Matthew D. Sacchet, Ph.D.

Dr. Matthew D. Sacchet, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor and the Director of the Meditation Research Program at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital (Mass General). Dr. Sacchet and his team study advanced meditation: states, stages, and endpoints of meditative development and mastery. He has authored more than 150 publications that have been cited more than 10,000 times, and his work has been presented more than 170 times at international, national, regional and local venues including at Cambridge, Harvard, Oxford, Princeton, Stanford, and Yale Universities, and the United Nations. His research has appeared in leading scientific journals in the mind and brain sciences and psychiatry, including American Journal of Psychiatry, Biological Psychiatry, Cerebral Cortex, JAMA Psychiatry, Journal of Neuroscience, Molecular Psychiatry, Nature Mental Health, Neuron, Neuropsychopharmacology, Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and World Psychiatry. He has received generous support from numerous foundations and repeat awards from federal funding bodies in the United States, including the National Institutes of Health and National Science Foundation. His work has appeared in many major media outlets where it has been viewed many millions of times, including in 10% Happier, CBC, CBS, Forbes, Men’s/Women’s Health, NBC, New Scientist, NPR, Scientific American, TIME, Vox, and Wall Street Journal, and Forbes named him one of its “30 Under 30.” Dr. Sacchet is an Associate Editor of the leading meditation academic journal Mindfulness, and a Research Fellow of the Mind & Life Institute. He has been nominated for mentorship awards five times in the last five years.

The mission of the Meditation Research Program at Mass General and Harvard is to establish a scientific understanding of, and also to share, advanced meditation. The Program’s research spans and integrates diverse fields across clinical science and medicine, computer/computational science, engineering, epidemiology, neuroscience, philosophy, psychology, and religious studies. For example, the Program’s studies include multidisciplinary investigation of meditative development and meditative endpoints toward a more comprehensive understanding of the trajectories and outcomes of advanced meditation. The Program has published landmark research in a number of domains including in diverse theoretical aspects of advanced meditation research, and empirically including contributing first studies of advanced absorption (“jhana”) and insight meditation, meditative endpoints (including cessations of consciousness), and the epidemiology and public health implications of altered states of consciousness. This research promises to contribute to improving individual well-being and the collective health of society by informing the development of meditation-based interventions that are more efficient and impactful. Toward this end, the Program develops and shares advanced meditation training and educational materials for broad dissemination.

Please see the Meditation Research Program’s website for more information: https://meditation.mgh.harvard.edu