Engaging in yoga may mitigate stress and anxiety in individuals while potentially enhancing one's capacity to manage distractions. Our research aimed to explore the relation between these two outcomes: Can an eight-week yoga program foster distraction suppression, thereby reducing stress and discomfort? To answer this question, we used Hatha Yoga, the most commonly practiced form of yoga. We tested if the intervention improved participants' ability to suppress distractions and selectively decrease self-reported stress and stress reactivity. In Addition, we investigated whether such an intervention would increase participants' mindfulness. Our study included 98 healthy yoga novices between 18 and 40 years who were randomly assigned to either an experimental or a waitlist condition, with each participant completing pre- and post-intervention assessments, including questionnaires, as well as electrophysiological and behavioral measures. After eight weeks of yoga practice, significant reductions in self-reported stress and stress reactivity levels, as well as increased mindfulness, were observed among those participating in the intervention relative to those in the waitlist control group. There were, however, no significant changes in state or trait anxiety due to the intervention. Changes in stress measures could not be explained by changes in participants' ability to suppress distractors, which was not affected by the intervention. Overall, our findings suggest that regular participation in Hatha Yoga can improve mental health outcomes without impacting cognitive functioning directly related to distractor suppression. CLINICAL TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: NCT05232422.

Queer individuals experience unique stressors related to their minority status, negatively impacting their mental health. One factor contributing to these disparities is exposure to minority stress, which involves social stressors related to minority status. Previous research has focused on the negative impacts of minority stress, with less attention to its impact on positive psychological functioning. This study explored the relationship between minority stress and psychological well-being among 270 queer individuals in German-speaking countries. Participants completed an online survey assessing minority stress and psychological well-being. Analyses of Covariance indicated that proximal factors of minority stress—such as self-stigma, concealment, and expectations of rejection—had a particularly negative impact on psychological well-being, but no effects could be found for gender and sexual orientation. Additionally, gender identity but not sexual orientation had a significant effect on minority stress, with non-binary and other gender identities reporting higher minority stress compared to females. Thematic analysis revealed concerns about survey inclusivity, gender identity challenges, and intersectionality of minority identities. Our findings emphasize the significant impact of minority stress on the psychological well-being of queer individuals, particularly non-binary people and those with diverse gender identities, while demonstrating the need for inclusive research methodologies, tailored interventions, and policies addressing the diverse experiences within the queer community.

Does the practice of yoga impact stress? Various studies have suggested that yoga may reduce both self-reported stress and stress biomarkers, but the evidence for such claims remains inconclusive, especially for yoga styles with a focus on physical postures. In a randomized controlled trial with 98 participants, we therefore examined whether an eight-week Hatha yoga intervention (60 min, 3×/week or more) led to reduced levels of diurnal salivary cortisol (sCort), salivary alpha-amylase (sAA), and subjective momentary stress as compared to a waitlist control group. To ensure the concomitant assessment of self-report and biological measures in an ecologically valid setting, and to capture the diurnal profile of cortisol and alpha-amylase, we employed an ecological momentary assessment approach. Five times per day, participants reported their momentary stress levels on a visual analogue scale and collected saliva samples for the assessment of salivary biomarkers. The intervention led to a significant reduction of subjective momentary stress but there was no change in diurnal sCort or sAA levels. There are several potential explanations for these findings: The intervention may have helped participants to cope better with stress while leaving diurnal levels of stress biomarkers unaffected, or the change may at least not have been reflected in sCort and sAA. Alternatively, there may have been a self-report bias, insofar as a favorable disposition towards yoga may have led participants to report reductions in stress in order to indicate positive effects of the intervention. Our findings contribute to a better understanding of the effects of distinct yoga interventions, demonstrating their potential to serve as low-risk stress relief tools.

Past research suggests a continuity between perception and memory, as reflected in influences of orienting of spatial attention by cues presented after a visual target offset (post-target cues) on target perception. Conducting two experiments, we tested and confirmed this claim. Our study revealed an elevated reliance on post-target cues for target detection with diminishing target visibility, leading to better performance in validly versus invalidly cued trials, indicative of contrast gain. We demonstrated this post-target cueing impact on target perception without a postcue response prompt, meaning that our results truly reflected a continuity between perception and memory rather than a task-specific impact of having to memorize the target due to a response prompt. While previous studies found an improvement in accuracy through valid compared to invalid cues using liminal targets, in Experiment 1, we further showed an influence of attention on participants’ response time by the post-target cues with cues presented away from a clearly visible target. This suggests that visual interactions at the target location provided no better explanation of post-target cueing effects. Our results generalize prior research with liminal targets and confirm the view of a perception–memory continuum so that visual target processing is not shielded against visuospatial orienting of attention elicited by events following the offset of the visual target.

Meditation, traditionally seen as a path to spiritual enlightenment, is commonly used in therapeutic contexts for its mental health benefits, such as reducing stress, anxiety, and depression. However, alongside these benefits, practitioners of diverse forms of meditation have repeatedly been reporting adverse effects (AEs) of meditation. While most of these AEs are transient, some of them are significant enough to warrant clinical attention. This review synthesizes the existing literature on AEs associated with three forms of meditation: focused attention (FA), open monitoring (OM), and loving–kindness/compassion (LK/C) meditation, linking AEs with their neurological underpinnings. Potential AEs range from heightened psychiatric symptoms due to increased interoceptive/exteroceptive awareness over intensified awareness of suffering—with the insular cortex playing a major role—to ego dissolution (accompanied by the deactivation of the default mode network) and subsequent depersonalization and derealization. While changes in interoception/exteroception and awareness of suffering are most common in OM and LK/C meditation (even though most AEs reported stem from FA meditation), AEs related to ego dissolution are common in all three forms investigated here. The prevalence of AEs tends to increase with meditation experience; however, experienced meditators also tend to exhibit better emotional and cognitive regulation strategies on average (as is shown by increased regulatory ability in the prefrontal cortex) and show more adherence to the core mindfulness principles of acceptance and nonreactivity. Guidance and individualized approaches might be needed when introducing meditation to novices, especially in the case of vulnerable populations.

We investigated the role of alpha in the suppression of attention capture by salient but to-be-suppressed (negative and nonpredictive) color cues, expecting a potential boosting effect of alpha-rhythmic entrainment on feature-specific cue suppression. We did so by presenting a rhythmically flickering visual bar of 10 Hz before the cue - either on the cue’s side or opposite the cue -while an arrhythmically flickering visual bar was presented on the respective other side. We hypothesized that rhythmic entrainment at cue location could enhance the suppression of the cue. Testing 27 participants ranging from 18 to 39 years of age, we found both behavioral and electrophysiological evidence of suppression: Search times for a target at a negatively cued location were delayed relative to a target away from the cued location (inverse validity effects). In addition, an event-related potential indicative for suppression (the Distractor Positivity, Pd) was observed following rhythmic but not arrhythmic stimulation, indicating that suppression was boosted by the stimulation. This was also echoed in higher spectral power and intertrial phase coherence of EEG at rhythmically versus arrhythmically stimulated electrode sites, albeit only at the second harmonic (20 Hz), but not at the stimulation frequency. In addition, inverse validity effects were not modulated by rhythmic entrainment congruent with the cue side. Hence, we propose that rhythmic visual stimulation in the alpha range could support suppression, though behavioral evidence remains elusive, in contrast to electrophysiological findings.