Dusana Dorjee

Mindfulness training for adolescents: A neurodevelopmental perspective on investigating modifications in attention and emotion regulation using event-related brain potentials.

Mindfulness training is increasingly being introduced in schools, yet studies examining its impact on the developing brain have been scarce. A neurodevelopmental perspective on mindfulness has been advocated as a powerful tool to enhance our understanding of underlying neurocognitive changes that have implications for developmental well-being research and the implementation of mindfulness in education. To stimulate more research in the developmental cognitive neuroscience of mindfulness, this article outlines possible indexes of mindfulness-based change in adolescence, with a focus on event-related brain potential (ERP) markers. We provide methodological recommendations for future studies and offer examples of research paradigms. We also discuss how mindfulness practice could impact on the development of prefrontal brain structures and enhance attention control and emotion regulation skills in adolescents, impacting in turn on their self-regulation and coping skills. We highlight advantages of the ERP methodology in neurodevelopmental research of mindfulness. It is proposed that research using established experimental tasks targeting ERP components such as the contingent negative variability, N200, error-related negativity and error positivity, P300, and late positive potential could elucidate developmentally salient shifts in the neural plasticity of the adolescent brain induced by mindfulness practice.

Long-Term Repetition Priming in Spoken and Written Word Production: Evidence for a Contribution of Phonology to Handwriting.

Although it is relatively well established that access to orthographic codes in production tasks is possible via an autonomous link between meaning and spelling (e.g., Rapp, Benzing, & Caramazza, 1997), the relative contribution of phonology to orthographic access remains unclear. Two experiments demonstrated persistent repetition priming in spoken and written single-word responses, respectively. Two further experiments showed priming from spoken to written responses and vice versa, which is interpreted as reflecting a role of phonology in constraining orthographic access. A final experiment showed priming from spoken onto written responses even when participants engaged in articulatory suppression during writing. Overall, the results support the view that access to orthography codes is accomplished via both the autonomous link between meaning and spelling and an indirect route via phonology.

Brain Potentials Dissociate Emotional and Conceptual Cross-Modal Priming of Environmental Sounds

The attentional effects triggered by emotional stimuli in humans have been substantially investigated, but little is known about the impact of affective valence on the processing of meaning. Here, we used a cross-modal priming paradigm involving visually presented adjective-noun dyads and environmental sounds of controlled affective valence to test the contributions of conceptual relatedness and emotional congruence to priming. Participants undergoing event-related potential recording indicated whether target environmental sounds were related in meaning to adjective-noun dyads presented as primes. We tested spontaneous emotional priming by manipulating the congruence between the affective valence of the adjective in the prime and that of the sound. While the N400 was significantly reduced in amplitude by both conceptual relatedness and emotional congruence, there was no interaction between the 2 factors. The same pattern of results was found when participants judged the emotional congruence between environmental sounds and adjective-noun dyads. These results support the hypothesis that conceptual and emotional processes are functionally independent regardless of the specific cognitive focus of the comprehender.

How does mindfulness modulate self-regulation in pre-adolescent children? An integrative neurocognitive review

HighlightsMindfulness training in pre‐adolescence could support self‐regulation development.Mindfulness may modulate bottom up orienting, salience detection and mind wandering.The P3a and LPP ERP components could index bottom up modulations.Mindfulness could enhance top down endogenous orienting and executive attention.The P3b, N2, ERN, Pe and LPP components could index top down modulations. ABSTRACT Pre‐adolescence is a key developmental period in which complex intrinsic volitional methods of self‐regulation are acquired as a result of rapid maturation within the brain networks underlying the self‐regulatory processes of attention control and emotion regulation. Fostering adaptive self‐regulation skills during this stage of development has strong implications for physical health, emotional and socio‐economic outcomes during adulthood. There is a growing interest in mindfulness‐based programmes for pre‐adolescents with initial findings suggesting self‐regulation improvements, however, neurodevelopmental studies on mindfulness with pre‐adolescents are scarce. This analytical review outlines an integrative neuro‐developmental approach, which combines self‐report and behavioural assessments with event related brain potentials (ERPs) to provide a systemic multilevel understanding of the neurocognitive mechanisms of mindfulness in pre‐adolescence. We specifically focus on the N2, error related negativity (ERN), error positivity (Pe), P3a, P3b and late positive potential (LPP) ERP components as indexes of mindfulness related modulations in non‐volitional bottom‐up self‐regulatory processes (salience detection, stimulus driven orienting and mind wandering) and volitional top‐down self‐regulatory processes (endogenous orienting and executive attention).

What can fMRI tell us about the locus of learning

Most functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studiesattempt to identify the brain regions involved in performinga task; that is, these studies are concerned with the locus orloci of on-lineprocesses.The successes and limitations of thisresearch programme have been discussed and debated atlength (e.g., Henson, 2005; Page, 2006; Coltheart, 2006;Logothetis, 2008; Vul and Kanwisher, 2010). Over the last fewyears there has been an explosion of fMRI research designedto identify the brain regions involved in learning visual (e.g.,Schwartz et al., 2002; Maertens and Pollman, 2005; Yotsumotoet al., 2008), auditory (e.g., Ja¨ncke et al., 2001), motor (e.g.,Parsons et al., 2005; Graydon et al., 2005), language (e.g.,Mochizuki-Kawai et al., 2006; Wong et al., 2007), and otherskills. These studies attempt to determine where on-lineneural processes leave their mark in long-term memory,such that performance is improved following training. Herewe consider this latter research programme, and argue thatthere are fundamental methodological and conceptual prob-lems with these studies that render their conclusionsregarding the locus of learning problematic.

Mindfulness Training in Primary Schools Decreases Negative Affect and Increases Meta-Cognition in Children

Studies investigating the feasibility and impact of mindfulness programs on emotional well-being when delivered by school teachers in pre-adolescence are scarce. This study reports the findings of a controlled feasibility pilot which assessed acceptability and emotional well-being outcomes of an 8-week mindfulness program (Paws b) for children aged 7–9 years. The program was delivered by school teachers within a regular school curriculum. Emotional well-being was measured using self-report questionnaires at baseline, post-training and 3 months follow-up, and informant reports were collected at baseline and follow-up. Seventy one participants aged 7–9 years were recruited from three primary schools in the UK (training group n = 33; control group n = 38). Acceptability of the program was high with 76% of children in the training group reporting ‘liking’ practicing mindfulness at school, with a strong link to wanting to continue practicing mindfulness at school (p < 0.001). Self-report comparisons revealed that relative to controls, the training group showed significant decreases in negative affect at follow-up, with a large effect size (p = 0.010, d = 0.84). Teacher reports (but not parental ratings) of meta-cognition also showed significant improvements at follow-up with a large effect size (p = 0.002, d = 1.08). Additionally, significant negative correlations were found between changes in mindfulness and emotion regulation scores from baseline to post-training (p = 0.038) and baseline to follow-up (p = 0.033). Findings from this study provide initial evidence that the Paws b program in children aged 7–9 years (a) can be feasibly delivered by primary school teachers as part of the regular curriculum, (b) is acceptable to the majority of children, and (c) may significantly decrease negative affect and improve meta-cognition.

Defining Contemplative Science: The Metacognitive Self-Regulatory Capacity of the Mind, Context of Meditation Practice and Modes of Existential Awareness

The term ‘contemplative’ is now frequently used in the fast growing field of meditation research. Yet, there is no consensus regarding the definition of contemplative science. Meditation studies commonly imply that contemplative practices such as mindfulness or compassion are the subject of contemplative science. Such approach, arguably, contributes to terminological confusions in the field, is not conducive to the development of an overarching theory in contemplative science, and overshadows its unique methodological features. This paper outlines an alternative approach to defining contemplative science which aims to focus the research on the core capacities, processes and states of the mind modified by contemplative practices. It is proposed that contemplative science is an interdisciplinary study of the metacognitive self-regulatory capacity (MSRC) of the mind and associated modes of existential awareness (MEA) modulated by motivational/intentional and contextual factors of contemplative practices. The MSRC is a natural propensity of the mind which enables introspective awareness of mental processes and behavior, and is a necessary pre-requisite for effective self-regulation supporting well-being. Depending on the motivational/intentional and contextual factors of meditation practice, changes in the metacognitive self-regulatory processes enable shifts in MEA which determine our sense of self and reality. It is hypothesized that changes in conceptual processing are essential mediators between the MSRC, motivational/intentional factors, context of meditation practice, and the modulations in MEA. Meditation training fosters and fine-tunes the MSRC of the mind and supports development of motivational/intentional factors with the ultimate aim of facilitating increasingly advanced MEA. Implications of the proposed framework for definitions of mindfulness and for future systematic research across contemplative traditions and practices are discussed. It is suggested that the proposed definition of contemplative science may reduce terminological challenges in the field and make it more inclusive of varied contemplative practices. Importantly, this approach may encourage development of a more comprehensive contemplative science theory recognizing the essential importance of first- and second-person methods to its inquiry, thus uniquely contributing to our understanding of the mind.

Written words supersede pictures in priming semantic access: a P300 study

The dynamic interplay of semantic access during information integration across the verbal and nonverbal domains and sensory modalities is poorly understood. Here, we compared the priming effects of four types of meaningful stimuli (pictures, written words, spoken words, and environmental sounds) on picture and written word targets referring to the same concept in all cases. P3b event-related brain potentials indexed automatic access to semantic memory in the different modalities. As expected, P3b amplitudes were large in the repetition priming condition, but also for word-picture and picture-word visual stimulus pairs. Critically, written word primes resulted in the largest P3b amplitudes whether elicited by written word or picture targets, suggesting a semantic priming supremacy of written words.

Effects of school-based mindfulness training on emotion processing and well-being in adolescents: Evidence from event-related potentials

Abstract In a non‐randomized controlled study, we investigated the efficacy of a school‐based mindfulness curriculum delivered by schoolteachers to older secondary school students (16–18 years). We measured changes in emotion processing indexed by P3b event‐related potential (ERP) modulations in an affective oddball task using static human faces. ERPs were recorded to happy and sad face oddballs presented in a stimulus stream of frequent faces with neutral expression, before and after 8 weeks of mindfulness training. Whilst the mean amplitude of the P3b, an ERP component typically elicited by infrequent oddballs, decreased between testing sessions in the control group, it remained unchanged in the training group. Significant increases in self‐reported well‐being and fewer doctor visits for mental health support were also reported in the training group as compared to controls. The observed habituation to emotional stimuli in controls thus contrasted with maintained sensitivity in mindfulness‐trained students. These results suggest that in‐school mindfulness training for adolescents has scope for increasing awareness of socially relevant emotional stimuli, irrespective of valence, and thus may decrease vulnerability to depression.

Mandatory Processing of Implied Content: Lessons from Context Effects on Implicitures

Since early experimental explorations of pragmatic phenomena it has been documented that novel and established utterances are processed differently. This is especially relevant to processing of a class of utterances called “implicitures” (Bach, 1994) in which some aspects of content are not explicitly expressed by the words used—they are implicit. It has been suggested that at least some implicitures have become “standardized” for their content (Bach, 1998; Garrett and Harnish, 2007). That is, the standard use of these expressions conveys the relevant content even though the words uttered do not present that content as conventional, linguistic meaning. While some studies suggest that the implicitures are mandatorily inferred regardless of context (Bach, 1998), others claim that impliciture processing is context-dependent (Sperber and Wilson, 1986). We investigated this issue using spatial, temporal and possession implicitures in two reaction time experiments. Implicitures were presented context-free or embedded in contexts that either supported their preferred interpretation or cancelled it. The results indicated that implicitures are readily available when no context is provided and are produced even when context forces an alternative interpretation. These findings support a standardization view for at least some impliciture processing. Possible differences in processing mechanisms across theories of impliciture processing and across impliciture types are discussed.