If you’ve ever considered practicing meditation, you might believe you should relax, breathe, and empty your mind of distracting thoughts. Novices tend to think of meditation as the brain at rest, but a new international study concludes that this ancient practice is quite the opposite: Meditation is a state of heightened cerebral activity that profoundly alters brain dynamics.

Researchers from the University of Montreal and Italy’s National Research Council recruited 12 monks of the Thai Forest Tradition at Santacittārāma, a Buddhist monastery outside Rome. In a laboratory in Chieti-Pescara, scientists analyzed the brain activity of these meditation practitioners using magnetoencephalography (MEG), technology capable of recording with great precision the brain’s electrical signals.

The study focused on two classical forms of meditation: Samatha, a technique that focuses on sustained attention to a specific objective, often steady breathing, with the aim of stabilizing the mind and reaching a deep state of calm and concentration, and Vipassana, which is based on equanimous observation of sensations, thoughts, and emotions as they arise in order to develop mental clarity and a deeper understanding of the experience.

“With Samatha, you narrow your field of attention, somewhat like narrowing the beam of a flashlight; with Vipassana, on the contrary, you widen the beam,” explains Karim Jerbi, professor of psychology at the University of Montreal and one of the study’s coauthors. “Both practices actively engage attentional mechanisms. While Vipassana is more challenging for beginners, in mindfulness programs the two techniques are often practiced in alternation.”

The researchers recorded multiple indicators of brain dynamics, including neural oscillations, measures of signal complexity, and parameters related to so-called “criticality,” a concept borrowed from statistical physics that has been applied to neuroscience for 20 years. Criticality describes systems that operate efficiently on the border between order and chaos, and in neuroscience, it is considered a state optimal for processing information in a healthy brain.

“A brain that lacks flexibility adapts poorly, while too much chaos can lead to malfunction, as in epilepsy,” Jerbi explained in a press release. “At the critical point, neural networks are stable enough to transmit information reliably, yet flexible enough to adapt quickly to new situations. This balance optimizes the brain’s processing, learning, and response capacity.”

During the experiment, the monks’ brain activity was recorded by a high-resolution MEG system as they alternated from one type of meditation to the other with brief periods of rest in between. The data were then processed with advanced signal analysis and machine learning tools to extract different indicators of neural complexity and dynamics.

Striking a Balance

Results published in the journal Neuroscience of Consciousness show both forms of meditation increase the complexity of brain signals compared to a brain at rest. This finding suggests the brain in meditation does not simply calm down but rather enters a dynamic state rich with information. At the same time, the researchers observed widespread reductions in certain parameters linked to the global organization of neural activity.

One of the most striking findings in the analysis of the criticality deviation coefficient showed a clear distinction between Samatha and Vipassana. This indicates that, although both practices increase brain complexity, they do so through different dynamic configurations, consistent with their subjective experiences. In other words, Vipassana brings the practitioner closer to the balance of stability and flexibility, while Samatha produces a somewhat more stable and focused state. According to researchers, the closer the brain gets to this critical state of balance, the more responsively and efficiently it functions. This is reflected, for example, in a greater capacity to switch tasks or to store information.

The NHL also pointed WIRED to its partnerships with Pride organizations around the US, Canada, and Australia, as well as pro-inclusivity organization You Can Play, which it’s been working with since 2013. The league said it will be hosting its third annual Pride Cup in 2026.

NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman has said he “binged” Heated Rivalry in one night and told reporters that all NHL teams do a Pride night. However, as the New York Times reported, that is no longer the case, with a couple of teams opting for more general inclusivity events.

Teresa Fowler, an associate professor at Concordia University of Edmonton and Tim Skuce, an associate professor at Brandon University, have both been researching hockey culture in Canada for years. Fowler is candid when she speaks about the league’s embrace of Heated Rivalry, which she feels is performative.

“Where’s your gay friend on your team? You know what I mean?” she says. “It just seems so hypocritical when people are saying, ‘Yeah, we would welcome them,’ and yet, the person who they call their brother, you know, that they would do anything for, is too afraid to bare their soul.”

Fowler and Skuce published a study on hockey culture in 2023, interviewing 21 elite players from the junior A level and higher, many of whom they say were current or former NHL players. Fowler says she’s also worked with younger players, including U18 players and youth hockey. One of the main issues they pointed to that fosters a toxic culture in sport was hazing.

“They would make players dress up like women, and then go into a shopping mall and sing ‘My Little Teapot.’ They would have notches in their belts for sexual conquest. But then, of course, there’s the more physical [hazing rituals]: drag your testicles across the rink naked, get in bathrooms naked,” Fowler says. “It’s just gross. It makes no sense to me how this is team bonding, none whatsoever. Those rituals are sexism rituals, misogynistic rituals, where you’re constantly demeaning women.”

In 2022, a Globe and Mail investigation revealed that Hockey Canada, the sport’s national governing body, had in part used players’ registration fees to cover uninsurable liabilities, such as sexual assault settlements; last July, five former Canadian Junior Hockey players were acquitted of sexually assaulting a woman at a hotel room in London, Ontario.

Hockey Canada did not respond to WIRED’s request for comment.

Skuce, who played university and AAA hockey, says a lot of the men he’s interviewed said they “felt uncomfortable” with the hazing but “they didn’t want to say anything about it.” Team belonging is predicated on going along with what’s happening.

Skuce says he wants to see a shift away from humiliation-based hazing rituals to ones that are more “inclusive.”

With the Olympics taking center stage, there’s once again the potential for a spotlight on trans people in sports—a culture war issue Browne says has created a “moral panic.” He coauthored the 2025 book Let Us Play about the issue.

The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) operation in Minnesota is pushing the United States court system to its breaking point.

Since Operation Metro Surge began in December, federal immigration agents have arrested some 4,000 people, according to the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The result is an avalanche of cases filed in the US district court in Minnesota on behalf of people challenging their imprisonment by federal immigration enforcement agents. According to WIRED’s review of court records and official judicial statistics, attorneys filed nearly as many so-called habeas corpus petitions in Minnesota alone as were filed across the US during an entire year.

The bombardment of cases filed in federal court in Minnesota and other states is the result of two Trump administration policies: a dramatic increase in the number of people being detained, and the elimination of a key legal mechanism for securing their release. The result is a US court system in collapse: Judges, immigration attorneys, and federal prosecutors are all overwhelmed, while the people at the center of these cases remain behind bars, often in states thousands of miles from their home—many after judges have ordered their release.

“I’ve never said the word habeas so many times in my life,” says Graham Ojala-Barbour, a Minnesota immigration attorney who has been practicing for over a decade. Ojala-Barbour says that when he goes to sleep, his dreams are about habeas petitions.

Exhaustion is endemic. On February 3, one now-former special assistant US attorney, Julie Le, begged a US judge in Minnesota to hold her in contempt so she could finally rest. She was listed on 88 cases, according to data obtained via PACER, the US court records database. Daniel Rosen, the US attorney for the district of Minnesota and head of Le’s office, previously told that judge in a letter that they were “struggling to keep up with the immense volume” of petitions and had let at least one court order demanding the return of a petitioner slip through the cracks. Le did not respond to a request for comment. In response to a request for comment, the Minnesota US Attorney’s Office sent an automatic reply stating that they currently lacked a public information officer.

Le was reportedly fired after the February hearing, where she told the judge, “This job sucks.”

In response to a request for comment, DHS spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin said, “The Trump administration is more than prepared to handle the legal caseload necessary to deliver President Trump’s deportation agenda for the American people.”

As hard as the workload may be for US attorneys, the situation is far more dire for people detained by immigration authorities. In court filings, people who have been detained describe being packed into cells that were so full that they couldn’t even sit down before being flown to detention centers in Texas. One described having to share cells with people who were sick with Covid. Others said agents repeatedly pressured them and other detainees to self-deport.

McLaughlin told WIRED, “All detainees are provided with proper meals, water, medical treatment, and have opportunities to communicate with their family members and lawyers. All detainees receive full due process.”

Ana Voss, the civil division chief for the Minnesota US Attorney’s Office, has been listed as one of the attorneys defending the government in nearly all the habeas petition cases filed in Minnesota since Operation Metro Surge began. Before December, the majority of cases associated with Voss were about other issues, such as social security and disability lawsuits. Since then, habeas petitions for immigrant detainees have dramatically overtaken all other matters.