Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
June 9, 2026
Grace Qiyuan Miao, Ian J Lieberman, Ashley Binnquist et al.
Little is known about the neurocognitive underpinnings of forming social connections. In this study, we tested whether default mode network (DMN) inter-brain synchrony (which prior work has linked to interpersonal alignment, or 'seeing eye-to-eye') predicts feelings of connection during conversations. Seventy pairs of strangers engaged in shallow or deep conversations while brain activity was...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
May 15, 2025
Matthew D. Lieberman
10 citations
Human subjectivity, our first-person conscious experience of the world, is among the deepest scientific mysteries. This opinion article lays out an approach to examining the neural correlates of subjectivity as it unfolds over time. Subjective experience is inherently idiosyncratic, arising from effortless interpretations that feel like perceived facts (p-interpretations), and integrative, with...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
September 17, 2018
Yoona Kang, Nicole Cooper, Prateekshit Pandey et al.
Significance People often feel defensive when reminded of their unhealthy behavior. We propose that self-transcendence, encouraged by focusing on others’ well-being, can lessen subsequent focus on threatened aspects of the self and increase receptivity. We show that activating self-transcendent mindsets, either by reflecting on self-transcendent values or making positive wishes for others,...
March 22, 2012
Matthew D. Lieberman
Could an individual act and speak just like other individuals without having any internal conscious experience? Belief in the possibility of so-called philosophical zombies serves as a litmus test for whether someone believes in some form of mind-body dualism or materialism. This chapter focuses on a related hypothesis that is emerging within psychology referred to as the psychological zombie...
Emotion
2010
Baldwin M. Way, J. David Creswell, Naomi I. Eisenberger et al.
212 citations
To better understand the relationship between mindfulness and depression, we studied normal young adults (n = 27) who completed measures of dispositional mindfulness and depressive symptomatology, which were then correlated with (a) rest: resting neural activity during passive viewing of a fixation cross, relative to a simple goal-directed task (shape-matching); and (b) reactivity: neural...
Psychosomatic Medicine
July 1, 2007
J. David Creswell, Baldwin M. Way, Naomi I. Eisenberger et al.
840 citations
OBJECTIVE: Mindfulness is a process whereby one is aware and receptive to present moment experiences. Although mindfulness-enhancing interventions reduce pathological mental and physical health symptoms across a wide variety of conditions and diseases, the mechanisms underlying these effects remain unknown. Converging evidence from the mindfulness and neuroscience literature suggests that...