Fibromyalgia (FM) is a prevalent problem that remains poorly understood and thus also difficult to treat. Mutually reinforcing relationships between pain and affect complicate mechanistic understanding and treatment development; high rates of comorbid affective disturbances compound pain-related suffering and make parsing the mechanistic underpinnings of FM particularly difficult. Over the last decade, spinal cord imaging …
Grant Type Archives:
Meditative and real-time fMRI training for the cultivation of compassion
Grant voided.
Mindful interactions: effects on couple conflict-related stress and relationship function
Accumulating research has shown that conflictual romantic relationships are powerful instigators of stress, as measured by subjective reports, hormonal and cardiovascular reactivity, and immune functioning in both laboratory contexts and naturalistic settings. Significantly, couple conflict appears to increase cortisol levels via hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis activation, such that individuals under chronic relationship stress may have increased health …
Yoga for Parenting Success: YPS
This application proposes to develop and pilot test a randomized control trial group parenting intervention (Yoga for Parenting Success: YPS) for single mothers of toddlers. YPS integrates the tenets of Emotion Coaching (EC: Gottman, 1997) with the principles of Viniyoga™ Therapy (VYT: Kraftsow, 1999, 2002). EC involves parental scaffolding children’s emotional development and self-regulation through …
Investigating the effects of loving kindness meditation on interpersonal stress generation in chronically depressed patients
Grant voided.
Differential effects of empathy and compassion on emotional and behavioral processes
Grant voided.
Investigation into the effects of compassion training for subjects and relatives on uncontrollability over pain that drives temporal summation from a first-, second-, and third-person perspective
Various factors are known to maintain pain. Among them, lack of control over pain, a frequent complaint of chronic pain patients, increases pain intensity and unpleasantness2 and is associated with changes in physiological measures and brain activation. Our previous results, submitted for publication, suggest that lack of control over pain is associated with an activation …
Strengthening memories of compassion
Compassion is a feeling that occurs in response to another’s suffering and motivates a subsequent helping desire (Goetz, Keltner, Simon-Thomas, 2010; Lazarus, 1991). Recent findings suggest that compassion may be trained through contemplative practice and that this training leads to increased prosocial feelings and behavior (Fredrickson, Cohn, Coffey, Pek, & Finkel, 2008; Hutcherson, Seppala, & …
Comparing the efficacy of mindfulness-based training vs. working-memory training on cognitive health and resilience to acute stress in older adults
Maintaining mental well-being, be it cognitive or emotional, in the elderly has proven challenging which could explain why ‘fitness for the mind’ regimens have become a billion dollar industry. Two types of training are well-documented: 1) mindfulness-based (MB) training, especially secular forms, and 2) working memory (WM) training. Though primarily studied in younger populations, these …
Socio-emotional effects of Insight Meditation retreat participation on practitioners and their close others
Some meditation practices aim, in part, to improve interpersonal relationships likely though enhanced emotion regulation abilities and the cultivation of compassion and loving-kindness for self and others. Research has primarily focused on outcomes for the practitioners, however, little research has examined the social effects of practice, especially in individuals close to mediators – do they …
