Neural mechanisms of hypnosis and meditation
Publication date: Available online 10 November 2015 Source:Journal of Physiology-Paris Author(s): Giuseppe De Benedittis Hypnosis has been an elusive concept for science for a long time. How-ever, the explosive advances in neuroscience in the last few decades have provided a ”bridge of understanding” between classical neurophysiological studies and psychophysiological studies. These studies have shed new light on the neural basis of the hypnotic experience. Furthermore, an ambitious new area of research is focusing on mapping the core processes of psychotherapy and the neurobiology/ underlying them. Hypnosis rese...
Source: Journal of Physiology Paris - November 11, 2015 Category: Physiology Source Type: research
A Case Series Study of the Neurophysiological Effects of Altered States of Mind During Intense Islamic Prayer
Publication date: Available online 19 August 2015 Source:Journal of Physiology-Paris Author(s): Andrew B. Newberg, Nancy A. Wintering, David Yaden, Mark R. Waldman, Janet Reddin, Abass Alavi This paper presents a case series with preliminary data regarding the neurophysiological effects of specific prayer practices associated with the Islamic religion. Such practices, like other prayer practices, are likely associated with several coordinated cognitive activities and a complex pattern of brain physiology. However, there may also be changes specific to the goals of Islamic prayer which has, as its most funda...
Source: Journal of Physiology Paris - August 19, 2015 Category: Physiology Source Type: research
Special issue: Neural basis of adaptive control
Publication date: February–June 2015 Source:Journal of Physiology-Paris, Volume 109, Issues 1–3 Author(s): Mark Laubach , Sebastien Bouret , Jerome Sallet (Source: Journal of Physiology Paris)
Source: Journal of Physiology Paris - May 29, 2015 Category: Physiology Source Type: research
How Kinesthetic Motor Imagery works: A predictive-processing theory of visualization in sports and motor expertise
Publication date: Available online 25 March 2015 Source:Journal of Physiology-Paris Author(s): K. Richard Ridderinkhof , Marcel Brass Kinesthetic Motor Imagery (KMI) is an important technique to acquire and refine motor skills. KMI is widely used by professional athletes as an effective way to improve motor performance without overt motor output. Despite this obvious relevance, the functional mechanisms and neural circuits involved in KMI in sports are still poorly understood. In the present article, which aims at bridging the sport sciences and cognitive neurophysiology literatures, we give a brief overview of relev...
Source: Journal of Physiology Paris - March 29, 2015 Category: Physiology Source Type: research
EEG-Guided Meditation: A Personalized Approach
Publication date: Available online 21 March 2015 Source:Journal of Physiology-Paris Author(s): Andrew A. Fingelkurts , Alexander A. Fingelkurts , Tarja Kallio-Tamminen The therapeutic potential of meditation for physical and mental well-being is well documented, however the possibility of adverse effects warrants further discussion of the suitability of any particular meditation practice for every given participant. This concern highlights the need for a personalized approach in the meditation practice adjusted for a concrete individual. This can be done by using an objective screening procedure that detects the wea...
Source: Journal of Physiology Paris - March 22, 2015 Category: Physiology Source Type: research
The role of supplementary eye field in goal-directed behavior
In conclusion, the overall function of SEF in goal-directed behavior seems to be the learning of context-dependent rules that allow predicting the likely consequences of different eye movements. This map of action value signals could be used so that eye movements are selected that best fulfill the current long-term goal of the agent. (Source: Journal of Physiology Paris)
Source: Journal of Physiology Paris - February 23, 2015 Category: Physiology Source Type: research
The role of prediction and outcomes in adaptive cognitive control
Publication date: Available online 16 February 2015 Source:Journal of Physiology-Paris Author(s): Anne-Marike Schiffer , Florian Waszak , Nick Yeung Humans adaptively perform actions to achieve their goals. This flexible behaviour requires two core abilities: the ability to anticipate the outcomes of candidate actions and the ability to select and imple ment actions in a goal-directed manner. The ability to predict outcomes has been extensively researched in reinforcement learning paradigms, but this work has often focused on simple actions that are not embedded in hierarchical and sequential structures that are cha...
Source: Journal of Physiology Paris - February 17, 2015 Category: Physiology Source Type: research
Mistakes were made: Neural mechanisms for the adaptive control of action initiation by the medial prefrontal cortex
We describe rhythmic neural activity that occurs when animals initiate a temporally extended action. Such rhythmic activity is coterminous with major changes in population spike activity. Testing animals over a series of sessions with varying pre-stimulus intervals showed that the signals adapt to the current temporal demands of the task. Disruptions of rhythmic neural activity occur on error trials (premature responding) and lead to a persistent encoding of the error and a subsequent change in behavioral performance (i.e. post-error slowing). Analysis of simultaneously recorded spike activity suggests that the presence of...
Source: Journal of Physiology Paris - January 31, 2015 Category: Physiology Source Type: research
The time course of action and action-word comprehension in the human brain as revealed by neurophysiology
Publication date: January–May 2008 Source:Journal of Physiology-Paris, Volume 102, Issues 1–3 Author(s): O. Hauk , Y. Shtyrov , F. Pulvermüller Numerous previous neuroimaging studies suggest an involvement of cortical motor areas not only in action execution but also in action recognition and understanding. Motor areas of the human brain have also been found to activate during the processing of written and spoken action-related words and sentences. Even more strikingly, stimuli referring to different bodily effectors produced specific somatotopic activation patterns in the motor areas. However, metabolic neuroi...
Source: Journal of Physiology Paris - November 16, 2014 Category: Physiology Source Type: research
Features and functions of nonlinear spatial integration by retinal ganglion cells
Publication date: November 2013 Source:Journal of Physiology-Paris, Volume 107, Issue 5 Author(s): Tim Gollisch Ganglion cells in the vertebrate retina integrate visual information over their receptive fields. They do so by pooling presynaptic excitatory inputs from typically many bipolar cells, which themselves collect inputs from several photoreceptors. In addition, inhibitory interactions mediated by horizontal cells and amacrine cells modulate the structure of the receptive field. In many models, this spatial integration is assumed to occur in a linear fashion. Yet, it has long been known that spatial integration ...
Source: Journal of Physiology Paris - November 16, 2014 Category: Physiology Source Type: research
Comparative analysis of oxytocin receptor density in the nucleus accumbens: An adaptation for female and male alloparental care?
Publication date: Available online 15 October 2014 Source:Journal of Physiology-Paris Author(s): Daniel E. Olazábal Parental behavior is commonly displayed by progenitors. However, other individuals, genetically related (e.g. siblings, aunts, uncles) or not with the newborns, also display parental behavior (commonly called alloparental, or adoptive behavior). I hypothesize that species that live in family or social groups where other non-reproductive members (males and females) take care of infants, have brain adaptations to promote or facilitate that behavioral response. The present work revises the evidence support...
Source: Journal of Physiology Paris - November 15, 2014 Category: Physiology Source Type: research
Geographic variation in acoustic communication in anurans and its neuroethological implications
Publication date: Available online 16 October 2014 Source:Journal of Physiology-Paris Author(s): Nelson A. Velásquez Geographic variation of traits may represent the first step for evolutionary divergence potentially leading to speciation. Signals are behavioral traits of particular interest for the study of variation at a geographic scale. The anuran acoustic communication system represents an excellent model for studies of this kind, because their vocalizations play a main role in reproduction and the extant variation in this system may determine the evolution of this group. This review is committed to studies on g...
Source: Journal of Physiology Paris - November 15, 2014 Category: Physiology Source Type: research
PET neuroimaging of extrastriatal dopamine receptors and prefrontal cortex functions
Publication date: December 2013 Source:Journal of Physiology-Paris, Volume 107, Issue 6 Author(s): Hidehiko Takahashi The role of prefrontal dopamine D1 receptors in prefrontal cortex (PFC) functions, including working memory, is widely investigated. However, human (healthy volunteers and schizophrenia patients) positron emission tomography (PET) studies about the relationship between prefrontal D1 receptors and PFC functions are somewhat inconsistent. We argued that several factors including an inverted U-shaped relationship between prefrontal D1 receptors and PFC functions might be responsible for these inconsistenc...
Source: Journal of Physiology Paris - October 12, 2014 Category: Physiology Source Type: research
Behavioral effects of transcranial Direct Current Stimulation (tDCS) induced dorsolateral prefrontal cortex plasticity in alcohol dependence
We examined the effects of repeated anodal tDCS (2mA, 35 cm2, 20min) over the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) on relapse to the use of alcohol in alcoholics from outpatient services, who received additional routine clinical treatment. Furthermore, event related potentials (ERPs), cognitive and frontal executive processes, craving, depressive and anxiety symptoms were obtained before and after treatment. From thirteen alcoholic subjects, seven were randomized to sham-tDCS and six to real tDCS treatment (once a week for five consecutive weeks). Depressive symptoms and craving were reduced to a larger extent in th...
Source: Journal of Physiology Paris - October 12, 2014 Category: Physiology Source Type: research
The effects of prenatal and postnatal environmental interaction: Prenatal environmental adaptation hypothesis
Publication date: December 2013 Source:Journal of Physiology-Paris, Volume 107, Issue 6 Author(s): Young-A Lee , Yukiori Goto Adverse antenatal maternal environments during pregnancy influence fetal development that consequently increases risks of mental health problems including psychiatric disorders in offspring. Therefore, behavioral and brain alterations caused by adverse prenatal environmental conditions are generally considered as deficits. In this article, we propose a novel hypothesis, along with summarizing a body of literatures supporting it, that fetal neurodevelopmental alterations, particularly synaptic ...
Source: Journal of Physiology Paris - October 12, 2014 Category: Physiology Source Type: research
