Frontiers in psychology
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Frontiers in psychology · Jan 2014
Decreased electrophysiological activity represents the conscious state of emptiness in meditation.
Many neuroscientific theories explain consciousness with higher order information processing corresponding to an activation of specific brain areas and processes. In contrast, most forms of meditation ask for a down-regulation of certain mental processing activities while remaining fully conscious. To identify the physiological properties of conscious states with decreased mental and cognitive processing, the electrical brain activity (64 channels of EEG) of 50 participants of various meditation proficiencies was measured during distinct and idiosyncratic meditative tasks. ⋯ A group of participants with none or little meditation practice did not present those differences significantly. Our findings indicate that a conscious state of TE reached by experienced meditators is characterized by reduced high-frequency brain processing with simultaneous reduction of the low frequencies. This suggests that such a state of meditative conscious awareness might be different from higher cognitive and mentally focused states but also from states of sleep and drowsiness.
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Frontiers in psychology · Jan 2014
Sex differences in event-related potentials and attentional biases to emotional facial stimuli.
Attentional processes play an important role in the processing of emotional information. Previous research reported attentional biases during stimulus processing in anxiety and depression. However, sex differences in the processing of emotional stimuli and higher prevalence rates of anxiety disorders among women, compared to men, suggest that attentional biases may also differ between the two sexes. ⋯ Probe P1 amplitudes correlated negatively with self-reported alexithymia, most of these correlations were only observable in women. Our results suggest that women orient their attention to a greater extent to facial stimuli than men and corroborate that alexithymia is a correlate of reduced emotional reactivity on a neuronal level. We recommend using a difference wave approach when addressing attentional processes of orientation and disengagement also in future studies.
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Frontiers in psychology · Jan 2014
OB3D, a new set of 3D objects available for research: a web-based study.
Studying object recognition is central to fundamental and clinical research on cognitive functions but suffers from the limitations of the available sets that cannot always be modified and adapted to meet the specific goals of each study. We here present a new set of 3D scans of real objects available on-line as ASCII files, OB3D. ⋯ We further analyze several other variables derived from this data set, such as the correlations with object complexity. This new stimulus set, which was found to activate the Lower Occipital Complex (LOC) in another study, may be of interest for studies of cognitive functions in healthy participants and patients with cognitive impairments, including visual perception, language, memory, etc.
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Frontiers in psychology · Jan 2014
Emotional exhaustion and workload predict clinician-rated and objective patient safety.
To investigate the role of clinician burnout, demographic, and organizational characteristics in predicting subjective and objective indicators of patient safety. ⋯ At least in the short-term, clinicians seem to be able to maintain safety despite high workload and low predictability. Nevertheless, burnout poses a safety risk. Subjectively, burnt-out clinicians rated safety lower, and objectively, units with high emotional exhaustion had higher standardized mortality ratios. In summary, our results indicate that clinician psychological health and patient safety could be managed simultaneously. Further research needs to establish causal relationships between these variables and support to the development of managerial guidelines to ensure clinicians' psychological health and patients' safety.
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Frontiers in psychology · Jan 2014
Does neurocognitive function affect cognitive bias toward an emotional stimulus? Association between general attentional ability and attentional bias toward threat.
Although poorer cognitive performance has been found to be associated with anxiety, it remains unclear whether neurocognitive function affects biased cognitive processing toward emotional information. We investigated whether general cognitive function evaluated with a standard neuropsychological test predicts biased cognition, focusing on attentional bias toward threat. ⋯ The present study provides the first evidence that general attentional ability, which was assessed with a standard neuropsychological test, affects attentional bias toward threatening information. Individual cognitive profiles might be important for the measurement and modification of cognitive biases.