiation between the diverse experiential and metacognitive dimensions of meditation. Consequently, future studies may benefit from incorporating more phenomenologically oriented approaches, such as the Lyon Assessment of Meditation Phenomenology (LAMP; Abdoun et al., 2025), or Temporal Experience Tracing (Jachs et al., 2022; Lewis-Healey et al., 2024), which may offer a richer and more detailed characterization of meditation experience across multiple domains (e.g., mental content, motivation, meta-awareness). Although an important strength of our methodology was to use hierarchical modeling to test for how the SMS-power relationship varies by region across induction, our primary analytic approach modeled regional power as nested within sessions, resulting in multiple observations per session. While this structure is standard for testing regional moderation, the repeating observations may underestimate standard errors, potentially inflating statistical significance. Thus, we conducted supplemental sensitivity analyses using an alternative model specification with two-way region x induction interactions that treat regional power values as separate predictors, effectively unnesting region and reducing the number of repeated observations within session (see OSF for full model output). Importantly, the sensitivity analyses confirmed the robustness of our core finding that frontal and posterior regions exhibit opposing patterns of spectral power-SMS relationships during the meditation practices, demonstrating that the region-specific patterns reported here are unlikely a sole product of the nested model structure. Additionally, while our analyses allowed us to contrast FA and OM states with an active control condition, the processes elicited during the active control require their own consideration and scrutiny. In this case, the control condition was a narrative podcast episode (TED talk) that differed considerably in content, structure, and engagement relative to the two guided inductions. These qualitative differences were clearly reflected in the manipulation check findings, in which significantly stronger engagement, interest, emotional reactions, arousal, understanding and learning occurred, relative to FA and OM. These differing engagement profiles may have contributed to some of the observed differences in spectral power among conditions. Other work examining meditation-related spectral power effects has utilized “instructed mind-wandering” as an active control condition (Braboszcz et al., 2017; Cahn et al., 2010). Thus, it would be worth investigating whether the observed results would replicate if such a condition were implemented in the current design as a parallel guided active control induction. Furthermore, we instructed participants to keep their eyes open during the audio inductions to mitigate sleepiness and vigilance-related confounds, which we acknowledge diverges from the more prevalent eyes-closed induction paradigms. Consequently, the present findings are not directly comparable to the eyes-closed literature and may introduce limitations to the scope of interpretability and generalizability. In particular, the eyes-open condition may interact with the distinct attentional demands of the two practices. OM encourages broad receptivity to all arising stimuli, which inherently increases visual sensory input from open eyes, a process known to suppress posterior alpha power. In contrast, FA involves internalization of awareness on the breath, which may restrict visual input processing and thereby attenuate suppression of alpha power. It is thus possible that the observed divergence in alpha power could partially reflect differences in visual engagement rather than meditation state quality alone.

  generallimitationsevidence 5/5
  Keywords: power meditation control eyes across session spectral induction tion region active condition future temporal within
• Mindfulness and Metacognitive Monitoring Accuracy in Young Meditation Practitioners Compared to Non-Practitioners (2026) · Mindfulness · doi

  Investigate the relationship between metacognitive monitoring accuracy and mindfulness in different age groups, - Examine the effects of mindfulness-based meditation on metacognitive monitoring accuracy in a longitudinal design, - Explore the neural mechanisms underlying metacognitive monitoring accuracy in mindfulness practitioners

  generalfuture-work sectionevidence 5/5
  Keywords: investigate relationship between metacognitive monitoring accuracy mindfulness different
• Mindfulness and Metacognitive Monitoring Accuracy in Young Meditation Practitioners Compared to Non-Practitioners (2026) · Mindfulness · doi

  One challenge is the difficulty in objectively measuring metacognition with laboratory tasks. Another challenge is the lack of understanding of the relationship between mindfulness-based meditation practice and metacognitive monitoring accuracy. A third challenge is the need to develop effective methods to promote metacognitive monitoring accuracy in individuals.

  generalstated challengesevidence 5/5
  Keywords: one challenge difficulty objectively measuring metacognition laboratory tasks

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