Quantitative electroencephalogram-informed geometric meditation: a pilot validation study

Objectives: The emerging neuroscience literature has provided some evidence that meditation may have measurable effects on the electrophysiological parameters in the nervous system. We hypothesized that a novel geometric meditation approach comprising Geometric Somatic-Breathing Based [GSBB] and Geometric Introspective Based [GIB] meditation yield favorable electrophysiological changes at brain's cortical level and autonomic nervous system upon deep meditative experience

Materials and Methods: A multi-sensor digital sampling setup, including Electroencephalography [EEG], Galvanic Skin Response [GSR], and Heart Rate Variability [HRV] was used to obtain data and compare meditation and baseline epochs from 3 long-term geometric meditators

Results: The analysis revealed a notable change in autonomic nervous response, including Root Mean Square of Successive Differences [RMSSD] in Heart Rate Variability [HRV] as well as GSR and Quantitative Electroencephalogram [QEEG] correlates across 10 practiced techniques in training and post-training as compared to the baseline state

Conclusion: Such findings may serve as a pilot validation dataset to pursue further research on quantitative EEG-guided geometric meditation approach

Snoring, a vexing night symphony or clinical red flag?

Sleep disordered breathing [SDB] is widely known to negatively affect productivity due to the resultant sleepiness. Meanwhile, the significance of snoring, upper airway resistances and sleep apnea has not been well appreciated by the general public. There has not been enough understanding about this common symptom as a major cause of various cardiovascular or neurological diseases. To properly diagnose SDB, the understanding of current development in technology and devices in the field is deemed mandatory. This brief perspective paper has been an attempt to touch on the significance of snoring as a clinically noticeable symptom especially when becomes intense and persistent. The negative impact of SDB on the so-called lung-brain axis has turned to an evolving area of experimental research in the field of sleep medicine

comparative analysis on quality of life in mothers of autistic, blind, and normal-functioning children

Background: Quality of life largely depends on one's perception about different aspects life. The present investigation aimed at comparing the quality of life of mothers with autistic, blind, or normal-functioning children

Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional comparative study was done in a population of 146 mothers of children who aged 6-15 years old, in Shiraz, within the period 2013-2014. Ninety six mothers had children who were either blind or autistic, while 50 had children with no disabilities. Participants were enrolled through multi-stage cluster sampling method. The Quality of Life [QoL] questionnaire-100 was employed to collect data and one-way ANOVA was used to analyze results

Results: Findings demonstrated a significant difference in QoL of mothers with autistic, blind, and normal-functioning children. Mothers with normal-functioning children had higher levels of QoL than those with blind kids. In addition, the QoL of mothers with autistic children was lower than the other two groups

Conclusion:Considering the importance of quality of life in mothers' life and subsequent family functioning, relevant programs need to be pursued to improve conflict resolution in distressed groups

Prioritizing problem-solving strategies in parents of children with autism spectrum disorder; initial report from the smart initiative, Shiraz, Iran

The importance of education through interactive discussion-forums and seminars on family skills in coping with stress of having a child with Autistic Spectrum Disorder [ASD] seems to be under-attended. This prompted a local initiative entitled SMART [Shiraz Multidisciplinary Autism Research Team], to document the personal impact of autism on a preliminary group of parents and identify the correlates of stress and emotional well-being of having a child with ASD. Seventeen parents [11 mothers and 6 fathers] from 17 families who had a child with ASD volunteered to take part in the study. Each participant completed the general health questionnaire [GHQ-28]. They were invited to an interactive forum during the 'Brain Awareness Week-2016', where they engaged in discussions and small-group activities to share and rank their top-ten challenges with regard to emotional well-being and family functioning as well as rating their child's autistic symptoms, including stereotyped behaviors. The practice was done through audience-response analysis and post-it note technique for individual counseling with interdisciplinary experts' supervision. Mothers had significantly higher scores than fathers on measures of stress and emotional well-being. Results identified that the poorer health was associated with more behavioral problems of the child. This narrow sample of Iranian parents showed to experience broadly similar responses to parents in other countries, which suggests that the impact of ASD may outweigh cultural disparities. Family counseling and education is planned to be strategized and attempted by SMART, based on the priority challenges documented in this sample group

cognitive face of cerebellum; implications for extended research

For years, the role of cerebellum was believed to be limited to motor functions. Only since almost two decades ago, a new concept about cerebellum and its contribution to non-motor functions including cognition and emotion started to emerged. During the recent years, numerous studies have focused on the cerebellar non-motor functions with their results providing supportive evidence on this view. The connections between cerebellum and cortical and subcortical areas such as frontoparietal cortices and the limbic system provide additional evidence for the involvement of cerebellum in higher cognitive functions. This review has been an effort to discuss the studies assessing different aspects of cognitive and affective disorders following cerebellar damage, as well as the cerebellar activity during cognitive tasks using novel approaches including fMRI and PET scans

Navigating life with multiple sclerosis from the physical, social, and neurocognitive standpoints

Multiple sclerosis [MS] is a life-long condition with a wide and varied range of symptoms which can have a profound impact on all aspects of a patient's life including future plans, self-confidence, self-esteem, relationships, quality of life and employment prospects. Living with MS can certainly be difficult and frustrating. Over time, however, most people find ways to adapt and come to terms with many of the changes that MS can bring and do manage to live fairly full lives

Simulating the formation and dynamics of the implicit attitude; a social cognition study

The current study aimed to define some factors contributing to implicit attitude formation mainly in the social interaction context. An agent-based computer simulation of a society including autonomous agents and an attitude object was used to track the implicit attitude progress towards the object. The society could simulate the autonomic behaviors. We provided a complex adaptive system and observed an emergent phenomenon as the formation and dynamics of implicit attitude in the society. Our results suggested that population size and the number of high-impact individuals are important for the formation of implicit attitude in a society. Moreover, when the number of factors affecting agents' relationships increases, the dynamics of society tended to unpredictability. Our experience showed that diverse autonomous components of a society with implemented simple rules lead to emergent and seemingly organized system behavior, and the pattern of behavior can be affected by communication and environmental stress. Our study attempted to offer some key implications since few theories within the cognitive psychology and sociology have been stated in precise and unambiguous terms

Where neuroscience and art embrace; the neuroaesthetics

Neuroscience has recently contributed a lot to the understanding of aesthetic experience features. Science, art and creativity are not really distinctively different entities. The parallelism seen between the properties of art and organizational principals of the brain has been highlighted through neuroaesthetic studies. Aesthetic as a subjective experience has comprehensively been studies through neuro-scientific, psychological, sociologic and cultural standpoints. This is a controversial topic in cognitive neuroscience, meanwhile seemingly varied results of the conducted researches in this field may be conceptualized in a framework linking aesthetics to neuroscience of affective visual processing, reward circuitries and the nature of decision making. Approaching the question of art-brain parallelism, is along side with elucidating the relation between perception and aesthetic experience, and the features of aesthetic judgment and reward. Moreover, other factors such as cultural underpinnings undoubtedly come into play. In this review we used expert opinions and literary notions to present a report on how neuroscience has so far elaborated on different features of the aesthetic phenomenon hoping to probe areas of neuroaeshetic research which can potentially assess our cultural interface with the aesthetics and cognitive neuroscience