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Catherine E. Kerr

11 papers in the library · 4,863 citations · publishing 2005-2020

Papers

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Distinct Insular Functional Connectivity Changes Related to Mood and Fatigue Improvements in Major Depressive Disorder Following Tai Chi Training: A Pilot Study

Frontiers in Integrative Neuroscience May 28, 2020 Anna Xu, Chloe S. Zimmerman, Sara W. Lazar et al.

Objective: Tai chi (TC), a contemplative practice combining slow movements and deep breathing, has been shown to be clinically effective in alleviating depressive symptoms. Feelings of fatigue or low vitality often accompany major depressive disorder (MDD) though they are commonly overlooked and not well understood neurologically. By using resting state functional connectivity (rs-FC) using the...

Moving beyond mindfulness: Defining equanimity as an outcome measure in meditation and contemplative research

October 3, 2019 Gaelle Desbordes, Tim Gard, Elizabeth A Hoge et al. 6 citations

In light of a growing interest in contemplative practices such as meditation, the emerging field of contemplative science has been challenged to describe and objectively measure how these practices affect health and well-being. While “mindfulness” itself has been proposed as a measurable outcome of contemplative practices, this concept encompasses multiple components, some of which, as we...

Mind the Hype: A Critical Evaluation and Prescriptive Agenda for Research on Mindfulness and Meditation

Perspectives on Psychological Science October 10, 2017 Nicholas T. van Dam, Marieke K. van Vugt, David R. Vago et al. 1,500 citations

During the past two decades, mindfulness meditation has gone from being a fringe topic of scientific investigation to being an occasional replacement for psychotherapy, tool of corporate well-being, widely implemented educational practice, and "key to building more resilient soldiers." Yet the mindfulness movement and empirical evidence supporting it have not gone without criticism....

Interoception, contemplative practice, and health

Frontiers in Psychology June 9, 2015 Norman A. S. Farb, Jennifer Daubenmier, Cynthia Price et al. 630 citations

Interoception can be broadly defined as the sense of signals originating within the body. As such, interoception is critical for our sense of embodiment, motivation, and well-being. And yet, despite its importance, interoception remains poorly understood within modern science. This paper reviews interdisciplinary perspectives on interoception, with the goal of presenting a unified perspective...

Meditation's impact on default mode network and hippocampus in mild cognitive impairment: a pilot study.

Neuroscience Letters November 27, 2013 Rebecca Erwin Wells, Gloria Y Yeh, Catherine E. Kerr et al.

Those with high baseline stress levels are more likely to develop mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's Disease (AD). While meditation may reduce stress and alter the hippocampus and default mode network (DMN), little is known about its impact in these populations. Our objective was to conduct a "proof of concept" trial to determine whether Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR)...

Exploring the subjective experience of the “rubber hand” illusion

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience June 14, 2013 Camila Valenzuela-Moguillansky, J. K. O 'Regan, C. Petitmengin et al.

Despite the fact that the rubber hand illusion (RHI) is an experimental paradigm that has been widely used in the last 14 years to investigate different aspects of the sense of bodily self, very few studies have sought to investigate the subjective nature of the experience that the RHI evokes. The present study investigates the phenomenology of the RHI through a specific elicitation method....

Mindfulness starts with the body: somatosensory attention and top-down modulation of cortical alpha rhythms in mindfulness meditation

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 2013 Catherine E. Kerr, Matthew D. Sacchet, Sara W. Lazar et al. 329 citations

Using a common set of mindfulness exercises, mindfulness based stress reduction (MBSR) and mindfulness based cognitive therapy (MBCT) have been shown to reduce distress in chronic pain and decrease risk of depression relapse. These standardized mindfulness (ST-Mindfulness) practices predominantly require attending to breath and body sensations. Here, we offer a novel view of ST-Mindfulness's...

Effortless awareness: using real time neurofeedback to investigate correlates of posterior cingulate cortex activity in meditators' self-report

Frontiers in Human Neuroscience 2013 Kathleen A. Garrison, Juan F. Santoyo, Jake H. Davis et al. 226 citations

Neurophenomenological studies seek to utilize first-person self-report to elucidate cognitive processes related to physiological data. Grounded theory offers an approach to the qualitative analysis of self-report, whereby theoretical constructs are derived from empirical data. Here we used grounded theory methodology (GTM) to assess how the first-person experience of meditation relates to...

Body Awareness: a phenomenological inquiry into the common ground of mind-body therapies

Philosophy Ethics and Humanities in Medicine 2011 Wolf Mehling, Judith Wrubel, Jennifer Daubenmier et al. 465 citations

Enhancing body awareness has been described as a key element or a mechanism of action for therapeutic approaches often categorized as mind-body approaches, such as yoga, TaiChi, Body-Oriented Psychotherapy, Body Awareness Therapy, mindfulness based therapies/meditation, Feldenkrais, Alexander Method, Breath Therapy and others with reported benefits for a variety of health conditions. To better...

Cortical dynamics as a therapeutic mechanism for touch healing.

Journal of alternative and complementary medicine (New York, N.Y.) 2007 Catherine E. Kerr, Rachel H. Wasserman, Christopher I. Moore

Touch Healing (TH) therapies, defined here as treatments whose primary route of administration is tactile contact and/or active guiding of somatic attention, are ubiquitous across cultures. Despite increasing integration of TH into mainstream medicine through therapies such as Reiki, Therapeutic Touch,(TM) and somatically focused meditation practices such as Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction,...

Meditation experience is associated with increased cortical thickness

Neuroreport November 7, 2005 Sara W. Lazar, Catherine E. Kerr, Rachel H. Wasserman et al. 1,707 citations

Previous research indicates that long-term meditation practice is associated with altered resting electroencephalogram patterns, suggestive of long lasting changes in brain activity. We hypothesized that meditation practice might also be associated with changes in the brain's physical structure. Magnetic resonance imaging was used to assess cortical thickness in 20 participants with extensive...