In this study, we examined the effects of a short mindfulness meditation induction (MMI) on the performance of a P300-based brain–computer interface (BCI) task. We expected that MMI would harness present-moment attentional resources, resulting in two positive consequences for P300-based BCI use. Specifically, we believed that MMI would facilitate increases in task accuracy and promote the production of robust P300 amplitudes. Sixteen-channel electroencephalographic data were recorded from 18 subjects using a row/column speller task paradigm. Nine subjects participated in a 6 min MMI and an additional nine subjects served as a control group. Subjects were presented with a 6 × 6 matrix of alphanumeric characters on a computer monitor. Stimuli were flashed at a stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA) of 125 ms. Calibration data were collected on 21 items without providing feedback. These data were used to derive a stepwise linear discriminate analysis classifier that was applied to an additional 14 items to evaluate accuracy. Offline performance analyses revealed that MMI subjects were significantly more accurate than control subjects. Likewise, MMI subjects produced significantly larger P300 amplitudes than control subjects at Cz and PO7. The discussion focuses on the potential attentional benefits of MMI for P300-based BCI performance.
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Patients in the placebo arms of randomized controlled trials (RCT) often experience positive changes from baseline. While multiple theories concerning such “placebo effects” exist, peculiarly, none has been informed by actual interviews of patients undergoing placebo treatment. Here, we report on a qualitative study (n = 27) embedded within a RCT (n = 262) in patients with irritable bowel syndrome. Besides identical placebo acupuncture treatment in the RCT, the qualitative study patients also received an additional set of interviews at the beginning, midpoint, and end of the trial. Interviews of the 12 qualitative subjects who underwent and completed placebo treatment were transcribed. We found that patients (1) were persistently concerned with whether they were receiving placebo or genuine treatment; (2) almost never endorsed “expectation” of improvement but spoke of “hope” instead and frequently reported despair; (3) almost all reported improvement ranging from dramatic psychosocial changes to unambiguous, progressive symptom improvement to tentative impressions of benefit; and (4) often worried whether their improvement was due to normal fluctuations or placebo effects. The placebo treatment was a problematic perturbation that provided an opportunity to reconstruct the experiences of the fluctuations of their illness and how it disrupted their everyday life. Immersion in this RCT was a co-mingling of enactment, embodiment and interpretation involving ritual performance and evocative symbols, shifts in bodily sensations, symptoms, mood, daily life behaviors, and social interactions, all accompanied by self-scrutiny and re-appraisal. The placebo effect involved a spectrum of factors and any single theory of placebo—e.g. expectancy, hope, conditioning, anxiety reduction, report bias, symbolic work, narrative and embodiment—provides an inadequate model to explain its salubrious benefits.
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IMPORTANCE:Many people meditate to reduce psychological stress and stress-related health problems. To counsel people appropriately, clinicians need to know what the evidence says about the health benefits of meditation.
OBJECTIVE:
To determine the efficacy of meditation programs in improving stress-related outcomes (anxiety, depression, stress/distress, positive mood, mental health-related quality of life, attention, substance use, eating habits, sleep, pain, and weight) in diverse adult clinical populations.
EVIDENCE REVIEW:
We identified randomized clinical trials with active controls for placebo effects through November 2012 from MEDLINE, PsycINFO, EMBASE, PsycArticles, Scopus, CINAHL, AMED, the Cochrane Library, and hand searches. Two independent reviewers screened citations and extracted data. We graded the strength of evidence using 4 domains (risk of bias, precision, directness, and consistency) and determined the magnitude and direction of effect by calculating the relative difference between groups in change from baseline. When possible, we conducted meta-analyses using standardized mean differences to obtain aggregate estimates of effect size with 95% confidence intervals.
FINDINGS:
After reviewing 18 753 citations, we included 47 trials with 3515 participants. Mindfulness meditation programs had moderate evidence of improved anxiety (effect size, 0.38 [95% CI, 0.12-0.64] at 8 weeks and 0.22 [0.02-0.43] at 3-6 months), depression (0.30 [0.00-0.59] at 8 weeks and 0.23 [0.05-0.42] at 3-6 months), and pain (0.33 [0.03- 0.62]) and low evidence of improved stress/distress and mental health-related quality of life. We found low evidence of no effect or insufficient evidence of any effect of meditation programs on positive mood, attention, substance use, eating habits, sleep, and weight. We found no evidence that meditation programs were better than any active treatment (ie, drugs, exercise, and other behavioral therapies).
CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE:
Clinicians should be aware that meditation programs can result in small to moderate reductions of multiple negative dimensions of psychological stress. Thus, clinicians should be prepared to talk with their patients about the role that a meditation program could have in addressing psychological stress. Stronger study designs are needed to determine the effects of meditation programs in improving the positive dimensions of mental health and stress-related behavior.
<p>Meditation practice alters intrinsic resting-state functional connectivity (rsFC) in the default mode network (DMN). However, little is known regarding the effects of meditation on other resting-state networks. The aim of current study was to investigate the effects of meditation experience and meditation-state functional connectivity (msFC) on multiple resting-state networks (RSNs). Meditation practitioners (MPs) performed two 5-minute scans, one during rest, one while meditating. A meditation naïve control group (CG) underwent one resting-state scan. Exploratory regression analyses of the relations between years of meditation practice and rsFC and msFC were conducted. During resting-state, MP as compared to CG exhibited greater rsFC within the Dorsal Attention Network (DAN). Among MP, meditation, as compared to rest, strengthened FC between the DAN and DMN and Salience network whereas it decreased FC between the DAN, dorsal medial PFC, and insula. Regression analyses revealed positive correlations between the number of years of meditation experience and msFC between DAN, thalamus, and anterior parietal sulcus, whereas negative correlations between DAN, lateral and superior parietal, and insula. These findings suggest that the practice of meditation strengthens FC within the DAN as well as strengthens the coupling between distributed networks that are involved in attention, self-referential processes, and affective response.</p>
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This study is the first to examine the potential role of mindfulness for attenuating anger and aggression in prospective criminal justice professionals. The Mindful Attention Awareness Scale, Aggression Questionnaire, Hostile Attribution Bias Scale, and Thought Recognition Inventory were administered to 272 undergraduate criminal justice majors. The results of a multivariate analysis of variance model indicated that dispositional mindfulness related negatively with self-reported aggression and hostile attribution bias and positively with thought recognition. A possible relationship between mindfulness and thought recognition may operate to influence other mechanisms to heighten mental health, as well as reduce anger and aggression. The potential benefits of mindfulness and thought recognition training for criminal justice professionals and prospective criminal justice professionals are discussed.
BackgroundSelf-management of health is important for improving health outcomes among primary care patients with chronic disease. Anxiety and depressive disorders are common and interfere with self-regulation, which is required for disease self-management. An insurance-reimbursable mindfulness intervention integrated within primary care may be effective for enhancing chronic disease self-management behaviors among primary care patients with anxiety, depression, trauma, and stress-related and adjustment disorders compared with the increasingly standard practice of referring patients to outside mindfulness resources.
Objective
Mindfulness Training for Primary Care (MTPC) is an 8-week, referral-based, insurance-reimbursable program integrated into safety-net health system patient-centered medical homes. We hypothesized that MTPC would be more effective for catalyzing chronic disease self-management action plan initiation within 2 weeks, versus a low-dose comparator (LDC) consisting of a 60-min mindfulness introduction, referral to community and digital resources, and addition to a 6-month waitlist for MTPC.
Participants
Primary care providers (PCPs) and mental health clinicians referred 465 patients over 12 months. All participants had a DSM-V diagnosis.
Design and Interventions
Participants (N = 136) were randomized in a 2:1 allocation to MTPC (n = 92) or LDC (n = 44) in a randomized controlled comparative effectiveness trial. MTPC incorporates mindfulness, self-compassion, and mindfulness-oriented behavior change skills and is delivered as insurance-reimbursable visits within primary care. Participants took part in a chronic disease self-management action planning protocol at week 7.
Main Measures
Level of self-reported action plan initiation on the action plan initiation survey by week 9.
Key Results
Participants randomized to MTPC, relative to LDC, had significantly higher adjusted odds of self-management action plan initiation in an intention-to-treat analysis (OR = 2.28; 95% CI = 1.02 to 5.06, p = 0.025).
Conclusions
An 8-week dose of mindfulness training is more effective than a low-dose mindfulness comparator in facilitating chronic disease self-management behavior change among primary care patients.
<p>Mindfulness training may disrupt the risk chain of stress-precipitated alcohol relapse. In 2008, 53 alcohol-dependent adults (mean age = 40.3) recruited from a therapeutic community located in the urban southeastern U.S. were randomized to mindfulness training or a support group. Most participants were male (79.2%), African American (60.4%), and earned less than $20,000 annually (52.8%). Self-report measures, psychophysiological cue-reactivity, and alcohol attentional bias were analyzed via repeated measures ANOVA. Thirty-seven participants completed the interventions. Mindfulness training significantly reduced stress and thought suppression, increased physiological recovery from alcohol cues, and modulated alcohol attentional bias. Hence, mindfulness training appears to target key mechanisms implicated in alcohol dependence, and therefore may hold promise as an alternative treatment for stress-precipitated relapse among vulnerable members of society. Keywords--alcohol dependence, attentional bias, heart-rate variability, mindfulness, stress, thought suppression</p>
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Recent theory suggests that positive psychological processes integral to health may be energized through the self-reinforcing dynamics of an upward spiral to counter emotion dysregulation.The present study examined positive emotion–cognition interactions among individuals in partial remission from depression who had been randomly assigned to treatment with mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT; n = 64) or a waitlist control condition (n = 66). We hypothesized that MBCT stimulates upward spirals by increasing positive affect and positive cognition. Experience sampling assessed changes in affect and cognition during 6 days before and after treatment, which were analyzed with a series of multilevel and autoregressive latent trajectory models. Findings suggest that MBCT was associated with significant increases in trait positive affect and momentary positive cognition, which were preserved through autoregressive and cross-lagged effects driven by global emotional tone. Findings suggest that daily positive affect and cognition are maintained by an upward spiral that might be promoted by mindfulness training. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)
Ecological restoration is the process of repairing human damage to ecosystems. It involves reintroducing missing plants and animals, rebuilding soils, eliminating hazardous substances, ripping up roads, and returning natural processes such as fire and flooding to places that thrive on their regular occurrence. Thousands of restoration projects take place in North America every year. In Nature by Design, Eric Higgs argues that profound philosophical and cultural shifts accompany these projects. He explores the ethical and philosophical bases of restoration and the question of what constitutes good ecological restoration.Higgs explains how and why the restoration movement came about, where it fits into the array of approaches to human relationships with the land, and how it might be used to secure a sustainable future. Some environmental philosophers and activists worry that restoration will dilute preservation and conservation efforts and lead to an even deeper technological attitude toward nature. They ask whether even well-conceived restoration projects are in fact just expressions of human will. Higgs prefaces his responses to such concerns by distinguishing among several types of ecological restoration. He also describes a growing gulf between professionals and amateurs. Higgs finds much merit in criticism about technological restoration projects, which can cause more damage than they undo. These projects often ignore the fact that changing one thing in a complex system can change the whole system. For restoration projects to be successful, Higgs argues, people at the community level must be engaged. These focal restorations bring communities together, helping volunteers develop a dedication to place and encouraging democracy.
Humans regulate intergroup conflict through parochial altruism; they self-sacrifice to contribute to in-group welfare and to aggress against competing out-groups. Parochial altruism has distinct survival functions, and the brain may have evolved to sustain and promote in-group cohesion and effectiveness and to ward off threatening out-groups. Here, we have linked oxytocin, a neuropeptide produced in the hypothalamus, to the regulation of intergroup conflict. In three experiments using double-blind placebo-controlled designs, male participants self-administered oxytocin or placebo and made decisions with financial consequences to themselves, their in-group, and a competing out-group. Results showed that oxytocin drives a “tend and defend” response in that it promoted in-group trust and cooperation, and defensive, but not offensive, aggression toward competing out-groups.
The authors asked breast cancer (BC) patients to participate in 1 of 3 mind-body interventions (cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), yoga, or self-hypnosis) to explore their feasibility, ease of compliance, and impact on the participants' distress, quality of life (QoL), sleep, and mental adjustment. Ninety-nine patients completed an intervention (CBT: n = 10; yoga: n = 21; and self-hypnosis: n = 68). Results showed high feasibility and high compliance. After the interventions, there was no significant effect in the CBT group but significant positive effects on distress in the yoga and self-hypnosis groups, and, also, on QoL, sleep, and mental adjustment in the self-hypnosis group. In conclusion, mind-body interventions can decrease distress in BC patients, but RCTs are needed to confirm these findings.
Positive affect elicited in a mother toward her newborn infant may be one of the most powerful and evolutionarily preserved forms of positive affect in the emotional landscape of human behavior. This study examined the neurobiology of this form of positive emotion and in so doing, sought to overcome the difficulty of eliciting robust positive affect in response to visual stimuli in the physiological laboratory. Six primiparous human mothers with no indications of postpartum depression brought their infants into the laboratory for a photo shoot. Approximately 6 weeks later, they viewed photographs of their infant, another infant, and adult faces during acquisition of functional magnetic resonance images (fMRI). Mothers exhibited bilateral activation of the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) while viewing pictures of their own versus unfamiliar infants. While in the scanner, mothers rated their mood more positively for pictures of their own infants than for unfamiliar infants, adults, or at baseline. The orbitofrontal activation correlated positively with pleasant mood ratings. In contrast, areas of visual cortex that also discriminated between own and unfamiliar infants were unrelated to mood ratings. These data implicate the orbitofrontal cortex in a mother's affective responses to her infant, a form of positive emotion that has received scant attention in prior human neurobiological studies. Furthermore, individual variations in orbitofrontal activation to infant stimuli may reflect an important dimension of maternal attachment.
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Recent research across the disciplines of cognitive science has exerted a profound influence on how many philosophers approach problems about the nature of mind. These philosophers, while attentive to traditional philosophical concerns, are increasingly drawing both theory and evidence from empirical disciplines — both the framing of the questions and how to resolve them. However, this familiarity with the results of cognitive science has led to the raising of an entirely new set of questions about the mind and how we study it, questions which not so long ago philosophers did not even pose, let alone address. This book offers an overview of this burgeoning field that balances breadth and depth, with articles covering every aspect of the psychology and cognitive anthropology. Each article provides a critical and balanced discussion of a core topic while also conveying distinctive viewpoints and arguments. Several of the articles are co-authored collaborations between philosophers and scientists.
Envision a society where economic opportunity, social justice and sustainable culture all depend on environmental stewardship. Imagine a world where nurturing the health of the planet is the catalyst for global financial success and social stability. Can you?Ten years ago, 14 business owners in Portland, Oregon did. Using a sustainability tool called The Natural Step, these 14 business owners looked at their business plans through the lens of environmental sustainability and began the journey to create businesses that would be responsible for Earth’s natural systems while building economic growth. Along the way, all 14 developed a passion for sustainability. Join these inspiring pioneers as they describe the journeys they have taken, the challenges and unseen rewards they have experienced and their ultimate vision of a sustainable culture. Prepare to be inspired, motivated and energized to begin your journey and find your own Passion for Sustainability.
Objective To explore participants’ experience in placebo-controlled randomized clinical trials (RCTs) specifically in relationship to their expectations. Background Aspects of being in RCTs, such as informed consent, perception of benefit and understanding of randomization, have been examined. In contrast, little is known concerning the formation of patient expectations before and during trials. Methods Qualitative methods using in-depth interviews with a semi-structured interview guide of nine patients from four different RCTs. Data analysis was conducted using a codebook format arranging participant responses under broad analytical headings. The interviewer used a semi-structured interview guide to direct the conversation from one broad topic to the next within the context of the ongoing conversation. A checklist of topics encouraged participants to describe their experiences in RCTs. Narratives concerning expectation, blinding and placebo were compared to identify common themes. Results Patient anticipatory processes were influenced and modified both before and during the trial from multiple inputs. Such factors as past experiences in RCTs, past experiences of ineffective treatment, stress of being off regular medications, fear of being a ‘placebo responder’, input of non-study doctors or other health professionals, the experience of other participants, measurements of health parameters made during the trial and the presence or absence of side-effects all affected patient expectation. Conclusion Expectations in RCTs are not fixed and instead may be viewed as continuously shaped by multiple inputs that include experience and information received both before and during the trial. Variability in placebo response observed in previous studies may be related to the fluid nature of expectations. Trying to control and equalize expectations in RCTs may be more difficult than previously assumed.
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Evidence that placebo acupuncture is an effective treatment for chronic pain presents a puzzle: how do placebo needles appearing to patients to penetrate the body, but instead sitting on the skin’s surface in the manner of a tactile stimulus, evoke a healing response? Previous accounts of ritual touch healing in which patients often described enhanced touch sensations (including warmth, tingling or flowing sensations) suggest an embodied healing mechanism. In this qualitative study, we asked a subset of patients in a singleblind randomized trial in irritable bowel syndrome to describe their treatment experiences while undergoing placebo treament. Analysis focused on patients’ unprompted descriptions of any enhanced touch sensations (e.g., warmth, tingling) and any significance patients assigned to the sensations. We found in 5/6 cases, patients associated sensations including “warmth” and “tingling” with treatment efficacy. The conclusion offers a “neurophenomenological” account of the placebo effect by considering dynamic effects of attentional filtering on early sensory cortices, possibly underlying the phenomenology of placebo acupuncture.
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Wellness is now seen as central to redefining the National Health agenda. There is growing evidence that contact with nature and physical activity in nature has considerable positive effects on human health. At the most basic level humanity is reliant on the natural world for resources such as air and water. However, a growing body of research is finding that beyond this fundamental relationship exposure to the non-human natural world can also positively enhance perceptions of physiological, emotional, psychological and spiritual health in ways that cannot be satisfied by alternate means. Theoretical explanations for this have posited that non-human nature might 1) restore mental fatigue, 2) trigger deep reflections, 3) provide an opportunity for nurturing and 4) rekindle innate connections. In this paper the authors show how an individual's experience of wellness is strongly connected to their relationship with the natural world. This paper points to how non-human nature could be better utilised for enhancing human health and wellness.
Ruth King is an emotional wisdom author, coach, and consultant. She’s a guiding teacher at Insight Meditation Community of Washington and she’s on the teacher’s council at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. In addition, she’s the founder of Mindful Members Insight Meditation Community in Charlotte, NC. She has a Master’s Degree in Clinical Psychology and is the author of several publications including her new book, Mindful of Race: Transforming Racism from the Inside Out. In this stirring, thoughtful and wise conversation, she touches on the heart of racism and teaches how we can move to heal this heart disease.
Identifying and protecting “keystone structures” is essential to maintain biodiversity in an increasingly human-dominated world. Sacred forests, i.e. natural areas protected by local people for cultural or religious regions, may be keystone structures for forest birds in the Greater Himalayas, but there is limited understanding of their use by bird communities. We surveyed birds and their habitat in and adjacent to six Tibetan sacred forests in northwest Yunnan China, a biodiversity hotspot. Our goal was to understand the ecological and conservation role of these remnant forest patches for forest birds. We found that sacred forests supported a different bird community than the surrounding matrix, and had higher bird species richness at plot, patch, and landscape scales. While we encountered a homogeneous matrix bird community outside the scared forests, the sacred forests themselves exhibited high heterogeneity, and supported at least two distinct bird communities. While bird community composition was primarily driven by the vegetation vertical structure, plots with the largest-diameter trees and native bamboo groves had the highest bird diversity, indicating that protecting forest ecosystems with old-growth characteristics is important for Himalayan forest birds. Finally, we found an increased bird use of the sacred forests and their edges during 2010, a severe drought year in Yunnan, indicating that sacred forests may serve as refuges during extreme weather years. Our results strongly indicate that sacred forests represent an important opportunity for Himalayan bird conservation because they protect a variety of habitat niches and increase bird diversity at multiple spatial scales.
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