Some types of first-person narrations of mental processes that constitute phenomenological accounts and texts, such as internal monolog statements, epitomize the best expressions and representations of human consciousness available and therefore may be used to model phenomenological streams of consciousness. The type of autonomous monolog in which an author or narrator declares actual mental...
Over the years, the prevalence of auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) have been documented across the lifespan in varied contexts, and with a range of potential long-term outcomes. Initially the emphasis focused on whether AVHs conferred risk for psychosis. However, recent research has identified significant differences in the presentation and outcomes of AVH in patients compared to those in...
It has been argued that hallucinations which appear to involve shifts in egocentric perspective (e.g., the out-of-body experience, OBE) reflect specific biases in exocentric perspective-taking processes. Via a newly devised perspective-taking task, we examined whether such biases in perspective-taking were present in relation to specific dissociative anomalous body experiences (ABE) - namely...
In body ownership illusions participants feel that a mannequin or virtual body (VB) is their own. Earlier results suggest that body ownership over a body seen from behind in extra personal space is possible when the surrogate body is visually stroked and tapped on its back, while spatially and temporal synchronous tactile stimulation is applied to the participant's back. This result has been...
A multivariate autoregressive (MVAR) model with exogenous inputs (MVARX) is developed for describing the cortical interactions excited by direct electrical current stimulation of the cortex. Current stimulation is challenging to model because it excites neurons in multiple locations both near and distant to the stimulation site. The approach presented here models these effects using an...
Recent findings illustrate how changes in consciousness accommodated by neural correlates and plasticity of the brain advance a model of perceptual change as a function of meditative practice.During the mindbody response neural correlates of changing awareness illustrate how the autonomic nervous system shifts from a sympathetic dominant to a parasympathetic dominant state.Expansion of...
Enactive approaches foreground the role of interpersonal interaction in explanations of social understanding. This motivates, in combination with a recent interest in neuroscientific studies involving actual interactions, the question of how interactive processes relate to neural mechanisms involved in social understanding. We introduce the Interactive Brain Hypothesis (IBH) in order to help...
Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVH) or "voices" are a characteristic symptom of schizophrenia, but can also be observed in healthy individuals in the general population. As these non-psychotic individuals experience AVH in the absence of other psychiatric symptoms and medication-use they provide an excellent model to study AVH in isolation. Indeed a number of studies used this approach and...
From its discovery in the early 1990s until this day, the error-related negativity (ERN) remains the most widely investigated electrophysiological index of cortical error processing. When researchers began addressing the electrophysiology of subjective error awareness more than a decade ago, the role of the ERN, alongside the subsequently occurring error positivity (Pe), was an obvious locus of...
Several cortical regions are reported to vary in meditation practitioners. However, prior analyses have focused primarily on examining gray matter or cortical thickness. Thus, additional effects with respect to other cortical features might have remained undetected. Gyrification (the pattern and degree of cortical folding) is an important cerebral characteristic related to the geometry of the...
Mindfulness-as a state, trait, process, type of meditation, and intervention has proven to be beneficial across a diverse group of psychological disorders as well as for general stress reduction. Yet, there remains a lack of clarity in the operationalization of this construct, and underlying mechanisms. Here, we provide an integrative theoretical framework and systems-based neurobiological...
The default mode network (DMN) of the brain consists of areas that are typically more active during rest than during active task performance. Recently however, this network has been shown to be activated by certain types of tasks. Social cognition, particularly higher-order tasks such as attributing mental states to others, has been suggested to activate a network of areas at least partly...
In 1593, Neapolitan polymath Giambattista della Porta publicly \nlamented that he was unable to improve his impressive productivity \n(he had published in areas as diverse as cryptography, \nhydraulics, pharmacology, optics, and classic fiction). Della \nPorta was trying to read two books simultaneously by placing \nboth volumes side-by-side, and using each eye independently. To \nhis great...
The amygdala has been repeatedly implicated in emotional processing of both positive and negative-valence stimuli. Previous studies suggest that the amygdala response to emotional stimuli is lower when the subject is in a meditative state of mindful-attention, both in beginner meditators after an 8-week meditation intervention and in expert meditators. However, the longitudinal effects of...
This study sought to examine the effect of meditation experience on brain networks underlying cognitive actions employed during contemplative practice. In a previous study, we proposed a basic model of naturalistic cognitive fluctuations that occur during the practice of focused attention meditation. This model specifies four intervals in a cognitive cycle: mind wandering (MW), awareness of MW,...
Aesthetic responses to visual art comprise multiple types of experiences, from sensation and perception to emotion and self-reflection. Moreover, aesthetic experience is highly individual, with observers varying significantly in their responses to the same artwork. Combining fMRI and behavioral analysis of individual differences in aesthetic response, we identify two distinct patterns of neural...
Mindfulness-based meditation practices involve various attentional skills, including the ability to sustain and focus ones attention. During a simple mindful breathing practice, sustained attention is required to maintain focus on the breath while cognitive control is required to detect mind wandering. We thus hypothesized that regular, brief mindfulness training would result in improvements in...
The capacity to focus one's attention for an extended period of time can be increased through training in contemplative practices. However, the cognitive processes engaged during meditation that support trait changes in cognition are not well characterized. We conducted a longitudinal wait-list controlled study of intensive meditation training. Retreat participants practiced focused attention...
Science exists to refute dogmas; nevertheless, dogmas may be introduced when undemonstrated scientific axioms lead us to reject facts incompatible with them. Several studies have proposed psychobiological interpretations of near-death experiences (NDEs), claiming that NDEs are a mere byproduct of brain functions gone awry; however, relevant facts incompatible with the ruling physicalist and...
While mindfulness-based interventions have received widespread application in both clinical and non-clinical populations, the mechanism by which mindfulness meditation improves well-being remains elusive. One possibility is that mindfulness training alters the processing of emotional information, similar to prevailing cognitive models of depression and anxiety. The aim of this study was to...
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In distinction, higher power in the gamma band has been found in advanced Buddhist meditators across differing meditation practices. We used exact Low Resolution Electromagnetic Tomography (eLORETA) to compare experienced (mean 4 years’ experience) and advanced (mean 30 years’ experience) Australian meditators from the Satyananda Yoga tradition on two meditation practices and a mental...
Auditory verbal hallucinations (AVHs) are experienced by individuals with various clinical diagnoses, such as psychosis, but also a significant minority of healthy individuals from the general population may experience them. Although much research has been carried out the past few decades, the mechanisms and factors underlying the emergence of AVHs is still poorly understood. One way of...
There is converging evidence that electrophysiological responses over posterior cortical regions in the 200-300 ms range distinguish between physically identical stimuli that reach consciousness or remain unseen. Here, we attempt at determining the sources of this awareness-related activity using magneto-encephalographic (MEG). Fourteen subjects were presented with faint colored gratings at...
A framework is described for understanding the schizophrenic syndrome at the brain systems level. It is hypothesized that over-activation of dynamic gesture and social perceptual processes in the temporal-parietal occipital junction (TPJ), posterior superior temporal sulcus (PSTS) and surrounding regions produce the syndrome (including positive and negative symptoms, their prevalence, prodromal...