Meditation is a self-entrainment of the mind impacting overall health. We evaluated the effect of long-term meditation on the cognitive status and selected neurophysiological parameters.Thirty experienced long-term meditators (LTM) and thirty matched meditation naïve controls (MNC) were selected. A validated Sinhala-version of the repeatable battery for the assessment of neuropsychological...
HeliyonFebruary 21, 2025Adrian Berk Safati, Wisam Almohamad Alkheder, Cassandra Justine Lowe et al.
To examine the effects of cannabis on mind-wandering, regular cannabis smokers of legally purchased pre-rolls took part in a three-session remote study. In each 30-min session participants completed three blocks of an attention task in which they pressed the spacebar in time with a metronome tone (the Metronome Response Task), and intermittently reported their levels of spontaneous and...
HeliyonJanuary 15, 2025E A S K Somarathne, M W Gunathunga, E Lokupitiya1 citation
There is increasing scientific interest in the potential links between meditation practice and pro-environmental behaviours. The present research investigates relationships between Vipassana meditation experience (temporal variables of meditation, five facets of trait mindfulness), positive lifestyle habits (PLH), quality of life (QoL) and per-head carbon footprint (CF) among 25 skilled...
HeliyonSeptember 15, 2024Hao Hua, Xinghuo Fu, Wenli Wang et al.2 citations
Psychedelics, as a class of potent psychoactive substances, significantly alter sensory perception and mood, thereby profoundly impacting cognition. Increasing evidence indicates that psychedelics can facilitate individual social function and rapidly and sustainably improve symptoms of moderate and severe depression. The growing interest in psychedelics as potential treatments for depression...
HeliyonAugust 15, 2024A Faramarzi, M Fooladi, M Yousef Pour et al.4 citations
We aimed to evaluate the effect of Lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD) on the pain neural network (PNN) in healthy subjects using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Twenty healthy volunteers participated in a balanced-order crossover study, receiving intravenous administration of LSD and placebo in two fMRI scanning sessions. Brain regions associated with pain processing were analyzed...
Following the COVID-19 global emergency, health students were faced with increased workloads, university closures, study interruptions, loss of peer support networks, and the challenges of volunteer work in hospitals. These factors caused health students to experience significant stress and anxiety, highlighting the necessity of psychological interventions for this group. Several studies have...
To prospectively determine the median effective dose (ED50) of propofol for inhibiting a response to laryngeal mask airway (LMA) insertion when combined with different doses of esketamine in female patients. A total of 58 female patients (aged 20-60 years, ASAⅠ-Ⅱ) scheduled for elective hysteroscopy were enrolled and randomly divided into 2 groups, one of which was administered 0.2 mg/kg of...
Meditation has been integral to human culture for millennia, deeply rooted in various spiritual and contemplative traditions. While the field of contemplative science has made significant steps toward understanding the effects of meditation on health and well-being, there has been little study of advanced meditative states, including those achieved through intense concentration and absorption....
HeliyonApril 15, 2024Aletta Me Millen, William Mu Daniels, Sooraj Baijnath6 citations
In Africa, there is currently a paucity of data on the epidemiology of depression, its treatment and management. The prevalence of depression is severely underestimated, with unique circumstances and societal risk factors associated with depression and its public awareness. Treating and managing depression is confounded by an inaccessibility to efficient and low-cost treatments for patients...
This behavioral study was undertaken to provide empirical evidence in favor of or opposed to the notion that animals across a wide breadth of the animal kingdom have subjective (personal) experience that varies with their lifestyles, ecological constraints, or phylogeny. Twelve species representing two invertebrate phyla and six vertebrate classes were observed unobtrusively in 15-min episodes,...
Objective Intuitive inquiry meditation is a unique form of Buddhist Zen/Chan practice in which individuals actively and intuitively utilize the cognitive functions to cultivate doubt and explore the concept of the self. This event-related potential (ERP) study aimed to investigate the neural correlates by which long-term practice of intuitive inquiry meditation induces flexibility in...
Objectives: To examine the relationships of age and sex with mindfulness traits among Chinese adults with controlling for measurement invariance. Methods: A total of 1777 participants completing the Five-Facet Mindfulness Questionnaire were included for analysis. Their age and sex information were also collected. Descriptive analysis, Pearson's Chi-Square test and analysis of variance were...
HeliyonAugust 9, 2023Ko-Shih Chang, Li-Hung Lee, Shu-Ling Chen et al.
Objective: This article aims to provide the experiences of mindfulness treatments from the perspectives of patients with a history of substance abuse. Data source: Peer-reviewed articles on 5 databases, namely, PubMed, PsychINFO, Medline, CINAHL and the Cochrane Library, between the year of 2000 and 2023. Study inclusion and exclusion criteria: Studies were included if they were published in...
Purpose: Respiratory function is thought to improve with long-term meditation. This study aimed to assess respiratory function in a cohort of healthy long-term meditators and non-meditators in Sri Lanka. Methods: Respiratory function of healthy, skilled long-term meditators (n = 20) practicing Buddhist meditation consistently >3 years, and age-sex matched non-meditators (n = 20) were assessed...
HeliyonJune 27, 2023Larissa Marcely Gomes Cassiano, Marina da Silva Oliveira, Wellington Alves de Barros et al.7 citations
Introduction: receptors. Although cases of toxicity associated with the recreational use of substituted phenethylamines are frequently reported, there is a lack of information on the possible neurotoxic effects of NBOMe and NBOH in the brain hippocampus, a major neurogenesis region. Objectives: This study aimed at assessing the phenotypic and molecular effects of prolonged exposure of the...
Teaching in vocational-technical schools can pose many challenges, which can lead to stressful situations as all aspects of instruction and teaching in this domain involve a high level of anxiety and exhaustion. So, the significant issue in this territory is teachers' motivation which plays a crucial role in enhancing the various types of performance, including organizational performance and it...
Psychedelic fungi have received considerable attention recently due to their promising treatment potential of several psychiatric disorders and medical conditions, both in clinical settings but also as a nutraceutical. Besides research, a growing number of companies are developing capacity to conduct research and clinical trials where these fungi and their products can be used, and to provide...
Introduction: Ketamine and its S-enantiomer esketamine are novel pharmacotherapeutic options for treatment resistant depression (TRD). There is growing evidence on the efficacy for other psychiatric disorders, including posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). It is hypothesized that psychotherapy may further potentiate the effects of (es)ketamine in psychiatric disorders. Methods: Repeated oral...
Our purpose is to address the biological problem of finding foundations of the organization in the collective activity among cell networks in the nervous system, at the meso/macroscale, giving rise to cognition and consciousness. But in doing so, we encounter another problem related to the interpretation of methods to assess the neural interactions and organization of the neurodynamics, because...
Anxiety may contribute to agitation and distress in learners that can influence learning. Along with anxiety, boredom has been the focus of many recent investigations in the context of second language (L2) learning involving young learners. Anxiety and boredom would limit learners' imagination power, and can deter creativity, one of the indispensable skills in the 21st century. Mindfulness is...
HeliyonFebruary 1, 2023Cheng Peng, Xi Liu, Kongyuan Wu et al.
Nitrous oxide is increasingly abused in the young population and has been verified to induce neuropathy, myelopathy, encephalopathy, and thrombosis. Nitrous oxide-related thrombosis was identified in the coronary artery, ascending aorta, pulmonary artery, and deep vein in the lower extremities. Cases with nitrous oxide abuse-related thrombosis in cerebral veins or cerebral venous sinus have...
Classic psychedelics, such as psilocybin, act on the brain's serotonin system and produce striking psychological effects. Early work in the 1950s and 1960s and more recent controlled studies suggest benefit from psychedelic treatment in a number of conditions. A few case reports in recreational users and a single experimental study suggest benefit in patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder...
HeliyonDecember 2022Martial Mermillod, Mickaël J R Perrier, Adeline Lacroix et al.
In this article, we tested the respective importance of low spatial frequencies (LSF) and high spatial frequencies (HSF) for conscious visual recognition of emotional stimuli by using an attentional blink paradigm. Thirty-eight participants were asked to identify and report two targets (happy faces) embedded in a rapid serial visual presentation of distractors (angry faces). During attentional...
HeliyonDecember 2022Mohammed Abdalla Kannan, Nurfaizatul Aisyah Ab Aziz, Nur Syairah Ab Rani et al.
Since its revelation over 14 centuries ago, the Holy Quran is considered as scriptural divine words of Islam, and it is believed to promote psycho-spiritual therapeutic benefits to its reciter and/or listener. In this context, the listening of rhythmic Quranic verses among Muslims is often viewed as a form of unconventional melodic vocals, with accompanied anecdotal claims of the 'Quranic...
There have been several recent attempts at using Artificial Intelligence systems to model aspects of consciousness (Gamez, 2008; Reggia, 2013). Deep Neural Networks have been given additional functionality in the present attempt, allowing them to emulate phenological aspects of consciousness by self-generating information representing multi-modal inputs as either sounds or images. We added...