This study examines the effects of a contemplative education intervention for Asian Indian adolescents living and going to high school in Singapore. The intervention aims to (a) reduce adolescents’ perceived levels of life stress and (b) enhance their ability to regulate their attention. While relaxation techniques have generally been found effective in dealing with adolescent …
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Developing a computational model for meditation using cross cortical synchrony in EEG data
This study uses a rigorous interdisciplinary approach to analyze EEG data collected during two 3-month long intensive meditation retreats in four steps. First, novel tools were developed for preprocessing the EEG data. Second, in order to identify the cortical correlates of meditation, longitudinal changes in the cortical activity were measured using spectral analysis. Three main …
Mindfulness-based interventions for depression: Possible neurophysiological mechanisms
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 …
Dissociable neural modes of self-reference and emotion regulation
Mindfulness‐Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is an 8 week course that teaches participants to change their patterns of reacting to stress. To accomplish this goal, participants practice meditation to increase their ability to attend to emotions and develop the ability to attend to their patterns of reactivity. In theory, this awareness will eventually enable participants to …
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Establishing mindfulness and mind wandering as mediators of patient benefit in MBCT
Prior studies have focused on the impact of mindfulness-based interventions on alleviating physical or psychological symptoms or difficulties (e.g., Teasdale et al., 2000; Ma & Teasdale, 2004), or on enhancing positive states, including mindfulness itself (E.g., Brown & Ryan, 2003). Relatively little work has focused on cognitive measures that might reflect the presence or absence …
The neurobiology of mindfulness meditation for the control of pain
The effect of meditation on pain perception was investigated. Zen meditators and controls were instructed to attend, in different ways, to painful and non-painful thermal stimuli. Conditions included: a) baseline, b) concentration: attend exclusively to the left calf, c) mindfulness: attend to the left calf and observe, moment to moment, in a non-judgmental manner. Meditators …
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Neural systems supporting interoceptive awareness in experienced and beginning meditators
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 …
Feasibility, clinical acceptability, and efficacy of a mindfulness-based group therapy intervention for PTSD
Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is seriously debilitating and common, with 5-10% incidence in general population and over 30% in combat veterans. PTSD symptoms include emotional dysregulation, intrusive, distressing trauma memories, nightmares, and ‘flashbacks’. Our laboratory has reported exaggerated a.) first-person emotional b.) psychophysiological and c.) neuroendocrine responses to trauma recall in combat PTSD patients, and …
Effectiveness of the Mindfulness Education Program on children’s social-emotional competence, psychological well-being, and stress reactivity
The objective of present study is to evaluate the effectiveness of a primary prevention program—“Mindfulness Education” (ME)—a classroom-based program designed to foster children’s mindful awareness, psychological well-being, and social-emotional competencies. This study will provide an examination of multiple areas of functioning—cognitive, affective, behavioural, interpersonal and physiological through the collection of data from multiple-informants (self-reports, peer …
Neural effects of mindfulness meditation training on working memory
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 …
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