A5071393301- Mindfulness and Compassion Interventions
- Anxiety, Depression, Psychometrics, Treatment, Cognitive Processes
- Visual perception and processing mechanisms
- Neural dynamics and brain function
- Psychosomatic Disorders and Their Treatments
- Heart Rate Variability and Autonomic Control
- Psychological Well-being and Life Satisfaction
- Pain Mechanisms and Treatments
- Neuroscience, Education and Cognitive Function
- COVID-19 and Mental Health
- Functional Brain Connectivity Studies
- Pain Management and Placebo Effect
- Mind wandering and attention
- Photoreceptor and optogenetics research
- Neural and Behavioral Psychology Studies
- Neuroscience and Neural Engineering
- Indian and Buddhist Studies
- Retinal Development and Disorders
- Advanced Optical Imaging Technologies
- Musculoskeletal pain and rehabilitation
- Music Therapy and Health
- Child Therapy and Development
- Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology
- Gaze Tracking and Assistive Technology
- Ocular and Laser Science Research
Mind and Life Institute
2022-2024
Massachusetts General Hospital
2013-2022
Harvard University
2010-2022
Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging
2013-2022
Brigham and Women's Hospital
2019-2021
Boston University
2003-2020
Barre Town Middle and Elementary School
2019
Maastricht University
2018-2019
Brown University
2019
Charité - Universitätsmedizin Berlin
2019
The amygdala has been repeatedly implicated in emotional processing of both positive and negative-valence stimuli. Previous studies suggest that the response to stimuli is lower when subject a meditative state mindful-attention, beginner meditators after an 8-week meditation intervention expert meditators. However, longitudinal effects training on responses have not reported participants are ordinary, non-meditative state. In this study, we investigated how 8 weeks affects subjects Healthy...
Mindfulness meditation has a longstanding history in eastern practices that received considerable public interest recent decades. Indeed, the science, practice, and implementation of Based Interventions (MBIs) have dramatically increased years. At its base, mindfulness is natural human state which an individual experiences attends to present moment. been developed train individuals how incorporate this practice into daily life. The current article will discuss concept describe treatment...
Thalamic neurons respond to visual scenes by generating synchronous spike trains on the timescale of 10–20 ms that are very effective at driving cortical targets. Here we demonstrate this activity contains unexpectedly rich information about fundamental properties stimuli. We report occurrence firing cat thalamic cells with highly overlapping receptive fields is strongly sensitive orientation and direction motion stimulus. show stimulus selectivity robust, remaining relatively unchanged...
Background Psychological factors are known to significantly modulate itch in patients suffering from chronic itch. Itch is also highly susceptible both placebo and nocebo (negative placebo) effects. Brain activity likely supports nocebo-induced itch, but currently unknown. Methods We collected functional MRI (fMRI) data atopic dermatitis (AD) patients, a within-subject design, contrast brain response saline understood be allergen vs open-label control. Exploratory analyses compared results...
Central autonomic control nuclei in the brainstem have been difficult to evaluate non-invasively humans. We applied ultrahigh-field (7 T) functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), and improved spatial resolution it affords (1.2 mm isotropic), putative that and/or sense pain-evoked cardiovagal modulation (high-frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV) instantaneously estimated through a point-process approach). The time-variant HF-HRV signal was used guide general linear model analysis of...
Self-compassion meditation, which involves compassion toward the self in moments of suffering, shows promise for improving pain-related functioning, but its underlying mechanisms are unknown. This longitudinal, exploratory pilot study investigated effects a brief (eight contact hours, two weeks home practice) self-compassion training on brain processing chronic low back pain (cLBP).We evaluated functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) response to evoked pressure and anticipation during...
The timing of spiking activity across neurons is a fundamental aspect the neural population code. Individual in retina, thalamus, and cortex can have very precise repeatable responses but exhibit degraded temporal precision response to suboptimal stimuli. To investigate functional implications for populations natural conditions, we recorded vivo simultaneous responses, movies scenes, multiple thalamic likely converging common neuronal target primary visual cortex. We show that individual...
Chronic itch, a highly debilitating condition, has received relatively little attention in the neuroimaging literature. Recent studies suggest that brain regions supporting itch chronic patients encompass sensorimotor and salience networks, corticostriatal circuits involved motor preparation for scratching. However, how these different areas interact with one another context of is still unknown. We acquired BOLD fMRI scans 14 atopic dermatitis to investigate resting-state functional...
Although it is known that images tend to disappear when they are stabilized on the retina for tens of seconds or minutes, possible functions fixational movements during brief periods visual fixation occur natural viewing remain controversial. Studies investigated retinal stabilization stimuli presented less than a few have observed neither decrement in contrast sensitivity nor image fading. In this study, we analyzed effect discriminating orientation low-contrast and noisy small bar was...
OPINION article Front. Hum. Neurosci., 05 November 2013Sec. Cognitive Neuroscience Volume 7 - 2013 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2013.00741
An understanding of the neural code in a given visual area is often confounded by immense complexity stimuli combined with number possible meaningful patterns that comprise response spike train. In lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN), stimulation generates trains comprised short spiking episodes ("events") separated relatively long intervals silence, which establishes basis for in-depth analysis code. By studying this event structure both artificial and natural stimulus contexts at different...
The amygdala has been repeatedly implicated in emotional processing of both positive and negative-valence stimuli. Previous studies suggest that the response to stimuli is lower when subject a meditative state mindful-attention, beginner meditators after an 8-week meditation intervention expert meditators. However, longitudinal effects training on responses have not reported participants are ordinary, non-meditative state. In this study, we investigated how 8 weeks affects subjects Healthy...
Respiratory-gated Auricular Vagal Afferent Nerve stimulation (RAVANS) is a safe nonpharmacological approach to managing chronic pain. The purpose of the current study was examine (1) feasibility and acceptability RAVANS, combined with mindful meditation (MM) for low back pain (CLBP), (2) potential synergy MM+RAVANS on improving pain, (3) possible moderators influence pain.Pilot study.Pain management center at large academic medical center.Nineteen adults CLBP previous MM...
During behavior, rats and other rodents use their facial vibrissae to actively explore surfaces through whisking head/body movement, resulting in complex sensory inputs that vary over a large range of angular velocities temporal scales. How these manifest the patterns cortical firing events ultimately form perceptual experience is not well understood. Through single-unit recordings layer 4 neurons S1 anesthetized rat, we systematically quantified interactions between instantaneous velocity...
During visual fixation, small eye movements keep the retinal image continuously in motion. It is known that neurons system are sensitive to spatiotemporal modulations of luminance resulting from this In study, we examined influence fixational on statistics neural activity macaque's retina during brief intersaccadic periods natural fixation. The responses parvocellular (P) and magnocellular (M) ganglion cells different regions field were modeled while their receptive fields scanned images...
Natural visual stimuli have highly structured spatial and temporal properties which influence the way information is encoded in pathway. In response to natural scene stimuli, neurons lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) are temporally precise - on a time scale of 10-25 ms both within single cells across population. This scale, established by non stimulus-driven elements neuronal firing, significantly shorter than that scenes, yet critical for neural representation structure scene. Here,...