Scientific Reports
June 7, 2016
Joseph Wielgosz, Brianna S. Schuyler, Antoine Lutz et al.
124 citations
Respiration rate is known to correlate with aspects of psychological well-being, and attention to respiration is a central component of mindfulness meditation training. Both traditional contemplative systems and recent empirical evidence support an association between formal mindfulness practice and decreased respiration rate. However, the question of whether long-term mindfulness training is...
Scientific Reports
May 26, 2016
Johannes G. Ramaekers, J. H. van Wel, Desirée Spronk et al.
81 citations
Cannabis use history as predictor of neurocognitive response to cannabis intoxication remains subject to scientific and policy debates. The present study assessed the influence of cannabis on neurocognition in cannabis users whose cannabis use history ranged from infrequent to daily use. Drug users (N = 122) received acute doses of cannabis (300 μg/kg THC), cocaine HCl (300 mg) and placebo....
Scientific Reports
February 11, 2016
Julia Natascha Frey, Philipp Ruhnau, Sabine Leske et al.
We recently proposed that besides levels of local cortical excitability, also distinct pre-stimulus network states (windows to consciousness) determine whether a near-threshold stimulus will be consciously perceived. In the present magnetoencephalography study, we scrutinised these pre-stimulus network states with a focus on the primary somatosensory cortex. For this purpose participants...
Scientific Reports
November 18, 2015
Way K W Lau, Mei-Kei Leung, Chetwyn C H Chan et al.
Cortisol homeostasis is important for cognitive and affective functions that depend on cortisol-sensitive brain regions including the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex. Recent studies have shown that training induces changes in the brain. We report the findings of a longitudinal study that verified the moderation effect of experience-induced changes in awareness on the neural-cortisol...
Scientific Reports
August 27, 2015
Sebastian T Philipp, Tobias Kalisch, Thomas Wachtler et al.
Bodily training typically evokes behavioral and perceptual gains, enforcing neuroplastic processes and affecting neural representations. We investigated the effect on somatosensory perception of a three-day Zen meditation exercise, a purely mental intervention. Tactile spatial discrimination of the right index finger was persistently improved by only 6 hours of mental-sensory focusing on this...
Scientific Reports
January 15, 2014
Natália Bezerra Mota, Raimundo Furtado, Pedro Maia et al.
159 citations
Early psychiatry investigated dreams to understand psychopathologies. Contemporary psychiatry, which neglects dreams, has been criticized for lack of objectivity. In search of quantitative insight into the structure of psychotic speech, we investigated speech graph attributes (SGA) in patients with schizophrenia, bipolar disorder type I, and non-psychotic controls as they reported waking and...
Scientific Reports
August 2, 2013
Fábio V. Caixeta, Alianda Maira Cornélio, Robson Scheffer-Teixeira et al.
134 citations
Recent studies show that higher order oscillatory interactions such as cross-frequency coupling are important for brain functions that are impaired in schizophrenia, including perception, attention and memory. Here we investigated the dynamics of oscillatory coupling in the hippocampus of awake rats upon NMDA receptor blockade by ketamine, a pharmacological model of schizophrenia. Ketamine (25,...
Scientific Reports
February 18, 2009
Vincent Haegele
38 citations
Disruptions in social decision-making are becoming evident in many psychiatric conditions. These are studied using paradigms investigating the psychological mechanisms underlying interpersonal interactions, such as the Ultimatum Game (UG). Rejection behaviour in the UG represents altruistic punishment - the costly punishment of norm violators - but the mechanisms underlying it require...