Psychoradiology
2026
Menglu Chen, P J Alvarez Duran, Tatia M C Lee
Suggestibility refers to an individual's tendency to accept, believe, and act on information or ideas presented by others with limited critical evaluation or independent judgment. It reflects the extent to which a person's behaviors, choices, thoughts, and memories can be shaped by external prompts, leading questions, or social influences. Despite its relevance to human behaviors, its...
Consciousness and Cognition
November 1, 2023
Charlene L M Lam, Tom J Barry, Jenny Yiend et al.
1 citation
Extinction learning is regarded as a core mechanism underlying exposure therapy. The extent to which learned threats can be extinguished without conscious awareness is a controversial and on-going debate. We investigated whether implicit vs. explicit exposure to a threatened stimulus can modulate defence responses measured using pupillometry. Healthy participants underwent a threat conditioning...
Social Neuroscience
June 1, 2018
Mei-Kei Leung, Way K W Lau, Chetwyn C H Chan et al.
Recent evidence suggests that the effects of meditation practice on affective processing and resilience have the potential to induce neuroplastic changes within the amygdala. Notably, literature speculates that meditation training may reduce amygdala activity during negative affective processing. Nonetheless, studies have thus far not verified this speculation. In this longitudinal study,...
Brain and Neuroscience Advances
2018
Bolton K H Chau, Kati Keuper, Mandy M Lo et al.
Neuroplastic underpinnings of meditation-induced changes in affective processing are largely unclear. We included healthy older participants in an active-controlled experiment. They were involved a meditation training or a control relaxation training of eight weeks. Associations between behavioral and neural morphometric changes induced by the training were examined. The meditation group...
Mindfulness
2018
Way K W Lau, Mei-Kei Leung, Yun Kwok Wing et al.
The mechanisms of mindfulness-improved sleep quality are not extensively studied. Recently, attention monitoring/awareness and acceptance in mindfulness have been proposed to be the underlying mechanisms that tackle distress and related disorders. The current study tested if acceptance moderated the relationship of awareness with psychological distress and sleep quality, and verified that...
Scientific Reports
April 4, 2017
Francesca A Cotier, Ruibin Zhang, Tatia M C Lee
The beneficial effects of meditation on preserving age-related changes in cognitive functioning are well established. Yet, the neural underpinnings of these positive effects have not been fully unveiled. This study employed a prospective longitudinal design, and graph-based analysis, to study how an eight-week meditation training vs. relaxation training shaped network configuration at global,...
EBioMedicine
June 16, 2016
Robin Shao, Kati Keuper, Xiujuan Geng et al.
38 citations
Evidence indicates meditation facilitates affective regulation and reduces negative affect. It also influences resting-state functional connectivity between affective networks and the posterior cingulate (PCC)/precuneus, regions critically implicated in self-referential processing. However, no longitudinal study employing active control group has examined the effect of meditation training on...
Scientific Reports
November 18, 2015
Way K W Lau, Mei-Kei Leung, Chetwyn C H Chan et al.
Cortisol homeostasis is important for cognitive and affective functions that depend on cortisol-sensitive brain regions including the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex. Recent studies have shown that training induces changes in the brain. We report the findings of a longitudinal study that verified the moderation effect of experience-induced changes in awareness on the neural-cortisol...
Neuroscience Letters
March 17, 2015
Mei-Kei Leung, Chetwyn C H Chan, Jing Yin et al.
Previous studies have demonstrated that meditation is associated with neuroplastic changes in the brain regions including amygdala, anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), and temporal-parietal junction. Extended from these previous works, this study examined the functional connectivity of the amygdala in meditation experts during affective processing and observed that these experts had significantly...
Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine
2015
Nerissa S P Ho, Delin Sun, Kin-Hung Ting et al.
This study explored the relationship of mindfulness trait with the early and late stages of affective processing, by examining the two corresponding ERP components, P2 and LPP, collected from twenty-two male Chinese participants with a wide range of meditation experiences. Multiple regression analyses was performed on the mindfulness scores, as measured by CAMS-R, with the subjective affective...
Evidence-based Complementary and Alternative Medicine
2014
Natalie T Y Leung, Mandy M Lo, Tatia M C Lee
Affective dysregulation is at the root of many psychopathologies, including stress induced disorders, anxiety disorders, and depression. The root of these disorders appears to be an attenuated, top-down cognitive control from the prefrontal cortices over the maladaptive subcortical emotional processing. A form of mental training, long-term meditation practice can trigger meditation-specific...
PLoS One
August 15, 2012
Tatia M C Lee, Mei-Kei Leung, Wai-Kai Hou et al.
163 citations
This study examined the dissociable neural effects of ānāpānasati (focused-attention meditation, FAM) and mettā (loving-kindness meditation, LKM) on BOLD signals during cognitive (continuous performance test, CPT) and affective (emotion-processing task, EPT, in which participants viewed affective pictures) processing. Twenty-two male Chinese expert meditators (11 FAM experts, 11 LKM experts)...
Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience
July 18, 2012
Mei-Kei Leung, Chetwyn C H Chan, Jing Yin et al.
145 citations
Previous voxel-based morphometry (VBM) studies have revealed that meditation is associated with structural brain changes in regions underlying cognitive processes that are required for attention or mindfulness during meditation. This VBM study examined brain changes related to the practice of an emotion-oriented meditation: loving-kindness meditation (LKM). A 3 T magnetic resonance imaging...