Neuroimage
June 1, 2016
Lorenzo Magazzini, Philipp Ruhnau, Nathan Weisz
The partial awareness hypothesis is a theoretical proposal that recently provided a reconciling solution to graded and dichotomous accounts of consciousness. It suggests that we can become conscious of distinct properties of an object independently, ranging from low-level features to complex forms of representation. We investigated this hypothesis using classic visual word masking adapted to a...
Neuroimage
April 30, 2016
Melissa Ellamil, Kieran C. R. Fox, Matthew L. Dixon et al.
150 citations
Thoughts arise spontaneously in our minds with remarkable frequency, but tracking the brain systems associated with the early inception of a thought has proved challenging. Here we addressed this issue by taking advantage of the heightened introspective ability of experienced mindfulness practitioners to observe the onset of their spontaneously arising thoughts. We found subtle differences in...
Neuroimage
March 19, 2016
Kwun Kei Ng, June C. Lo, Joseph K.W. Lim et al.
237 citations
The effects of age on functional connectivity (FC) of intrinsic connectivity networks (ICNs) have largely been derived from cross-sectional studies. Far less is known about longitudinal changes in FC and how they relate to ageing-related cognitive decline. We evaluated intra- and inter-network FC in 78 healthy older adults two or three times over a period of 4years. Using linear mixed modeling...
Neuroimage
February 26, 2016
R. Lutterveld, Sean Dae Houlihan, Prasanta Pal et al.
Background: Meditation is increasingly showing beneficial effects for psychiatric disorders. However, learning to meditate is not straightforward as there are no easily discernible outward signs of performance and thus no direct feedback is possible. As meditation has been found to correlate with posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) activity, we tested whether source‐space EEG neurofeedback from...
Neuroimage
February 15, 2016
Christopher G. Davey, Jesus Pujol, Ben J. Harrison
576 citations
The brain's default mode network (DMN) has become closely associated with self-referential mental activity, particularly in the resting-state. While the DMN is important for such processes, it has functions other than self-reference, and self-referential processes are supported by regions outside of the DMN. In our study of 88 participants, we examined self-referential and resting-state...
Neuroimage
2016
J Lutz, Annette B Brühl, N Doerig et al.
Mental health benefits of mindfulness techniques are thought to involve changes in self-processing, such as decreased attachment to the self, higher self-compassion and lower emotional reactivity to inner experience. However, self-related emotion processing in regular mindfulness practitioners is not extensively studied. In the current work we investigate differential neural and behavioral...
Neuroimage
September 1, 2015
Ju Lynn Ong, Danyang Kong, Tiffany T Y Chia et al.
Spontaneous eye-closures that herald sleep onset become more frequent when we are sleep deprived. Although these are typically associated with decreased responsiveness to external stimuli, it is less clear what occurs in the brain at these transitions to drowsiness and light sleep. To investigate this, task-free fMRI of sleep-deprived participants was acquired. BOLD activity associated with...
Neuroimage
July 26, 2015
Deniz Vatansever, D.K. Menon, Anne E. Manktelow et al.
157 citations
Initially described as task-induced deactivations during goal-directed paradigms of high attentional load, the unresolved functionality of default mode regions has long been assumed to interfere with task performance. However, recent evidence suggests a potential default mode network involvement in fulfilling cognitive demands. We tested this hypothesis in a finger opposition paradigm with task...
Neuroimage
July 1, 2015
Manish Saggar, Anthony P Zanesco, Brandon G King et al.
31 citations
Meditation training has been shown to enhance attention and improve emotion regulation. However, the brain processes associated with such training are poorly understood and a computational modeling framework is lacking. Modeling approaches that can realistically simulate neurophysiological data while conforming to basic anatomical and physiological constraints can provide a unique opportunity...
Neuroimage
May 15, 2015
Pigorini Andrea, Sarasso Simone, Proserpio Paola et al.
During non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep (stage N3), when consciousness fades, cortico-cortical interactions are impaired while neurons are still active and reactive. Why is this? We compared cortico-cortical evoked-potentials recorded during wakefulness and NREM by means of time-frequency analysis and phase-locking measures in 8 epileptic patients undergoing intra-cerebral...
Neuroimage
February 25, 2015
Kieran C. R. Fox, R. Nathan Spreng, Melissa Ellamil et al.
717 citations
The neural basis and cognitive functions of various spontaneous thought processes, particularly mind-wandering, are increasingly being investigated. Although strong links have been drawn between the occurrence of spontaneous thought processes and activation in brain regions comprising the default mode network (DMN), spontaneous thought also appears to recruit other, non-DMN regions just as...
Neuroimage
January 3, 2015
What it means to be Zen: marked modulations of local and interareal synchronization during open monitoring meditation.
Neuroimage
October 15, 2014
Kristian Sandberg, Gareth Robert Barnes, Bahador Bahrami et al.
During binocular rivalry, visual perception alternates spontaneously between two different monocular images. Such perceptual reversals are slowed or halted if stimuli are presented intermittently with inter-stimulus intervals larger than ~400 ms--a phenomenon called stabilization. Often, the neural correlates of reversal and stabilization are studied separately, and both phenomena in turn are...
Neuroimage
June 25, 2014
Aaron Kucyi, Karen D. Davis
381 citations
Humans spend much of their time engaged in stimulus-independent thoughts, colloquially known as "daydreaming" or "mind-wandering." A fundamental question concerns how awake, spontaneous brain activity represents the ongoing cognition of daydreaming versus unconscious processes characterized as "intrinsic." Since daydreaming involves brief cognitive events that spontaneously fluctuate, we tested...
Neuroimage
May 24, 2014
Nia Goulden, Aygul Khusnulina, Nicholas J. Davis et al.
828 citations
With the advent of new analysis methods in neuroimaging that involve independent component analysis (ICA) and dynamic causal modelling (DCM), investigations have focused on measuring both the activity and connectivity of specific brain networks. In this study we combined DCM with spatial ICA to investigate network switching in the brain. Using time courses determined by ICA in our dynamic...
Neuroimage
December 1, 2013
J R King, F Faugeras, A Gramfort et al.
Detecting residual consciousness in unresponsive patients is a major clinical concern and a challenge for theoretical neuroscience. To tackle this issue, we recently designed a paradigm that dissociates two electro-encephalographic (EEG) responses to auditory novelty. Whereas a local change in pitch automatically elicits a mismatch negativity (MMN), a change in global sound sequence leads to a...
Neuroimage
November 1, 2013
K. Garrison, Dustin Scheinost, Patrick D. Worhunsky et al.
Recent advances in brain imaging have improved the measure of neural processes related to perceptual, cognitive and affective functions, yet the relation between brain activity and subjective experience remains poorly characterized. In part, it is a challenge to obtain reliable accounts of participant's experience in such studies. Here we addressed this limitation by utilizing experienced...
Neuroimage
October 4, 2013
Andreas Horn, Dirk Ostwald, Marco Reisert et al.
375 citations
An emerging field of human brain imaging deals with the characterization of the connectome, a comprehensive global description of structural and functional connectivity within the human brain. However, the question of how functional and structural connectivity are related has not been fully answered yet. Here, we used different methods to estimate the connectivity between each voxel of the...
Neuroimage
April 1, 2013
Jennifer S Mascaro, James K. Rilling, Lobsang Tenzin Negi et al.
While a variety of meditation techniques are increasingly employed as health interventions, the fact that meditation requires a significant commitment of time and effort may limit its potential widespread utility. In the current study, we ask whether baseline subjective reports or brain activity in response to a "Pain for Self and Others" paradigm predicts subsequent engagement in mindfulness...
Neuroimage
2013
Antoine Lutz, Daniel R McFarlin, David M Perlman et al.
Experientially opening oneself to pain rather than avoiding it is said to reduce the mind's tendency toward avoidance or anxiety which can further exacerbate the experience of pain. This is a central feature of mindfulness-based therapies. Little is known about the neural mechanisms of mindfulness on pain. During a meditation practice similar to mindfulness, functional magnetic resonance...
Neuroimage
December 20, 2012
Jonathan Smallwood, Christine M. Tipper, Kevin Brown et al.
145 citations
Cognition that is not based on perception can lead to at least two different outcomes. In some situations, cognition that is independent of perception can allow actions to be selected other than those prescribed by immediate perceptual input. In others, cognition can be independent of perception and unrelated to the current behavioral goal allowing thoughts to develop that are largely...
Neuroimage
September 18, 2012
Dimitrios Kapogiannis, David A. Reiter, Auriel A. Willette et al.
212 citations
The balance between excitatory glutamatergic projection neurons and inhibitory GABAergic interneurons determines the function of cortical microcircuits. How these neurotransmitters relate to the functional status of an entire macro-scale network remains unknown. The posteromedial cortex (PMC) is the default mode network (DMN) node with the greatest functional connectivity; therefore, we...
Neuroimage
February 21, 2012
Bridging the hemispheres in meditation: thicker callosal regions and enhanced fractional anisotropy (FA) in long-term practitioners.
Neuroimage
February 1, 2012
Sebastien Marti, Mariano Sigman, Stanislas Dehaene
Doing two things at once is difficult. When two tasks have to be performed within a short interval, the second is sharply delayed, an effect called the Psychological Refractory Period (PRP). Similarly, when two successive visual targets are briefly flashed, people may fail to detect the second target (Attentional Blink or AB). Although AB and PRP are typically studied in very different...
Neuroimage
January 2, 2012
Wendy Hasenkamp, Christine D Wilson-Mendenhall, Erica Duncan et al.
Studies have suggested that the default mode network is active during mind wandering, which is often experienced intermittently during sustained attention tasks. Conversely, an anticorrelated task-positive network is thought to subserve various forms of attentional processing. Understanding how these two systems work together is central for understanding many forms of optimal and sub-optimal...