Atypical sensory processing in autistic spectrum development (ASD) is related to the quality of l... more Atypical sensory processing in autistic spectrum development (ASD) is related to the quality of life of autistic people (Lin & Huang, 2019), their participation in activities (Little et al., 2015), their mental health (Mazurek et al., 2013), stress levels in their caregivers (Nieto et al., 2016), and their social cognition (Green et al., 2018). The study seeks to better understand the cognitive and perceptual underpinnings of sensory processing in ASD in the central nervous system, particularly in terms of attentional hyper-focus. The auditory modality appears to be particularly salient in many autistic people's sensory experiences, including those of the applicant. Autistic individuals have been noted by caregivers to display atypical anxieties (Kerns et al., 2014), and according to one study, by far the most common such anxiety is fear of loud sounds, although fears of soft sounds are also cited (Lau et al., 2019). Interestingly, this pattern may suggest that auditory hyper-se...
One of the most universally accepted facts about autism is that it is heterogenous. Individuals d... more One of the most universally accepted facts about autism is that it is heterogenous. Individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder have a wide range of behavioral presentations and a variety of co-occurring medical and mental health conditions. The identification of more homogenous subgroups is likely to lead to a better understanding of etiologies as well as more targeted interventions and treatments. In 2006, we initiated the UC Davis MIND Institute Autism Phenome Project (APP) with the overarching goal of identifying clinically meaningful subtypes of autism. This ongoing longitudinal multidisciplinary study now includes over 400 children and involves comprehensive medical, behavioral, and neuroimaging assessments from early childhood through adolescence (2–19 years of age). We have employed several strategies to identify sub-populations within autistic individuals: subgrouping by neural, biological, behavioral or clinical characteristics as well as by developmental trajector...
This experiment was designed to explore whether brain norepinephrine (NE) serves as a specific re... more This experiment was designed to explore whether brain norepinephrine (NE) serves as a specific reward system for the power drive. Previous research has indicated that 3-methoxy-4-hydroxyphenyl glycol (MHPG), a urinary metabolite reflecting central NE turnover, is posi-tively correlated with features of assertiveness which one might expect of a person high in the need for power (n power) or in a state of aroused power motivation. Twenty-seven male under-graduates, 13 of whom were high and 14 of whom were low in n power as assessed by a TAT measure, were recruited as subjects. Before and after the laboratory session, subjects voided all urine and concentrations of epinephrine, norepinephrine and MHPG were obtained from sam-ples. The laboratory task consisted of 20 picture-word pairs in which the subject had to learn to anticipate the word associated with each picture before the word was presented. Five pairs of stimuli in each of the following picture-word combinations were presented ...
Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, 2017
During the past two decades, mindfulness meditation has gone from being a fringe topic of scienti... more During the past two decades, mindfulness meditation has gone from being a fringe topic of scientific investigation to being an occasional replacement for psychotherapy, tool of corporate well-being, widely implemented educational practice, and "key to building more resilient soldiers." Yet the mindfulness movement and empirical evidence supporting it have not gone without criticism. Misinformation and poor methodology associated with past studies of mindfulness may lead public consumers to be harmed, misled, and disappointed. Addressing such concerns, the present article discusses the difficulties of defining mindfulness, delineates the proper scope of research into mindfulness practices, and explicates crucial methodological issues for interpreting results from investigations of mindfulness. For doing so, the authors draw on their diverse areas of expertise to review the present state of mindfulness research, comprehensively summarizing what we do and do not know, while p...
... 327-360). New York: Academic. Kliepera, C., Wolff, PH, & Drake, C. (1... more ... 327-360). New York: Academic. Kliepera, C., Wolff, PH, & Drake, C. (1981). Bimanual coordination in adolescent boys with reading retardation. Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology, 23, 617-625. Leisman, G., & Ashkenazi, M. (1980). Aetiological factors in dyslexia: IV. ...
Microstate analysis of scalp EEG collected during sessions of guided compassion meditation over t... more Microstate analysis of scalp EEG collected during sessions of guided compassion meditation over the course of two 3-month residential meditation retreats
We present a novel manner in which to visualize the coding of qualitative data that enables repre... more We present a novel manner in which to visualize the coding of qualitative data that enables representation and analysis of connections between codes using graph theory and network analysis. Network graphs are created from codes applied to a transcript or audio file using the code names and their chronological location. The resulting network is a representation of the coding data that characterizes the interrelations of codes. This approach enables quantification of qualitative codes using network analysis and facilitates examination of associations of network indices with other quantitative variables using common statistical procedures. Here, as a proof of concept, we applied this method to a set of interview transcripts that had been coded in 2 different ways and the resultant network graphs were examined. The creation of network graphs allows researchers an opportunity to view and share their qualitative data in an innovative way that may provide new insights and enhance transpare...
The capacity to focus one's attention for an extended period of time can be increased through... more The capacity to focus one's attention for an extended period of time can be increased through training in contemplative practices. However, the cognitive processes engaged during meditation that support trait changes in cognition are not well characterized. We conducted a longitudinal wait-list controlled study of intensive meditation training. Retreat participants practiced focused attention (FA) meditation techniques for three months during an initial retreat. Wait-list participants later undertook formally identical training during a second retreat. Dense-array scalp-recorded electroencephalogram (EEG) data were collected during 6 min of mindfulness of breathing meditation at three assessment points during each retreat. Second-order blind source separation, along with a novel semi-automatic artifact removal tool (SMART), was used for data preprocessing. We observed replicable reductions in meditative state-related beta-band power bilaterally over anteriocentral and posterior ...
The ability to focus one’s attention underlies success in many everyday tasks, but voluntary atte... more The ability to focus one’s attention underlies success in many everyday tasks, but voluntary attention cannot be sustained for extended periods of time. In the laboratory, sustained-attention failure is manifest as a decline in perceptual sensitivity with increasing time on task, known as the vigilance decrement. We investigated improvements in sustained attention with training (~5 hr/day for 3 months), which consisted of meditation practice that involved sustained selective attention on a chosen stimulus (e.g., the participant’s breath). Participants were randomly assigned either to receive training first ( n = 30) or to serve as waiting-list controls and receive training second ( n = 30). Training produced improvements in visual discrimination that were linked to increases in perceptual sensitivity and improved vigilance during sustained visual attention. Consistent with the resource model of vigilance, these results suggest that perceptual improvements can reduce the resource dem...
Atypical sensory processing in autistic spectrum development (ASD) is related to the quality of l... more Atypical sensory processing in autistic spectrum development (ASD) is related to the quality of life of autistic people (Lin & Huang, 2019), their participation in activities (Little et al., 2015), their mental health (Mazurek et al., 2013), stress levels in their caregivers (Nieto et al., 2016), and their social cognition (Green et al., 2018). The study seeks to better understand the cognitive and perceptual underpinnings of sensory processing in ASD in the central nervous system, particularly in terms of attentional hyper-focus. The auditory modality appears to be particularly salient in many autistic people's sensory experiences, including those of the applicant. Autistic individuals have been noted by caregivers to display atypical anxieties (Kerns et al., 2014), and according to one study, by far the most common such anxiety is fear of loud sounds, although fears of soft sounds are also cited (Lau et al., 2019). Interestingly, this pattern may suggest that auditory hyper-se...
One of the most universally accepted facts about autism is that it is heterogenous. Individuals d... more One of the most universally accepted facts about autism is that it is heterogenous. Individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder have a wide range of behavioral presentations and a variety of co-occurring medical and mental health conditions. The identification of more homogenous subgroups is likely to lead to a better understanding of etiologies as well as more targeted interventions and treatments. In 2006, we initiated the UC Davis MIND Institute Autism Phenome Project (APP) with the overarching goal of identifying clinically meaningful subtypes of autism. This ongoing longitudinal multidisciplinary study now includes over 400 children and involves comprehensive medical, behavioral, and neuroimaging assessments from early childhood through adolescence (2–19 years of age). We have employed several strategies to identify sub-populations within autistic individuals: subgrouping by neural, biological, behavioral or clinical characteristics as well as by developmental trajector...
This experiment was designed to explore whether brain norepinephrine (NE) serves as a specific re... more This experiment was designed to explore whether brain norepinephrine (NE) serves as a specific reward system for the power drive. Previous research has indicated that 3-methoxy-4-hydroxyphenyl glycol (MHPG), a urinary metabolite reflecting central NE turnover, is posi-tively correlated with features of assertiveness which one might expect of a person high in the need for power (n power) or in a state of aroused power motivation. Twenty-seven male under-graduates, 13 of whom were high and 14 of whom were low in n power as assessed by a TAT measure, were recruited as subjects. Before and after the laboratory session, subjects voided all urine and concentrations of epinephrine, norepinephrine and MHPG were obtained from sam-ples. The laboratory task consisted of 20 picture-word pairs in which the subject had to learn to anticipate the word associated with each picture before the word was presented. Five pairs of stimuli in each of the following picture-word combinations were presented ...
Perspectives on psychological science : a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, 2017
During the past two decades, mindfulness meditation has gone from being a fringe topic of scienti... more During the past two decades, mindfulness meditation has gone from being a fringe topic of scientific investigation to being an occasional replacement for psychotherapy, tool of corporate well-being, widely implemented educational practice, and "key to building more resilient soldiers." Yet the mindfulness movement and empirical evidence supporting it have not gone without criticism. Misinformation and poor methodology associated with past studies of mindfulness may lead public consumers to be harmed, misled, and disappointed. Addressing such concerns, the present article discusses the difficulties of defining mindfulness, delineates the proper scope of research into mindfulness practices, and explicates crucial methodological issues for interpreting results from investigations of mindfulness. For doing so, the authors draw on their diverse areas of expertise to review the present state of mindfulness research, comprehensively summarizing what we do and do not know, while p...
... 327-360). New York: Academic. Kliepera, C., Wolff, PH, & Drake, C. (1... more ... 327-360). New York: Academic. Kliepera, C., Wolff, PH, & Drake, C. (1981). Bimanual coordination in adolescent boys with reading retardation. Developmental Medicine and Child Neurology, 23, 617-625. Leisman, G., & Ashkenazi, M. (1980). Aetiological factors in dyslexia: IV. ...
Microstate analysis of scalp EEG collected during sessions of guided compassion meditation over t... more Microstate analysis of scalp EEG collected during sessions of guided compassion meditation over the course of two 3-month residential meditation retreats
We present a novel manner in which to visualize the coding of qualitative data that enables repre... more We present a novel manner in which to visualize the coding of qualitative data that enables representation and analysis of connections between codes using graph theory and network analysis. Network graphs are created from codes applied to a transcript or audio file using the code names and their chronological location. The resulting network is a representation of the coding data that characterizes the interrelations of codes. This approach enables quantification of qualitative codes using network analysis and facilitates examination of associations of network indices with other quantitative variables using common statistical procedures. Here, as a proof of concept, we applied this method to a set of interview transcripts that had been coded in 2 different ways and the resultant network graphs were examined. The creation of network graphs allows researchers an opportunity to view and share their qualitative data in an innovative way that may provide new insights and enhance transpare...
The capacity to focus one's attention for an extended period of time can be increased through... more The capacity to focus one's attention for an extended period of time can be increased through training in contemplative practices. However, the cognitive processes engaged during meditation that support trait changes in cognition are not well characterized. We conducted a longitudinal wait-list controlled study of intensive meditation training. Retreat participants practiced focused attention (FA) meditation techniques for three months during an initial retreat. Wait-list participants later undertook formally identical training during a second retreat. Dense-array scalp-recorded electroencephalogram (EEG) data were collected during 6 min of mindfulness of breathing meditation at three assessment points during each retreat. Second-order blind source separation, along with a novel semi-automatic artifact removal tool (SMART), was used for data preprocessing. We observed replicable reductions in meditative state-related beta-band power bilaterally over anteriocentral and posterior ...
The ability to focus one’s attention underlies success in many everyday tasks, but voluntary atte... more The ability to focus one’s attention underlies success in many everyday tasks, but voluntary attention cannot be sustained for extended periods of time. In the laboratory, sustained-attention failure is manifest as a decline in perceptual sensitivity with increasing time on task, known as the vigilance decrement. We investigated improvements in sustained attention with training (~5 hr/day for 3 months), which consisted of meditation practice that involved sustained selective attention on a chosen stimulus (e.g., the participant’s breath). Participants were randomly assigned either to receive training first ( n = 30) or to serve as waiting-list controls and receive training second ( n = 30). Training produced improvements in visual discrimination that were linked to increases in perceptual sensitivity and improved vigilance during sustained visual attention. Consistent with the resource model of vigilance, these results suggest that perceptual improvements can reduce the resource dem...
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