Neuroreport
December 5, 2018
Diego B G Rodrigues, Shirley S Lacerda, Joana B Balardin et al.
Among several cognitive advantages, meditation is thought to enhance practitioners' capacity for sustained attention. In the present study, we explored this question by testing meditation practitioners (meditators) and nonpractitioners (nonmeditators) on a task that requires sustained attention, the Stroop Word-Color Task (SWCT), while using functional MRI. Participants were all right-handed...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
June 11, 2018
Elisa H. Kozasa, Joana B Balardin, João R. Sato et al.
Meditation as a cognitive enhancement technique is of growing interest in the field of health and research on brain function. The Stroop Word-Color Task (SWCT) has been adapted for neuroimaging studies as an interesting paradigm for the understanding of cognitive control mechanisms. Performance in the SWCT requires both attention and impulse control, which is trained in meditation practices. We...
PLoS One
July 3, 2012
João R. Sato, Elisa H. Kozasa, Tamara A Russell et al.
Multivariate pattern recognition approaches have become a prominent tool in neuroimaging data analysis. These methods enable the classification of groups of participants (e.g. controls and patients) on the basis of subtly different patterns across the whole brain. This study demonstrates that these methods can be used, in combination with automated morphometric analysis of structural MRI, to...
Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences
June 1, 2008
Elisa H. Kozasa, João Radvany, M. Barreiros et al.
FOR MANY CENTURIES, Asian philosophers have affirmed that there are different states of awareness to be developed through meditation.1 Meditation results in changes in cognition, sensory perception, affect, hormones, and autonomic activity. Until today, there have been very few imaging studies of the neural correlates of meditation. Most of them study the act of meditation by experienced...