The practice of meditative concentration has been proposed to be somewhat equivalent to an attention task. Because the attention and working memory systems are intimately linked, we hypothesized that practicing this particular attention task would make the working memory system more efficient. We tested 29 participants of a Dathun (a month-long intensive meditation retreat), before …
Continue reading “Mathematical modeling of acute effects of meditation on cognition”
Previous emotion regulation studies (Ochsner et al., 2004, Urry et al., 2006) have used reappraisal as a strategy to investigate neural mechanisms of down-regulating negative emotion. Compassion may also be viewed as a regulatory strategy to cope with negative emotion, which may differ in neural mechanism and positive behavioral outcomes. In a pilot study, we investigate …
Research on the effects of meditation has focused on understanding both the meditative state as well as characteristics resulting from long-term, regular meditation practice. Understanding these states and traits is of interest because of potential clinical applications and the possibility for better understanding of brain states and function. In particular, this is of interest for …
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 …
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 …
Continue reading “Dissociable neural modes of self-reference and emotion regulation”
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 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 …
Continue reading “The neurobiology of mindfulness meditation for the control of pain”
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 …
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 …
