Antoine Lutz's Homepage I am currently an associate scientist at the Waisman Lab for Brain Imaging & Behavior at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. I am doing my research in collaboration with Prof. R. J. Davidson and several researchers from his lab. Contact: Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging & Behavior University of Wisconsin-Madison 1500 Highland Avenue Madison, WI 53703-2280 (tel) (1).608.262.8705 (fax) (1).608.262.9440 alutz@wisc.edu I am interested in understanding the neural counterparts to subjective experience and, more generally, the mechanisms underlying mind-brain-body interactions. Current researches and collaborations include: Neuro-functional (fMRI) and neuro-dynamical (EEG) study of several standard meditative states (concentration/mindfulness, compassion and loving-kindness, and open presence meditations) in a group of highly trained Buddhist practitioners (more than 10, 000 hours of meditation in life).
How Our Brains Navigate the City - Commute To navigate certain parts of New York City — namely Queens and much of Manhattan — all you need to be able to do is count. In Manhattan neighborhoods like the West Village, and most of Brooklyn, things get a good bit trickier. You can no longer depend on the logical numbered progression of streets and avenues, and must instead rely on some other picture inside your head. For a while now psychologists have debated just what that picture looks like. A third alternative suggests that our internal GPS system is informed by frequently looking at maps. Frankenstein and colleagues recruited 26 people from Tübingen to participate in a test of spatial knowledge of their home. Their results suggest that our mental maps rely less on local reference points or memory-based maps and more on geographical orientation. For one thing, the landmarks they chose aren't on typical maps, and some of the participants reported not having viewed a map of Tübingen for decades.
Like it Or Not, Emotions Will Drive the Decisions You Make Today Your emotions will drive the decisions you make today, and your success may depend upon your ability to understand and interpret them. When an emotion is triggered in your brain, your nervous systems responds by creating feelings in your body (what many people refer to as a "gut feeling") and certain thoughts in your mind. A great deal of your decisions are informed by your emotional responses because that is what emotions are designed to do: to appraise and summarize an experience and inform your actions. But if an emotion is triggered, just how much should you pay attention to your visceral response and the thoughts it creates? Emotions are not particularly sophisticated or precise, but their speed and utility make up for what they lack in sophistication and precision. Emotions, when they are not disordered, provide information about your circumstances in a simple, quick way that does not involve a lot of cognition (thinking about it). Emotions have tremendous action potential.
Human Connectome Project | Mapping the human brain connectivity The Mind's Hidden Switches: Scientific American Podcast Podcast Transcription Meet Dr. Bechard Nor, pioneer transplant surgeon and one of the many achievers helping to unlock human potential at Cutter Foundation. Steve: Okay, how do you do this again? Nestler: The ability of this chronic social stress to produce maladaptive changes in brain and behavior are mediated through epigenetic modifications of gene expression in particular emotional centers of the brain. Steve: That's Eric Nestler. Steve: The old nature versus nurture thing is very simplistic. Nestler: Yes, I think that's true. Steve: You come at this from a particular vantage point, because you're an addiction researcher. Nestler: Yes. Steve: But the findings that your lab generated would apply to great many biological phenomena. Nestler: That's right. Steve: So, let's talk about the nuts and bolts of the research. Nestler: Right. Steve: Right and development is the clearest example. Nestler: It's the best established by far. Steve: Right. Nestler: Exactly. Nestler: Exactly. Steve: Right.
10 Ways Gratitude Can Change Your Life & 4 Step Gratitude Plan Gratitude can motivate others, increase self-control, build social ties and more…plus 4-step gratitude plan. Gratitude is the new miracle emotion. Although gratitude has been around for as long as human beings, it’s only recently started to get the big thumbs-up from science. So here are 10 ways gratitude can change your life, followed by a quick 4-step plan to help maximise your own gratitude, whatever level you start from. There’s even a trick for those suffering from ‘gratitude burnout’. 1. Gratitude is different things to different people: amongst them could be counting your blessings, savouring what life has given you, thanking someone or wondering at the natural world. Whatever form it takes, one of the best known and most researched effects of practicing gratitude is it makes you happier. Participants in one study were 25% happier, on average, after practicing a little gratitude over a 10-week period. 2. Gratitude isn’t just about feeling better, it’s also about thinking better. 3. 4.
Paul Thompson's Research Publications The brain's center of reasoning and problem solving is among the last to mature, a new study graphically reveals. The decade-long magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) study of normal brain development, from ages 4 to 21, by researchers at NIH's National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) shows that such "higher-order" brain centers, such as the prefrontal cortex, don't fully develop until young adulthood. A time-lapse 3-D movie that compresses 15 years of human brain maturation, ages 5 to 20, into seconds shows gray matter - the working tissue of the brain's cortex - diminishing in a back-to-front wave, likely reflecting the pruning of unused neuronal connections during the teen years. "To interpret brain changes we were seeing in neurodevelopmental disorders like schizophrenia, we needed a better picture of how the brain normally develops," explained Rapoport. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Article: [1] Nitin Gogtay MD, Jay N.
The 'rich club' that rules your brain - life - 02 November 2011 Not all brain regions are created equal – instead, a "rich club" of 12 well-connected hubs orchestrates everything that goes on between your ears. This elite cabal could be what gives us consciousness, and might be involved in disorders such as schizophrenia and Alzheimer's disease. As part of an ongoing effort to map – the full network of connections in the brain – Martijn van den Heuvel of the University Medical Center in Utrecht, the Netherlands, and Olaf Sporns of Indiana University Bloomington scanned the brains of 21 people as they rested for 30 minutes. The researchers used a technique called diffusion tensor imaging to track the movements of water through 82 separate areas of the brain and their interconnecting neurons. They found 12 areas of the brain had significantly more connections than all the others, both to other regions and among themselves. Members of the elite Best connected of all is the precuneus, an area at the back of the brain. Downfall of the rich More from the web
Emotional Wiring Different in Men and Women Men and women are actually from the same planet, but scientists now have the first strong evidence that the emotional wiring of the sexes is fundamentally different. An almond-shaped cluster of neurons that processes experiences such as fear and aggression hooks up to contrasting brain functions in men and women at rest, the new research shows. For men, the cluster "talks with" brain regions that help them respond to sensors for what's going on outside the body, such as the visual cortex and an area that coordinates motor actions. For women, the cluster communicates with brain regions that help them respond to sensors inside the body, such as the insular cortex and hypothalamus. These areas tune in to and regulate women's hormones, heart rate, blood pressure, digestion and respiration. Cahill and his co-author Lisa Kilpatrick, scanned the brains of 36 healthy men and 36 healthy women. Scientists still have to find out if one's sex also affects the wiring of other regions of the brain.
Morality Study Narrows Gap Between Mind And Brain The Brain: A Body Fit for a Freaky-Big Brain | Mind & Brain Aiello and Wheeler noted that this dramatic increase in brain size would seem to have required a dramatic increase in metabolism—the same way that adding an air-conditioning system to a house would increase the electricity bill. Yet humans burn the same number of calories, scaled to size, as other primates. Somehow, Aiello and Wheeler argued, our ancestors found a way to balance their energy budget. The scientists compared the sizes of organs in humans and other primates. Aiello and Wheeler christened their idea “the expensive tissue hypothesis.” Then William Leonard, a biological anthropologist at Northwestern University, put the expensive tissue hypothesis to a new test. This suggested that the gut-shrinking phenomenon within the primate groups was probably too subtle to explain our increase in brain size completely. Greg Wray, an evolutionary biologist at Duke University, is finding secrets to big brains in an entirely different place: the human genome.