Human neuroimaging offers a powerful way to connect animal and human research on emotion, with profound implications for psychological science. However, the gulf between animal and human studies remains a formidable obstacle: Human studies typically focus on the cortex and a few subcortical regions such as the amygdala, whereas deeper structures such as the brainstem …
Continue reading “Meditation-induced changes in anticipation and experience of pain”
Most meditation traditions integrate attention to the internal state of the body into the practice of meditation, and teach that a central effect of the meditative practice is increased awareness of the body. To test whether meditators have increased body awareness we examined the performance of two groups of experienced meditators compared to one group …
In previous work, experienced meditators demonstrated sustained high-amplitude gamma oscillations during meditation at frequencies associated with mental processes such as attention, working memory, and perception, suggesting that meditation might lead to long-term behavioral and neural changes. We examined the effects of meditation experience on attention, perception, and decision-making through two studies of individuals with extensive …
In this month’s Fellow Spotlight we are pleased to share the work of Norman Farb, Associate Professor of Psychology and Principal Investigator of the Regulatory and Affective Dynamics Laboratory at the University of Toronto Mississauga. Norm studies the social neuroscience of the self and human emotion, with a focus on how biases in self-representation shape emotions to determine …
We are presently undertaking a series of psychophysical pilot studies, recording extensive data from a small number of individuals. Using breath as the object of meditation, we are searching for EEG signals (possibly in the gamma-frequency band) that correlate with attentional quality. In response to a cue, subjects indicate by button press their subjective level …
Continue reading “Neural effects of mindfulness meditation training on working memory”
Growing recognition of the benefits of contemplative practice for the reduction of harmful stress and the improvement of prosocial behavior is prompting research into how these effects arise. We define contemplative practice as intentionally attempting to suspend all discursive and evaluative thought. In practice, most forms of contemplative practice emphasize compassion for self and others, …
We hypothesized that 8-week mindfulness meditative training (MMT) would significantly decrease 1) cognitive/emotional biases associated with perception of pain and general dysfunction in fibromyalgia (FM) and 2) the magnitudes of various symptoms in FM patients. Changes were documented in self-reported measures of primary and secondary symptoms, mindfulness, cognitive/emotional biases associated with the experience of pain …
Previous studies have indicated that mindfulness and other forms of meditation training are associated with improvements in sleep quality. However, none of these studies used objective polysomnographic sleep recordings. The aim of this study was to examine whether mindfulness meditation was associated with improvements in objectively measured sleep, according to polysomnography (PSG), and to relate …
Recent studies suggest attention may be trained as a skill. While a large body of literature suggests that expertise in domains like chess or music requires 5,000 to 10,000 hours of practice, most previous studies examined changes in attention following far less training. We report performance on different attention tasks by 32 Buddhist meditators, who …
Interest in investigating the neural correlates of different meditation practices is increasing within the neuroscience community. In particular, shamatha practice, which strengthens the ability of a practitioner to sustain a concentrated, single-pointed focus of attention, is a natural focus for attention researchers within cognitive neuroscience. However, studies of the medium- and long-term effects of shamatha …
Continue reading “Understanding the neural correlates of attention”
