Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2013
Patricia Bockelman, Lauren Reinerman-Jones, Shaun Gallagher
47 citations
Neurophenomenological (NP) methods integrate objective and subjective data in ways that retain the statistical power of established disciplines (like cognitive science) while embracing the value of first-person reports of experience. The present paper positions neurophenomenology as an approach that pulls from traditions of cognitive science but includes techniques that are challenging for...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2013
Berit Brogaard
46 citations
Though synesthesia research has seen a huge growth in recent decades, and tremendous progress has been made in terms of understanding the mechanism and cause of synesthesia, we are still left mostly in the dark when it comes to the mechanistic commonalities (if any) among developmental, acquired and drug-induced synesthesia. We know that many forms of synesthesia involve aberrant structural or...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2013
Sérgio Mota-Rolim, Zé H. Targino, Bryan C. Souza et al.
42 citations
During sleep, humans experience the offline images and sensations that we call dreams, which are typically emotional and lacking in rational judgment of their bizarreness. However, during lucid dreaming (LD), subjects know that they are dreaming, and may control oneiric content. Dreaming and LD features have been studied in North Americans, Europeans and Asians, but not among Brazilians, the...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2013
István Bókkon, Birendra N. Mallick, Jack A Tuszynski
42 citations
Recently, we proposed a novel biophysical concept regarding on the appearance of brilliant lights during near death experiences (NDEs) (Bókkon and Salari, 2012). Specifically, perceiving brilliant light in NDEs has been proposed to arise due to the reperfusion that produces unregulated overproduction of free radicals and energetically excited molecules that can generate a transient enhancement...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2013
Omar T Khachouf, Stefano Poletti, Giuseppe Pagnoni
34 citations
Neurophenomenology is a research programme aimed at bridging the explanatory gap between first-person subjective experience and neurophysiological third-person data, through an embodied and enactive approach to the biology of consciousness. The present proposal attempts to further characterize the bodily basis of the mind by adopting a naturalistic view of the phenomenological concept of...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2013
Michael Lifshitz, Emma P Cusumano, Amir Raz
28 citations
Hypnosis research binds phenomenology and neuroscience. Here we show how recent evidence probing the impact of hypnosis and suggestion can inform and advance a neurophenomenological approach. In contrast to meditative practices that involve lengthy and intensive training, hypnosis induces profound alterations in subjective experience following just a few words of suggestion. Individuals highly...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2013
José-luis Díaz
19 citations
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...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2013
Saskia De Leede-Smith, Emma Barkus
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...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2013
Ausiàs Pomés, Mel Slater
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...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2013
Jason J Braithwaite, Kelly James, Hayley Dewe et al.
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...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2012
David R. Vago, David A. Silbersweig
1,324 citations
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...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2012
Rogier B. Mars, Franz-Xaver Neubert, MaryAnn P. Noonan et al.
807 citations
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...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2012
Alexander F G Maier, Theofanis I. Panagiotaropoulos, Naotsugu Tsuchiya et al.
632 citations
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...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2012
Gaelle Desbordes, Lobsang Negi, Thaddeus W W Pace et al.
445 citations
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...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2012
Wendy Hasenkamp, Lawrence W. Barsalou
377 citations
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,...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2012
Edward A. Vessel, G. Gabrielle Starr, Nava Rubin
369 citations
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...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2012
Adam Moore, Thomas Gruber, Jennifer Derose et al.
323 citations
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...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2012
Manish Saggar, Brandon G King, Anthony P Zanesco et al.
136 citations
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...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2012
Enrico Facco, Christian Agrillo
87 citations
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...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2012
Douglas Roberts-Wolfe, Matthew D. Sacchet, Elizabeth Hastings et al.
79 citations
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...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2012
Marc Cohen
Event Abstract Back to Event Source localisation of cortical oscillation differences in Yoga meditation between medium and advanced level practitioners Graham A. Jamieson1, John Thomas2* and Marc Cohen2 1 University of New England, Australia 2 RMIT University, Australia Previous studies have shown increased EEG power in lower frequency bands for experienced practitioners in both meditation...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2012
Philippe Peigneux
Frontiers Events is a rapidly growing calendar management system dedicated to the scheduling of academic events. This includes announcements and invitations, participant listings and search functionality, abstract handling and publication, related events and post-event exchanges. Whether an organizer or participant, make your event a Frontiers Event!
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2012
Ying Liu, Anne-Lise Paradis, Lydia Yahia-Cherif et al.
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...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
December 16, 2011
Valentin Wyart, Stanislas Dehaene, Catherine Tallon-Baudry
THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN SPATIAL ATTENTION AND CONSCIOUS ACCESS HAS OFTEN BEEN PICTURED AS A SINGLE CAUSAL LINK: spatial attention would provide conscious access to weak stimuli by increasing their effective contrast during early visual processing. To test this hypothesis, we assessed whether the early attentional amplification of visual responses, around 100 ms following stimulus onset, had a...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2011
Heleen A. Slagter, Richard J. Davidson, Antoine Lutz
295 citations
Although the adult brain was once seen as a rather static organ, it is now clear that the organization of brain circuitry is constantly changing as a function of experience or learning. Yet, research also shows that learning is often specific to the trained stimuli and task, and does not improve performance on novel tasks, even very similar ones. This perspective examines the idea that...