This review provides an overview of the field of social neuroscience from a European perspective and focuses mainly on outlining research topics which originated in European laboratories. After a brief historical synopsis of the emergence of this young field, the most relevant findings related to the investigation of the neural networks underlying our capacity to understand the minds of others are summarized. More specifically, three routes of social cognition are distinguished: (1) our capacity to mentalize, or to infer intentions and beliefs of others, (2) our capacity to mimic and understand other's motor actions, and (3) our capacity to empathize, or to share and understand the feelings of others. More recent studies focusing on social emotions such as love, compassion, revenge or our sense of fairness will be discussed linking the field of social neuroscience to the even younger field of neuroeconomics, with the focus on the study of human social interactions using game theoretical paradigms. Finally, the use of a multi-method and multi-disciplinary research approach combining genetic, pharmacological, computational and developmental aspects is advocated and future directions for the study of interactive minds are discussed.
Zotero Collections:
The purpose of the present study was twofold: (1) to obtain information on central mechanisms underlying cardiac self-regulation by comparing changes in cerebral asymmetry during self-control of heart rate with changes observed during the production of affective imagery; and (2) to explore sex differences in hemispheric function during performance of these two tasks. Heart rate (HR) and bilateral parietal EEG filtered for alpha were recorded from 20 right-handed males and females during two discrete experimental phases: cardiac control and image self-generation. HR showed significant effects between up versus down in prefeedback and feedback, and between anger versus relaxing imagery in the image phase. The EEG data indicated similar patterns of hemispheric asymmetry in both sexes during prefeedback. However, with the introduction of feedback, females shifted to greater relative right hemisphere activation comparable to what they show when specifically instructed to think emotional thoughts; males showed little differentiation between conditions. These data indicate that the Self-regulation of HR with biofeedback in males and females may be accomplished by the utilization of strategies involving different underlying patterns of neuropsychological processes.
Zotero Collections:
<p>The premise of this dissertation is that Buddhism must inculturate to meet the context of contemporary North America. Given the widespread interest in the application of Buddhist-derived ideas and practices in a host of secular settings, the capacity for teachers to engage with new ideas and disciplines will be crucial to the tradition's continued relevance. Because there is a high demand for and interest in Buddhist-derived programming in secular spaces, the number of individuals and organizations striving to meet this demand is mushrooming. This trend, coupled with a dearth of professional training programs and accreditation processes means that not only are there an eclectic array of approaches being used to teach meditation, but there is also minimal discourse engaging the crucial question of what constitutes effective pedagogy or adequate training processes for teachers. Chapter 1 establishes the need for the inculturation of Buddhism. This imperative for adaptation raises fundamental questions regarding how to best evaluate the authenticity of changes to traditional teaching methods. In Chapters 2 and 3, the Buddhist doctrine of skillful means is explored with an eye toward distilling guiding principles for analyzing this process of adaptation of teachings to meet a variety of cultural and personal perspectives. Drawing from Mahayana and pre-Mahayana sutras, traditions of commentary, and contemporary hermeneutics, a set of priorities based on the perspective of the Buddhist tradition is proposed. In Chapter 4, it is established that finding points of relevance to particular cultural concerns such as physical and mental health issues has been a vital component of existing efforts toward secularized meditation programs to date. This chapter concludes by drawing out of such present practices additional guiding principles to advance the process of pedagogical inculturation. Despite the widespread interest in applying meditation to a variety of settings, the pedagogy and philosophy of education behind the various approaches remains largely under-theorized. To fill this need, Chapter 5 establishes a set of guiding principles for pedagogical adaptation, drawing from the tradition's own self-understanding as well as from the insights of Western education as discussed in the prior 4 chapters. Finally, Chapter 6 offers an example of inculturated pedagogy at work.</p>
Zotero Collections:
Employing data from a mailed survey of a sample of ecologically and spiritually aware respondents (N = 829), the study tests the hypothesized relationship between ecologically sustainable behavior (ESB) and subjective well-being (SWB). The proposed link between ESB and SWB is the spiritual practice of mindfulness meditation (MM). In multiple regression equations ESB and MM independently explain statistically significant amounts of variance in SWB, indicating, for at least the study's sample, that there can be a relationship between personal and planetary well-being. The inter-relationships among SWB, ESB and MM suggest that for specific segments of the general population (e.g., the spiritually inclined) there may not necessarily be an insurmountable conflict between an environmentally responsible lifestyle and personal quality of life. The research reported here also points to the potential for meditative/mindful experiences to play a prominent role in the explanation of variance in SWB, a direction in QoL studies recently highlighted by several researchers (Layard 2005, pp. 189–192; Nettle 2005, pp. 153–160; Haidt 2006).
Zotero Collections:
Zotero Collections:
<p>OBJECTIVE: A variety of results from both population and laboratory studies suggest that stress and hot flashes (HFs) are correlated and that HFs are more severe in women with lower coping abilities. The objective of this pilot study was to obtain information on the feasibility and effect of participation in a mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) program on HF severity and menopause-related quality of life. DESIGN: Fifteen women volunteers reporting a minimum of seven moderate to severe HFs per day at study intake attended the eight weekly MBSR classes at the University of Massachusetts Medical School. Participants were assessed for menopause-related quality of life before beginning and at the conclusion of the MBSR program. Women also kept a daily log of their HFs through the course of the 7 weeks of the MBSR program and for 4 weeks after it. RESULTS: Women's scores on quality-of-life measures increased significantly, and the median reported HF severity, calculated as the weekly average of a daily HF severity score, decreased 40% over the course of the 11 weeks of the assessment period. The women were individually interviewed at the completion of their participation, and the results of the interviews were consistent with the results from daily diaries. CONCLUSIONS: These results provide preliminary positive evidence of the feasibility and efficacy of MBSR in supporting women who are experiencing severe HFs, and it warrants further investigation.</p>
Zotero Collections:
<p>BACKGROUND: Mindfulness means paying attention in the present moment, non-judgmentally, without commentary or decision-making. We report results of a pilot study designed to test the feasibility of using Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) (with minor modifications) as a smoking intervention. METHODS: MBSR instructors provided instructions in mindfulness in eight weekly group sessions. Subjects attempted smoking cessation during week seven without pharmacotherapy. Smoking abstinence was tested six weeks after the smoking quit day with carbon monoxide breath test and 7-day smoking calendars. Questionnaires were administered to evaluate changes in stress and affective distress. RESULTS: 18 subjects enrolled in the intervention with an average smoking history of 19.9 cigarettes per day for 26.4 years. At the 6-week post-quit visit, 10 of 18 subjects (56%) achieved biologically confirmed 7-day point-prevalent smoking abstinence. Compliance with meditation was positively associated with smoking abstinence and decreases in stress and affective distress. DISCUSSIONS and CONCLUSIONS The results of this study suggest that mindfulness training may show promise for smoking cessation and warrants additional study in a larger comparative trial.</p>
Zotero Collections:
Zotero Collections:
The aim of this article is to investigate how a contemplative orientation to teaching may facilitate wholeness for teachers and students through a portrait of Diana, a kindergarten teacher working in a contemplative elementary school. The portrait, one of three portraits from a larger study, illustrates three central features of contemplative teaching: compassion, integrity, and mindful awareness. These three central features develop internally within individual teachers and are animated and influenced externally through their role as teachers. The context of their teaching, relationships with students, parents, and colleagues, and pedagogical choices, in turn influence the three central features. The emphasis on wholeness, unity, and integration of a contemplative orientation to teaching moves us toward a view of teachers and students as beings with not only minds and heads but also hearts and bodies. Contemplative teaching offers educational communities a path toward transformational, holistic, and integrative learning and teaching.
Zotero Collections:
<p>Early childhood is marked by substantial development in the self-regulatory skills supporting school readiness and socioemotional competence. Evidence from developmental social cognitive neuroscience suggests that these skills develop as a function of changes in a dynamic interaction between more top-down (controlled) regulatory processes and more bottom-up (automatic) influences on behavior. Mindfulness training—using age-appropriate activities to exercise children's reflection on their moment-to-moment experiences—may support the development of self-regulation by targeting top-down processes while lessening bottom-up influences (such as anxiety, stress, curiosity) to create conditions conducive to reflection, both during problem solving and in more playful, exploratory ways.</p>
Zotero Collections:
Studies of homework effects in psychotherapy outcome have produced inconsistent results. Although these findings may reflect the comparability of psychotherapy with and without homework assignments, many of these studies may not have been sensitive enough to detect the effects sizes (ESs) likely to be found when examining homework effects. The present study evaluated the power of homework research and showed that, on average, current power levels are relatively weak in controlled studies ranging from 0.58 for large ESs to 0.09 for small ESs. Thus, inconsistent findings between studies may very well be due to low statistical power.
Responses to individuals who suffer are a foundation of cooperative communities. On the basis of the approach/inhibition theory of power (Keltner, Gruenfeld, & Anderson, 2003), we hypothesized that elevated social power is associated with diminished reciprocal emotional responses to another person's suffering (feeling distress at another person's distress) and with diminished complementary emotion (e.g., compassion). In face-to-face conversations, participants disclosed experiences that had caused them suffering. As predicted, participants with a higher sense of power experienced less distress and less compassion and exhibited greater autonomic emotion regulation when confronted with another participant's suffering. Additional analyses revealed that these findings could not be attributed to power-related differences in baseline emotion or decoding accuracy, but were likely shaped by power-related differences in the motivation to affiliate. Implications for theorizing about power and the social functions of emotions are discussed.
Zotero Collections:
This report is a summary of the Contemplative Net Project’s findings. The report begins by reviewing the historical and cultural context for the current interest in meditation and
other contemplative practices. The secular application of these practices is then surveyed in five professional fields: Business and Organizational Development, Medicine and Healthcare, Education and Youth Work, Law and Government, and Prison Work. Through
the use of stories, profiles, and quotes from research interviews, the report offers an indepth, narrative look at how exposure to meditation and other practices has impacted individuals, workplaces, and society at large.
Zotero Collections:
We examined a non-specific or relationship variable as well as a specific or technical variable (i.e. homework compliance) and their prediction of cognitive behavioral treatment (CBT) outcome for children with anxiety disorders. Therapist ratings of the therapeutic relationship (TR), but not homework compliance (HC) predicted CBT outcome at posttreatment (n = 138) and at 1-year follow-up (n = 121) for anxious children (aged 9 to 13 years). Findings from this study suggest the therapeutic relationship is a hardy non-specific factor in CBT of anxious children. Implications for the treatment of children with anxiety disorders using CBT and recommendations for research are offered.
Zotero Collections:
Interoception refers to the conscious perception of body signals. Mindfulness is a meditation practice that encourages individuals to focus on their internal experiences such as bodily sensations, thoughts, and emotions. In this study, we selected a behavioral measure of interoceptive sensitivity (heartbeat detection task, HBD) to compare the effect of meditation practice on interoceptive sensitivity among long term practitioners (LTP), short term meditators (STM, subjects that completed a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program) and controls (non-meditators). All participants were examined with a battery of different tasks including mood state, executive function and social cognition tests (emotion recognition, empathy and theory of mind). Findings Compared to controls, both meditators? groups showed lower levels of anxiety and depression, but no improvement in executive function or social cognition performance was observed (except for lower scores compared to controls only in the personal distress dimension of empathy). More importantly, meditators? performance did not differ from that of nonmeditators regarding cardiac interoceptive sensitivity. Conclusion Results suggest no influence of meditation practice in cardiac interoception and in most related social cognition measures. These negative results could be partially due to the fact that awareness of heartbeat sensations is not emphasized during mindfulness/vipassana meditation and may not be the best index of the awareness supported by the practice of meditation.
Zotero Collections:
Zotero Collections:
The present studies examined how observers infer moral attributes and beliefs from nonverbal pride displays. Pride is a self-focused positive emotion triggered by appraisals of the self's success, status, and competence. We hypothesized that when a target emits nonverbal cues of pride, he or she will be viewed by observers as higher in self-interest and therefore more likely to endorse ideologies that would benefit the self-specifically, merit-based resource distributions (meritocracy) as opposed to equality-based resource distributions (egalitarianism). Across studies, experimentally manipulated pride displays (Studies 1 and 3) and naturally occurring expressions of pride (Study 4) led observers to infer heightened support for meritocracy as opposed to egalitarianism. Analyses also revealed that people intuitively associate higher self-interest with enhanced support for meritocracy as opposed to egalitarianism (Study 2), and this association mediates the pathway from pride displays to inferences of heightened support for meritocracy and reduced support for egalitarianism (Studies 3 and 4). Across studies, we compare pride to expressions of joy or no emotion and demonstrate these effects using thin slices as well as static images.
Zotero Collections:
Zotero Collections:
<p>ABSTRACT: The 1995 publication of Goleman's Emotional Intelligence triggered a revolution in mental health promotion. Goleman's examination of Gardner's work on multiple intelligences and current brain research, and review of successful programs that promoted emotional health, revealed a common objective among those working to prevent specific problem behaviors: producing knowledgeable, responsible, nonviolent, and caring individuals. Advances in research and field experiences confirm that school-based programs that promote social and emotional learning (SEL) in children can be powerful in accomplishing these goals. This article reviews the work of the Collaborative to Advance Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL), its guidelines for promoting mental health in children and youth based on SEL, key principles, and examples of exemplary programs.</p>
Zotero Collections:
<p>Virtually all developmental neuropsychiatric disorders involve some dysfunction or dysregulation of emotion. Moreover, many psychiatric disorders with adult onset have early subclinical manifestations in children. This essay selectively reviews the literature on the neuroimaging of affect and disorders of affect in children. Some critical definitional and conceptual issues are first addressed, including the distinctions between the perception and production of emotion and between emotional states and traits. Developmental changes in morphometric measures of brain structure are then discussed and the implications of such findings for studies of functional brain activity are considered. Data on functional neuroimaging and childhood depression are then reviewed. While the extant data in this area are meager, they are consistent with studies in adults that have observed decreased left-sided anterolateral prefrontal cortex activation in depression. Studies in children on the recognition of emotion and affective intent in faces using functional magnetic resonance imaging are then reviewed. These findings indicate that the amygdala plays an important role in such affective face processing in children, similar to the patterns of activation observed in adults. Moreover, one study has reported abnormalities in amygdala activation during a task requiring the judgment of affective intent from the eye region of the face in subjects with autism. Some of the methodological complexities of developmental research in this area are discussed, and directions for future research are suggested.</p>
Zotero Collections:
<p>BACKGROUND: All therapists direct their attention in some manner during psychotherapy. A special form of directing attention, 'mindfulness', is recommended. This study aimed to examine whether, and to what extent, promoting mindfulness in psychotherapists in training (PiT) influences the treatment results of their patients. METHODS: The therapeutic course and treatment results of 124 inpatients, who were treated for 9 weeks by 18 PiTs, were compared. The PiTs were randomly assigned to 1 of 2 groups: (i) those practicing Zen meditation (MED; n = 9 or (ii) control group, which did not perform meditation (noMED; n = 9). The results of treatment (according to the intent-to-treat principle) were examined using the Session Questionnaire for General and Differential Individual Psychotherapy (STEP), the Questionnaire of Changes in Experience and Behavior (VEV) and the Symptom Checklist (SCL-90-R). RESULTS: Compared to the noMED group (n = 61), the patients of PiTs from the MED group (n = 63) had significantly higher evaluations (according to the intent-to-treat principle) for individual therapy on 2 STEP scales, clarification and problem-solving perspectives. Their evaluations were also significantly higher for the entire therapeutic result on the VEV. Furthermore, the MED group showed greater symptom reduction than the noMED group on the Global Severity Index and 8 SCL-90-R scales, including Somatization, Insecurity in Social Contact, Obsessiveness, Anxiety, Anger/Hostility, Phobic Anxiety, Paranoid Thinking and Psychoticism. CONCLUSIONS: This study indicates that promoting mindfulness in PiTs could positively influence the therapeutic course and treatment results in their patients.</p>
Zotero Collections:
The authors propose a model of the prosocial classroom that highlights the importance of teachers’ social and emotional competence (SEC) and well-being in the development and maintenance of supportive teacher–student relationships, effective classroom management, and successful social and emotional learning program implementation. This model proposes that these factors contribute to creating a classroom climate that is more conducive to learning and that promotes positive developmental outcomes among students. Furthermore, this article reviews current research suggesting a relationship between SEC and teacher burnout and reviews intervention efforts to support teachers’ SEC through stress reduction and mindfulness programs. Finally, the authors propose a research agenda to address the potential efficacy of intervention strategies designed to promote teacher SEC and improved learning outcomes for students.
Zotero Collections:
<p>In this meta-analysis, we give a comprehensive overview of the effects of meditation on psychological variables that can be extracted from empirical studies, concentrating on the effects of meditation on nonclinical groups of adult meditators. Mostly because of methodological problems, almost ¾ of an initially identified 595 studies had to be excluded. Most studies appear to have been conducted without sufficient theoretical background. To put the results into perspective, we briefly summarize the major theoretical approaches from both East and West. The 163 studies that allowed the calculation of effect sizes exhibited medium average effects ( = .28 for all studies and = .27 for the n = 125 studies from reviewed journals), which cannot be explained by mere relaxation or cognitive restructuring effects. In general, results were strongest (medium to large) for changes in emotionality and relationship issues, less strong (about medium) for measures of attention, and weakest (small to medium) for more cognitive measures. However, specific findings varied across different approaches to meditation (transcendental meditation, mindfulness meditation, and other meditation techniques). Surprisingly, meditation experience only partially covaried with long-term impact on the variables examined. In general, the dependent variables used cover only some of the content areas about which predictions can be made from already existing theories about meditation; still, such predictions lack precision at present. We conclude that to arrive at a comprehensive understanding of why and how meditation works, emphasis should be placed on the development of more precise theories and measurement devices.</p>
Zotero Collections:
<p>This new book, the fruit of a weeklong intermonastic dialogue held at New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur, California, includes (in addition to Zen Buddhism & Hinduism) the Chinese traditions of Taoism, Confucianism, & Chan Buddhism.</p>
Zotero Collections:
Pages |