Meditation clinical trials at UCSD

The goal of this clinical trial is to determine whether which types of integrative care, meaning a combination of psychotherapy and mind-body interventions, lead to the most changes in functioning among Veterans with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). The main aims are: 1. To evaluate the impact of integrative care approaches on functional outcomes among Veterans with PTSD. 2. To examine factors relevant to the implementation of integrated treatments for PTSD from the perspective of patients, providers and administrators in the VA Healthcare System. Participants will: 1. Complete assessments at the beginning of the study and 12- and 24-weeks later. 2. Engage in 12 weeks of integrated care, with the type being randomly assigned.

The goal of this study is to better understand how two common psychological treatments for pain work in the brain of older adults living with chronic pain. This study will: 1. evaluate fMRI of adults receiving psychological treatments for chronic pain relative to an attention control condition to determine how these interventions work within older adults, and 2. examine self-report and EEG variables to identify for whom do these psychological interventions work. Adults ages 60 years and older, living with chronic pain for at least 3 months will be randomly assigned to one of three conditions: 1. Mindfulness-Meditation 2. Therapeutic Hypnosis 3. Story Listening

Repetitive Transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) is an FDA-approved treatment for depression that involves brief magnetic stimulation pulses on the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) brain region. The ultimate goal of this treatment is to increase excitability and long-term plasticity in DLPFC, a brain region shown to be hypo-active in depression. Unfortunately, rTMS only has low to moderate efficacy; remission rates for patients range from ~15-30% in large randomized controlled trials. The focus of this research is to develop a next-generation rTMS protocol that is guided by the basic principles underlying brain plasticity, in order to improve the efficacy of rTMS for the treatment of depression. Specifically, in this study the investigators will test rTMS paired with a depression-relevant cognitive state of internal attention.