Self-awareness, self-regulation, and self-transcendence (S-ART): a framework for understanding the neurobiological mechanisms of mindfulness David R. Vago and David A. Silbersweig 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 […]
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STUDY ALERT: Content-Specific Fronto-Parietal Synchronization During Visual Working Memory
Content-Specific Fronto-Parietal Synchronization During Visual Working Memory R. F. Salazar, N. M. Dotson, S. L. Bressler, & C. M. Gray Lateral prefrontal and posterior parietal cortical areas exhibit task-dependent activation during working memory tasks in humans and monkeys. Neurons in these regions become synchronized during attention demanding tasks, but the contribution of these interactions to […]
STUDY ALERT: fMRI reveals reciprocal inhibition between social and physical cognitive domains
fMRI reveals reciprocal inhibition between social and physical cognitive domains Anthony I. Jack, Abigail Dawson, Katelyn Begany, Regina L. Leckie, Kevin Barry, Angela Ciccia, Abraham Snyder Two lines of evidence indicate that there exists a reciprocal inhibitory relationship between opposed brain networks. First, most attention-demanding cognitive tasks activate a stereotypical set of brain areas, known […]
STUDY ALERT: Consequences of Bilingualism for Cognitive Development
Research addressing the possible cognitive consequences of bilingualism for children’s development has found mixed results when seeking effects in domains such as language ability and intelligence. The approach in the research reported in this chapter is to investigate the effect that bilingualism might have on specific cognitive processes rather than domains of skill development. Three […]
STUDY ALERT: Mindfulness meditation training alters cortical representations of interoceptive attention
Mindfulness meditation training alters cortical representations of interoceptive attention Norman A. S. Farb, Zindel V. Segal, and Adam K. Anderson One component of mindfulness training (MT) is the development of interoceptive attention (IA) to visceral bodily sensations, facilitated through daily practices such as breath monitoring. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we examined experience-dependent […]
STUDY ALERT: Chocolate Consumption, Cognitive Function, and Nobel Laureates
There was a close, significant linear correlation (r=0.791, P<0.0001) between chocolate consumption per capita and the number of Nobel laureates per 10 million persons in a total of 23 countries (Fig. 1). When recalculated with the exclusion of Sweden, the correlation coefficient increased to 0.862. Switzerland was the top per- former in terms of both […]
STUDY ALERT: The neural components of empathy: Predicting daily prosocial behavior
The neural components of empathy: Predicting daily prosocial behavior Sylvia A. Morelli, Lian T. Rameson, and Matthew D. Lieberman Previous neuroimaging studies on empathy have not clearly identified neural systems that support the three components of empathy: affective con- gruence, perspective-taking, and prosocial motivation. These limitations stem from a focus on a single emotion per […]
STUDY ALERT: Mental illness, suicide and creativity: 40-Year prospective total population study
Mental illness, suicide and creativity: 40-Year prospective total population study Simon Kyaga, Mikael Landén, Marcus Boman, Christina M. Hultman, Niklas Långström, Paul Lichtenstein We previously demonstrated that patients with schizophrenia or bipolar disorder and their relatives are overrepresented in creative occupations. Here, we use a new dataset with a considerably larger sample of patients (n […]
STUDY ALERT: Abandoning a label doesn’t make it disappear: The perseverance of labeling effects
Abandoning a label doesn’t make it disappear: The perseverance of labeling effects Francesco Foroni & Myron Rothbart Labels exert strong influence on perception and judgment. The present experiment examines the possibility that such effects may persist even when labels are abandoned. Participants judged the similarity of pairs of silhouette drawings of female body types, ordered […]
STUDY ALERT: The Entire “Rethinking Giftedness” Debate
Introduction Jonathan A. Plucker and Carolyn M. Callahan Changing population demographics, debates over the purposes and funding of public education, the emergence of charter schools, emerging research in the physical and social sciences, and the emphasis on research-based pedagogy provide a major opportunity for the field to step back and reexamine its positions from the many perspectives that can be offered […]
STUDY ALERT: Unreliable Evoked Responses in Autism
Unreliable Evoked Responses in Autism Ilan Dinstein, David J. Heeger, Lauren Lorenzi, Nancy J. Minshew, Rafael Malach, and Marlene Behrmann Autism has been described as a disorder of general neural processing, but the particular processing characteristics that might be abnormal in autism have mostly remained obscure. Here, we present evidence of one such characteristic: poor […]
STUDY ALERT: The neuroscience of race
The neuroscience of race Jennifer T Kubota, Mahzarin R Banaji & Elizabeth A Phelps As the racial composition of the population changes, intergroup interactions are increasingly common. To understand how we perceive and categorize race and the attitudes that flow from it, scientists have used brain imaging techniques to examine how social categories of race […]