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This preliminary study examined whether the practice of mind–body techniques decreases symptoms of posttraumatic stress in adolescents. Posttraumatic Stress Reaction Index questionnaires were collected from 139 high school students in Kosovo who participated in a 6-week program that included meditation, biofeedback, drawings, autogenic training, guided imagery, genograms, movement, and breathing techniques. Three separate programs were held approximately 2 months apart. There was no control group. Posttraumatic stress scores significantly decreased after participation in the programs. These scores remained decreased in the 2 groups that participated in the follow-up study when compared to pretest measures. These data indicate that mind–body skills groups were effective in reducing posttraumatic stress symptoms in war-traumatized high school students.

<p>Creator's Description: Tibetan Buddhist lists and collections of Indian Great Seal (Phyag rgya chen po, Mahāmudrā) texts consist almost exclusively of works found in the Translation of Treatises (Bstan ’gyur). There are, however, two Translation of the Word (Bka’ ’gyur) texts that appear in a collection of Ten Dharmas of Mahāmudrā (Phyag rgya chen po’i chos bcu) transmitted by the eleventh-century Indian teacher Vajrapāṇi: the Noble Mahāyāna Sūtra Called “The Gnosis of the Moment of Passing Away” (’Phags pa ’da’ ka ye shes shes bya ba theg pa chen po’i mdo, Ārya-​ātajñāna-​nāma-​mahāyāna-​sūtra) and the Royal Tantra on the Glorious Unpolluted (Rgyud kyi rgyal po dpal rnyog pa med pa zhes bya ba, Śrī-​anāvila-​tantra-​rāja). In exploring these two texts, rarely discussed by either Tibetan or Western scholarship, this article provides a translation and discussion of the Gnosis of the Moment of Passing Away (Ātajñāna, ’Da’ ka ye shes) and a synopsis and discussion of the Unpolluted (Anāvila, Rnyog pa med pa). It concludes that although neither text is an obvious choice for a Great Seal canon, each contains terminology and themes that are consonant with the Great Seal discourse of later Indian, as well as Tibetan, Buddhism, each appears to have been sufficiently prominent to come to the attention of Vajrapāṇi, and each can serve to provide the necessary authority of the word of the Buddha (Buddhavacana; Sangs rgyas kyi bka’) to lists of Indian Great Seal texts utilized by Tibetans.</p>

In this article, I argue that educators can utilize mindfulness practices to enhance the efficacy of anti-oppressive pedagogy. The philosophies of Wittgenstein and Nagarjuna provide a holistic human ontology and show that learning affects students at all levels: mind, body, emotion, and spirit. My analysis of the phenomenology of thinking reveals the modes of relationship to ideation. I have proposed mindfulness practice as a proven technique to address the non-cognitive forms of attachment to ideation that may remain in force despite the most thorough-going intellectual change. /// Dans cet article, l'auteure fait valoir que les enseignants peuvent utiliser des pratiques attentionnées pour augmenter l'efficacité de la pédagogie libertaire. Les philosophies de Wittgenstein et de Nagarjuna permettent une ontologie humaine holistique et démontrent que l'apprentissage affecte les étudiants sur tous les plans: l'intelligence, le corps, les émotions et l'esprit. Les analyses de la phénoménologie de la pensée révèlent les types de relation à l'idéation. La pratique attentionnée est proposée comme une technique qui a fait ses preuves pour traiter les formes d'attachement hors du champ cognitif à l'idéation qui demeure active malgré le plus profond changement intellectuel.

OBJECTIVES: Affective neuroscience research that investigates core symptoms of pediatric bipolar disorder (PBD) may be effective in differentiating PBD phenotypes. The current study used affect-modulated startle to examine potential differences in reactivity to emotional stimuli (reward and punishment) in narrow and broad phenotype PBD and controls. METHODS: Thirty children meeting DSM-IV bipolar disorder criteria (i.e. narrow phenotype PBD with defined manic episodes with elevated/expansive mood), 19 children meeting criteria for severe mood dysregulation (i.e. broad phenotype with chronic irritability, hyper-reactivity, and hyperarousal), and 19 controls completed a lottery startle paradigm involving reward (money) and punishment (loud noise). Startle probes were presented during anticipation of the emotional stimulus, immediately following the presentation of the stimulus, or during return to baseline following the stimulus. RESULTS: By self-report, patients and controls found the putative punishment to be preferable to the neutral condition. In the reward condition, patient samples reported greater arousal than did controls, but no between-group differences were found on the magnitude of startle response during the reward, punishment, or neutral conditions. CONCLUSIONS: The failure to find differences in affect-modulated startle between control children and those with narrow or broad PBD phenotypes speaks to the methodological challenges associated with studying reward mechanisms in PBD. Alternative paradigms that focus on different aspects of reward mechanisms are discussed.
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Muscle electrical activity, or "electromyogenic" (EMG) artifact, poses a serious threat to the validity of electroencephalography (EEG) investigations in the frequency domain. EMG is sensitive to a variety of psychological processes and can mask genuine effects or masquerade as legitimate neurogenic effects across the scalp in frequencies at least as low as the alpha band (8-13 Hz). Although several techniques for correcting myogenic activity have been described, most are subjected to only limited validation attempts. Attempts to gauge the impact of EMG correction on intracerebral source models (source "localization" analyses) are rarer still. Accordingly, we assessed the sensitivity and specificity of one prominent correction tool, independent component analysis (ICA), on the scalp and in the source-space using high-resolution EEG. Data were collected from 17 participants while neurogenic and myogenic activity was independently varied. Several protocols for classifying and discarding components classified as myogenic and non-myogenic artifact (e.g., ocular) were systematically assessed, leading to the exclusion of one-third to as much as three-quarters of the variance in the EEG. Some, but not all, of these protocols showed adequate performance on the scalp. Indeed, performance was superior to previously validated regression-based techniques. Nevertheless, ICA-based EMG correction exhibited low validity in the intracerebral source-space, likely owing to incomplete separation of neurogenic from myogenic sources. Taken with prior work, this indicates that EMG artifact can substantially distort estimates of intracerebral spectral activity. Neither regression- nor ICA-based EMG correction techniques provide complete safeguards against such distortions. In light of these results, several practical suggestions and recommendations are made for intelligently using ICA to minimize EMG and other common artifacts.
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Meditation is approached as a technique for the activation of religious experience. Various theories used in psychology to explain the cognitive changes brought about by meditation are briefly reviewed. Of these, the role-theory of Sundén fits best the structure and function of various meditation methods in religious history. A small scale laboratory experiment is reported, designed for the purpose of testing the predictive validity of role-theory. The results make it possible to specify the theory's contribution and limitation.

<p>Numerous studies have noted that depth psychology has been one of the most prevalent frameworks for the interpretation of Buddhism in the West. Similarly, many commentators have bemoaned the assimilation of Buddhist thought and practice into western psychological discourse. This paper argues, however, that such critiques often fail to adequately distinguish between reductive approaches that reduce Buddhist phenomena to psychological states, and dialogical enterprises that utilize psychology as a tool to extend, through dialogue, the aims of Buddhism. Through a focus on what I identify as "West Coast Vipassana," a distinctive current within the American Insight Community, I examine attempts to incorporate personal life into Buddhist practice. While there are numerous incidents of the reductive approach in the Buddhist-psychology interface, I interpret West Coast Vipassana as providing a more legitimate and dialogical or "skillful means" approach to Buddhist practice in a contemporary Western climate.</p>

We present a novel weighted Fourier series (WFS) representation for cortical surfaces. The WFS representation is a data smoothing technique that provides the explicit smooth functional estimation of unknown cortical boundary as a linear combination of basis functions. The basic properties of the representation are investigated in connection with a self-adjoint partial differential equation and the traditional spherical harmonic (SPHARM) representation. To reduce steep computational requirements, a new iterative residual fitting (IRF) algorithm is developed. Its computational and numerical implementation issues are discussed in detail. The computer codes are also available at http://www.stat.wisc.edu/-mchung/softwares/weighted.SPHARM/weighted-SPHARM.html. As an illustration, the WFS is applied i n quantifying the amount ofgray matter in a group of high functioning autistic subjects. Within the WFS framework, cortical thickness and gray matter density are computed and compared.
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<p>Research suggests that mindfulness practices offer psychotherapists a way to positively affect aspects of therapy that account for successful treatment. This paper provides psychotherapists with a synthesis of the empirically supported advantages of mindfulness. Definitions of mindfulness and evidence-based interpersonal, affective, and intrapersonal benefits of mindfulness are presented. Research on therapists who meditate and client outcomes of therapists who meditate are reviewed. Implications for practice, research, and training are discussed.</p>

<p>This article opens by noting that positive emotions do not fit existing models of emotions. Consequently, a new model is advanced to describe the form and function of a subset of positive emotions, including joy, interest, contentment, and love. This new model posits that these positive emotions serve to broaden an individual's momentary thought-action repertoire, which in turn has the effect of building that individual's physical, intellectual, and social resources. Empirical evidence to support this broaden-and-build model of positive emotions is reviewed, and implications for emotion regulation and health promotion are discussed.</p>

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