Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
September 11, 2015
Dav eClark, Frank eSchumann, Stewart H. Mostofsky
Bodily movement has long been employed as a foundation for cultivating mental skills such as attention, self-control or mindfulness, with recent studies documenting the positive impacts of mindful movement training, such as yoga and tai chi. A parallel mind-body connection has also been observed in many developmental disorders. We elaborate a spectrum of mindfulness by considering ADHD, in...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
August 25, 2015
Anselm Doll, Britta K. Hölzel, Christine C. Boucard et al.
174 citations
Mindfulness is attention to present moment experience without judgment. Mindfulness practice is associated with brain activity in areas overlapping with the default mode, salience, and central executive networks (DMN, SN, CEN). We hypothesized that intrinsic functional connectivity (iFC; i.e., synchronized ongoing activity) across these networks is associated with mindfulness scores. After 2...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
June 12, 2015
Andrew R. Gallimore
52 citations
The psychological state elicited by the classic psychedelics drugs, such as LSD and psilocybin, is one of the most fascinating and yet least understood states of consciousness. However, with the advent of modern functional neuroimaging techniques, the effect of these drugs on neural activity is now being revealed, although many of the varied phenomenological features of the psychedelic state...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2015
Tal Yatziv, Hilla Jacobson
3 citations
The paper focuses on the question of what the (visual) perceptual differences are between individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASD) and typically developing (TD) individuals. We argue against the view that autistic subjects have a deficiency in the most basic form of perceptual consciousness-namely, phenomenal consciousness. Instead, we maintain, the perceptual atypicality of individuals...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2015
Tim Gard, Maxime Taquet, Rohan Dixit et al.
There has been a growing interest in understanding how contemplative practices affect brain functional organization. However, most studies have restricted their exploration to predefined networks. Furthermore, scientific comparisons of different contemplative traditions are largely lacking. Here we explored differences in whole brain resting state functional connectivity between experienced...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2015
Peter Payne, Mardi A Crane-Godreau
Basic to all motile life is a differential approach/avoid response to perceived features of environment. The stages of response are initial reflexive noticing and orienting to the stimulus, preparation, and execution of response. Preparation involves a coordination of many aspects of the organism: muscle tone, posture, breathing, autonomic functions, motivational/emotional state, attentional...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
December 8, 2014
Lisa Scocchia, Matteo Valsecchi, Jochen Triesch
61 citations
The world as it appears to the viewer is the result of a complex process of inference performed by the brain. The validity of this apparently counter-intuitive assertion becomes evident whenever we face noisy, feeble or ambiguous visual stimulation: in these conditions, the state of the observer may play a decisive role in determining what is currently perceived. On this background, ambiguous...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
September 22, 2014
John eThomas, Graham eJamieson, Marc eCohen
Meditation proficiency is related to trait-like (learned) effects on brain function, developed over time. Previous studies show increases in EEG power in lower frequency bands (theta, alpha) in experienced meditators in both meditation states and baseline conditions. Higher gamma band power has been found in advanced Buddhist meditators, yet it is not known if this occurs in Yoga meditation...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
September 22, 2014
Francesca eFiori, Nicole eDavid, Salvatore Maria Aglioti
In the rod and frame test (RFT), participants are asked to set a tilted visual linear marker (i.e. a rod), embedded in a square, to the subjective vertical, irrespective of the surrounding frame. People not influenced by the frame tilt are defined as field-independent, while people biased in their rod verticality perception are field-dependent. Performing RFT requires the integration of...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
July 17, 2014
Marieke K. van Vugt
10 citations
There is a rising scientific interest in the neuroscience behind contemplative practices (see e.g., Vago and Silbersweig, 2012 for a review), including movement-based practices such as yoga and tai chi. Given that, it becomes important to ask how such contemplative practices differ from Western movement practices such as dance. In both dance training and contemplative movement, one learns to...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
July 3, 2014
Cassandra Gould van Praag, Tom Froese, Adam B. Barrett et al.
29 citations
Investigation of synesthesia phenomenology in adults is needed to constrain accounts of developmental trajectories of this trait. We report an extended phenomenological investigation of sequence-space synesthesia in a single case (AB). We used the Elicitation Interview (EI) method to facilitate repeated exploration of AB's synesthetic experience. During an EI the subject's attention is...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
June 19, 2014
Arianna Palmieri, Vincenzo Calvo, Johann Roland Kleinbub et al.
51 citations
The nature of near-death-experiences (NDEs) is largely unknown but recent evidence suggests the intriguing possibility that NDEs may refer to actually "perceived," and stored, experiences (although not necessarily in relation to the external physical world). We adopted an integrated approach involving a hypnosis-based clinical protocol to improve recall and decrease memory inaccuracy together...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
May 27, 2014
Leor Roseman, Robert Leech, Amanda Feilding et al.
293 citations
Perturbing a system and observing the consequences is a classic scientific strategy for understanding a phenomenon. Psychedelic drugs perturb consciousness in a marked and novel way and thus are powerful tools for studying its mechanisms. In the present analysis, we measured changes in resting-state functional connectivity (RSFC) between a standard template of different independent components...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
May 27, 2014
Vanessa Charland-Verville, Jean-Pierre Jourdan, Marie Thonnard et al.
116 citations
BACKGROUND: Near death experiences (NDEs) are increasingly being reported as a clearly identifiable physiological and psychological reality of clinical significance. However, the definition and causes of the phenomenon as well as the identification of NDE experiencers is still a matter of debate. To date, the most widely used standardized tool to identify and characterize NDEs in research is...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
May 23, 2014
Elizaveta Solomonova, Kieran C. R. Fox, Tore Nielsen
17 citations
GENERAL COMMENTARY article Front. Hum. Neurosci., 23 May 2014Sec. Cognitive Neuroscience Volume 8 - 2014 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2014.00317
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
May 22, 2014
Marieke Karlijn van Vugt, Peter eHitchcock, Ben eShahar et al.
Objectives: Converging research suggests that mindfulness training exerts its therapeutic effectson depression by reducing rumination. Theoretically, rumination is a multifaceted construct thataggregates multiple neurocognitive aspects of depression, including poor executive control,negative and overgeneral memory bias, and persistence or stickiness of negative mind states.Current measures of...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
May 22, 2014
B. Alexander eDiaz, Sophie eVan der Sluis, Sarah eMoens et al.
Resting-state neuroimaging is a dominant paradigm for studying brain function in health and disease. It is attractive for clinical research because of its simplicity for patients, straightforward standardization, and sensitivity to brain disorders. Importantly, non-sensory experiences like mind wandering may arise from ongoing brain activity. However, little is known about the link between...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
May 22, 2014
Laura eSchmalzl, Mardi A Crane-Godreau, Peter ePayne
Over the past decades, cognitive neuroscience has witnessed a shift from predominantly disembodied and computational views of the mind, to more embodied and situated views of the mind. These postulate that mental functions cannot be fully understood without reference to the physical body and the environment in which they are experienced. Within the field of contemplative science, the directing...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
May 22, 2014
Bruno G Bara, Angela Ciaramidaro, Henrik Walter et al.
In this paper we show how we empirically tested one of the most relevant topics in philosophy of mind through a series of fMRI experiments: the classification of different types of intention. To this aim, firstly we trace a theoretical distinction among private, prospective and communicative intentions. Second, we propose a set of predictions concerning the recognition of these three types of...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2014
Robin Carhart-Harris, Robert Leech, Peter J. Hellyer et al.
1,289 citations
Entropy is a dimensionless quantity that is used for measuring uncertainty about the state of a system but it can also imply physical qualities, where high entropy is synonymous with high disorder. Entropy is applied here in the context of states of consciousness and their associated neurodynamics, with a particular focus on the psychedelic state. The psychedelic state is considered an exemplar...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2014
Wanqing Li, Xiaoqin Mai, Chao Liu
469 citations
The Default Mode Network (DMN) has been found to be involved in various domains of cognitive and social processing. The present article will review brain connectivity results related to the DMN in the fields of social understanding of others: emotion perception, empathy, theory of mind, and morality. Most of the reviewed studies focused on healthy subjects with no neurological and psychiatric...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2014
Omar Singleton, Britta K. Hölzel, Mark Vangel et al.
116 citations
Individuals can improve their levels of psychological well-being (PWB) through utilization of psychological interventions, including the practice of mindfulness meditation, which is defined as the non-judgmental awareness of experiences in the present moment. We recently reported that an 8-week-mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) course lead to increases in gray matter concentration in...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2014
Daniel D. Hutto, Michael D Kirchhoff, Erik Myin
94 citations
Radical enactive and embodied approaches to cognitive science oppose the received view in the sciences of the mind in denying that cognition fundamentally involves contentful mental representation. This paper argues that the fate of representationalism in cognitive science matters significantly to how best to understand the extent of cognition. It seeks to establish that any move away from...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2014
Andra M. Smith, Claude Messier
48 citations
The present single-case study examined functional brain imaging patterns in a participant that reported being able, at will, to produce somatosensory sensations that are experienced as her body moving outside the boundaries of her physical body all the while remaining aware of her unmoving physical body. We found that the brain functional changes associated with the reported extra-corporeal...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2014
Bruce Greyson, Nathan B. Fountain, Lori L. Derr et al.
35 citations
Alterations of consciousness are critical factors in the diagnosis of epileptic seizures. With these alterations in consciousness, some persons report sensations of separating from the physical body, experiences that may in rare cases resemble spontaneous out-of-body experiences. This study was designed to identify and characterize these out-of-body-like subjective experiences associated with...