Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2014
Serge Stoléru
24 citations
One of the essential tasks of neuropsychoanalysis is to investigate the neural correlates of sexual drives. Here, we consider the four defining characteristics of sexual drives as delineated by Freud: their pressure, aim, object, and source. We systematically examine the relations between these characteristics and the four-component neurophenomenological model that we have proposed based on...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2014
Dobromir G Dotov
23 citations
Radical embodied cognitive neuroscience (RECN) will probably rely on dynamical systems theory (DST) and complex systems theory for methods and formalism. Yet, there have been plenty of non-radical neurodynamicists out there for quite some time. How much of their work fits with radical embodied cognitive science, what do they need RECN for, and what are the inconsistencies between RECN and...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2014
Laura Marzetti, Claudia Di Lanzo, Filippo Zappasodi et al.
According to several conceptualizations of meditation, the interplay between brain systems associated to self-related processing, attention and executive control is crucial for meditative states and related traits. We used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to investigate such interplay in a highly selected group of "virtuoso" meditators (Theravada Buddhist monks), with long-term training in the two...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2014
Tim Gard, Jessica J Noggle, Crystal L Park et al.
Research suggesting the beneficial effects of yoga on myriad aspects of psychological health has proliferated in recent years, yet there is currently no overarching framework by which to understand yoga's potential beneficial effects. Here we provide a theoretical framework and systems-based network model of yoga that focuses on integration of top-down and bottom-up forms of self-regulation. We...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2014
Jennifer Windt, Dominic L Harkness, Bigna Lenggenhager
The contrast between self- and other-produced tickles, as a special case of sensory attenuation for self-produced actions, has long been a target of empirical research. While in standard wake states it is nearly impossible to tickle oneself, there are interesting exceptions. Notably, participants awakened from REM (rapid eye movement-) sleep dreams are able to tickle themselves. So far,...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2014
Geraint A Wiggins, Joydeep Bhattacharya
Creativity is the hallmark of human cognition and is behind every innovation, scientific discovery, piece of music, artwork, and idea that have shaped our lives, from ancient times till today. Yet scientific understanding of creative processes is quite limited, mostly due to the traditional belief that considers creativity as a mysterious puzzle, a paradox, defying empirical enquiry. Recently,...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2014
Glenn Carruthers
Existing accounts of the sense of agency tend to focus on the proximal causal history of the feeling. That is, they explain the sense of agency by describing the cognitive mechanism that causes the sense of agency to be elicited. However, it is possible to elicit an unconscious representation of one's own agency that plays a different role in a cognitive system. I use the "occasionality...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2014
Antonella Maselli, Mel Slater
Bodily illusions have been used to study bodily self-consciousness and disentangle its various components, among other the sense of ownership and self-location. Congruent multimodal correlations between the real body and a fake humanoid body can in fact trigger the illusion that the fake body is one's own and/or disrupt the unity between the perceived self-location and the position of the...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
December 27, 2013
Patricia Milz, Pascal L Faber, D. Lehmann et al.
We investigated brain functional connectivity comparing no-task resting to breath counting (a meditation exercise but given as task without referring to meditation). Functional connectivity computed as EEG coherence between head-surface data suffers from localization ambiguity, reference dependence, and overestimation due to volume conduction. Lagged coherence between intracortical model...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
October 29, 2013
Paul F Smith, Cynthia L Darlington
The vestibular system is a sensory system that has evolved to detect linear and angular acceleration of the head in all planes so that the brain is not predominantly reliant on visual information to determine self-motion. Since the vestibular system first evolved in invertebrate species in order to detect gravitational vertical, it is likely that the central nervous system has developed a...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
September 12, 2013
Jakub Limanowski, Felix Blankenburg
285 citations
The term "minimal phenomenal selfhood" (MPS) describes the basic, pre-reflective experience of being a self (Blanke and Metzinger, 2009). Theoretical accounts of the minimal self have long recognized the importance and the ambivalence of the body as both part of the physical world, and the enabling condition for being in this world (Gallagher, 2005a; Grafton, 2009). A recent account of MPS...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
August 23, 2013
Tamara Fischmann, M. Russ, Marianne Leuzinger-Bohleber
To many psychoanalysts dreams are a central source of knowledge of the unconscious—the specific research object of psychoanalysis. The dialog with the neurosciences, devoted to the testing of hypotheses on human behavior and neurophysiology with objective methods, has added to psychoanalytic conceptualizations on emotion, memory, sleep and dreams, conflict and trauma. To psychoanalysts as well...
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....
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...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2013
Kieran C. R. Fox, Savannah Nijeboer, Elizaveta Solomonova et al.
297 citations
Isolated reports have long suggested a similarity in content and thought processes across mind wandering (MW) during waking, and dream mentation during sleep. This overlap has encouraged speculation that both "daydreaming" and dreaming may engage similar brain mechanisms. To explore this possibility, we systematically examined published first-person experiential reports of MW and dreaming and...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2013
Judson A. Brewer, Kathleen A. Garrison, Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli
264 citations
In the past decade, neuroimaging research has begun to identify key brain regions involved in self-referential processing, most consistently midline structures such as the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). The majority of studies have employed cognitive tasks such as judgment about trait adjectives or mind wandering, that have been associated with increased PCC activity. Conversely, tasks that...
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...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2013
Istvan Molnar-Szakacs, Lucina Q. Uddin
221 citations
Recent evidence for the fractionation of the default mode network (DMN) into functionally distinguishable subdivisions with unique patterns of connectivity calls for a reconceptualization of the relationship between this network and self-referential processing. Advances in resting-state functional connectivity analyses are beginning to reveal increasingly complex patterns of organization within...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2013
Sanneke De Haan, Erik Rietveld, Martin Stokhof et al.
218 citations
People suffering from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) do things they do not want to do, and/or they think things they do not want to think. In about 10% of OCD patients, none of the available treatment options is effective. A small group of these patients is currently being treated with deep brain stimulation (DBS). DBS involves the implantation of electrodes in the brain. These electrodes...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2013
Yair Dor-Ziderman, Aviva Berkovich-Ohana, Joseph Glicksohn et al.
207 citations
Contemporary philosophical and neurocognitive studies of the self have dissociated two distinct types of self-awareness: a "narrative" self-awareness (NS) weaving together episodic memory, future planning and self-evaluation into a coherent self-narrative and identity, and a "minimal" self-awareness (MS) focused on present momentary experience and closely tied to the sense of agency and...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2013
Barbara Tomasino, Sara Fregona, Miran Skrap et al.
151 citations
The brain network governing meditation has been studied using a variety of meditation practices and techniques practices eliciting different cognitive processes (e.g., silence, attention to own body, sense of joy, mantras, etc.). It is very possible that different practices of meditation are subserved by largely, if not entirely, disparate brain networks. This assumption was tested by...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2013
Juliana Bagdasaryan, Michel Le van Quyen
124 citations
Neurophenomenology is a scientific research program aimed to combine neuroscience with phenomenology in order to study human experience. Nevertheless, despite several explicit implementations, the integration of first-person data into the experimental protocols of cognitive neuroscience still faces a number of epistemological and methodological challenges. Notably, the difficulties to...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2013
Micah Allen, Jonathan Smallwood, Joanna Christensen et al.
100 citations
Self-generated thoughts unrelated to ongoing activities, also known as "mind-wandering," make up a substantial portion of our daily lives. Reports of such task-unrelated thoughts (TUTs) predict both poor performance on demanding cognitive tasks and blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) activity in the default mode network (DMN). However, recent findings suggest that TUTs and the DMN can also...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2013
Anthony P Zanesco, Brandon G King, Katherine A Maclean et al.
96 citations
Various forms of mental training have been shown to improve performance on cognitively demanding tasks. Individuals trained in meditative practices, for example, show generalized improvements on a variety of tasks assessing attentional performance. A central claim of this training, derived from contemplative traditions, posits that improved attentional performance is accompanied by subjective...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2013
Claire Petitmengin, Jean-Philippe Lachaux
90 citations
Neurophenomenology, as an attempt to combine and mutually enlighten neural and experiential descriptions of cognitive processes, has met practical difficulties which have limited its implementation into actual research projects. The main difficulty seems to be the disparity of the levels of description: while neurophenomenology strongly emphasizes the micro-dynamics of experience, at the level...