Poincare plots are commonly used to study the non-linear behavior of physiological signals. In the time series analysis, the width of Poincare plots can be considered as a criterion of short-term variability in signals. The hypothesis that Poincare plot indexes of electroencephalogram (EEG) signals can detect dy-namic changes during meditation was examined in sixteen healthy women. Therefore,...
Objective. To assess the effect of meditation on work stress, anxiety and mood in full-time workers. Methods. 178 adult workers participated in an 8-week, 3-arm randomized controlled trial comparing a "mental silence" approach to meditation (n = 59) to a "relaxation" active control (n = 56) and a wait-list control (n = 63). Participants were assessed before and after using Psychological Strain...
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...
Human experiences can be broadly divided into those that are external and related to interaction with the environment, and experiences that are internal and self-related. The cerebral cortex appears to be divided into two corresponding systems: an "extrinsic" system composed of brain areas that respond more to external stimuli and tasks and an "intrinsic" system composed of brain areas that...
CONTEXT: Asana, pranayama, and meditation are three main techniques of yoga practiced in India over thousands of years to attain functional harmony between the body and mind. Recent studies on long-term yogic practices have shown improvements in cardiovascular functions. AIM: The present study was conducted to ascertain if a short-term practice of pranayama and meditation had improvements in...
The Buddhist construct of mindfulness is a central element of mindfulness-based interventions and derives from an age-old systematic phenomenological program to investigate subjective experience. Recent enthusiasm for "mindfulness" in psychology has resulted in proliferation of self-report inventories that purport to measure mindful awareness as a trait. This paper addresses a number of...
Este ensayo se propone reflexionar sobre la introducción e influencia de la filosofía oriental en el pensamiento occidental, y en particular su relación con las ciencias cognitivas. Se inicia la discusión con un repaso histórico de la introducción de la filosofía oriental en el pensamiento occidental. Después se repasa el progresivo aumento de interés que se produjo a lo largo del siglo xx,...