bioRxiv Preprint Server
February 22, 2026
Sergio Elías Hernández, Katya Rubia, Oscar Perez-Diaz et al.
preprint
The perception of God can be as a transcendent entity that is infinite and outside of human beings, typical for religious traditions, or as an immanent entity that is outside and inside of human beings, typical for mystical traditions. These different perceptions of God may be associated with different neural correlates depending on which God we pray to. To elucidate the neural correlates of...
Scientific Reports
April 25, 2025
Oscar Perez-Diaz, Sergio Elías Hernández, Lucy L Brown et al.
1 citation
Neuroscience research has associated meditation practice with effects on cognitive, motivational and emotional processes. These processes are mediated by several brain circuits, including the striatum and its associated cortical connections. The aim of this study was to focus on the striatum and test how its functional connectivity is affected in long-term practitioners of Sahaja Yoga...
PLoS One
March 28, 2024
Oscar Perez-Diaz, Daylín Góngora, José Luis González–Mora et al.
11 citations
OBJECTIVE: To study the white matter connections between anterior cingulate cortex, anterior insula and amygdala as key regions of the frontal-limbic network that have been related to meditation. DESIGN: Twenty experienced practitioners of Sahaja Yoga Meditation and twenty nonmeditators matched on age, gender and education level, were scanned using Diffusion Weighted Imaging, using a 3T...
BMC Neuroscience
November 13, 2023
Oscar Perez-Diaz, Alfonso Barrós‐loscertales, Uffe Schjoedt et al.
Sahaja Yoga Meditation draws on many religious traditions and uses a variety of techniques including Christian prayer to reach a state known as thoughtless awareness, or mental silence. While there are many studies on the neural correlates of meditation, few studies have focused on the neural correlates of praying. Thus, the aim of our research was to study the neural activity associated with...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
March 16, 2021
Alfonso Barrós‐loscertales, Sergio Hernández, Yaqiong Xiao et al.
25 citations
Neuroscience research has shown that meditation practices have effects on brain structure and function. However, few studies have combined information on the effects on structure and function in the same sample. Long-term daily meditation practice produces repeated activity of specific brain networks over years of practice, which may induce lasting structural and functional connectivity (FC)...
PLoS One
December 28, 2020
Sergio Hernández, Roberto Dorta‐Guerra, José Suero et al.
23 citations
OBJECTIVES: Our previous study showed that long-term practitioners of Sahaja Yoga Meditation (SYM) had around 7% larger grey matter volume (GMV) in the whole brain compared with healthy controls; however, when testing individual regions, only 5 small brain areas were statistically different between groups. Under the hypothesis that those results were statistically conservative, with the same...
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory)
July 30, 2020
Sergio Hernández, Roberto Dorta‐Guerra, José Suero et al.
2 citations
preprint
Abstract Objectives Our previous study showed that long-term practitioners of Sahaja Yoga Meditation (SYM) had around 7% larger grey matter volume (GMV) in the whole brain compared with healthy controls; however, when testing individual regions, only 5 small brain areas were statistically different between groups. Under the hypothesis that those results were statistically conservative, with the...
Scientific Reports
July 29, 2019
Chuan-Chih Yang, Alfonso Barrós‐loscertales, Meng Li et al.
Increasing neuroimaging evidence suggests that mindfulness meditation expertise is related to different functional and structural configurations of the default mode network (DMN), the salience network (SN) and the executive network at rest. However, longitudinal studies observing resting network plasticity effects in brains of novices who started to practice meditation are scarce and generally...
Neuroscience
February 10, 2018
Sergio Elías Hernández, Alfonso Barrós‐loscertales, Yaqiong Xiao et al.
Some meditation techniques teach the practitioner to achieve the state of mental silence. The aim of this study was to investigate brain regions that are associated with their volume and functional connectivity (FC) with the depth of mental silence in long-term practitioners of Sahaja Yoga Meditation. Twenty-three long-term practitioners of this meditation were scanned using Magnetic Resonance...
Neural Plasticity
2016
Chuan-Chih Yang, Alfonso Barrós‐loscertales, Daniel Pinazo et al.
284 citations
The topic of investigating how mindfulness meditation training can have antidepressant effects via plastic changes in both resting state and meditation state brain activity is important in the rapidly emerging field of neuroplasticity. In the present study, we used a longitudinal design investigating resting state fMRI both before and after 40 days of meditation training in 13 novices. After...