Jan 16, 2018
Mindfulness Monday: Mindfulness and Curiosity One of my favorite things about living a more mindful lifestyle is being more curious about things.
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Mindfulness Monday: Mindfulness and Curiosity One of my favorite things about living a more mindful lifestyle is being more curious about things.
Positive and Negative Reinforcement is a reward base learning process our brain tends to use to determine how we pay attention. Our brain relies on context dependent memory when deciding how to act, and this learnt repeating process then validates and reinforces our patterns and habits: trigger > behaviour > reward. Important to note: When seeking to change behaviour, our prefrontal cortex does all it can to help us on a cognitive level. Unfortunately this is also the first part of our brain that goes offline when we're stressed, hence reverting back to old patterns and habits. There are many reasons to care about how we feel; if we're trying to change a pattern/habit, it's wise to start with managing our stress levels. Understanding our brain is a worthy investment in self-leadership. Watch full talk via this link: https://youtu.be/-moW9jvvMr4 #selfawareness #selfleadership #brain #mentalhealth #emotionalhealth #behaviour #judsonbrewer #neuroscience #tessnobile (at The European Melbourne)
02-18-14
Yale Daily News on our loving kindness study: "Just in time for Valentine’s Day, a Yale study published on Feb. 12 investigated the brain regions that may help us wish others well."
a blurb on mind and life about some of our work here at yale:
A new technology allows researchers to see the contemplative brain in real timeand uncover insights on everything from contentment to effort to distraction
new study out from our work at yale, using real time fMRI to study the subjective experience of meditation:
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 to assess how the first-person experience of meditation relates to neural activity in a core region of the default mode network the posterior cingulate cortex. We analyzed first-person data consisting of meditators' accounts of their subjective experience during runs of a real-time fMRI neurofeedback study of meditation, and third-person data consisting of corresponding feedback graphs of posterior cingulate cortex activity during the same runs. We found that for meditators, the subjective experiences of undistracted awareness such as concentration and observing sensory experience, and effortless doing such as observing sensory experience, not efforting, and contentment, correspond with posterior cingulate cortex deactivation. Further, the subjective experiences of distracted awareness such as distraction and interpreting, and controlling such as efforting and discontentment, correspond with posterior cingulate cortex activation. Moreover, we derived several novel hypotheses about how specific qualities of cognitive processes during meditation relate to posterior cingulate cortex activity, such as the difference between meditation and trying to meditate. These findings offer novel insights into the relationship between meditation and self-related thinking and neural activity in the default mode network, driven by the first-person experience.
my postdoc advisor thinks you're awesome!
hot off the presses, our recent work with real-time brain imaging in meditators at Yale:
Garrison KA, Scheinost D, Worhunsky PD, Elwafi HM, Thornhill TA 4th, Thompson E, Saron C, Desbordes G, Kober H, Hampson M, Gray JR, Constable RT, Papademetris X, Brewer JA. (2013) Real-time fMRI links subjective experience with brain activityduring focused attention. Neuroimage. doi:pii:S1053-8119(13)00524-7. 10.1016/j.neuroimage.2013.05.030. [Epub ahead of print] PubMed PMID: 23684866. PDF