Zitat:In recent years, however, researchers have increasingly capitalized
on a number of sophisticated study designs that circumvent the endogeneity problem, testing
the causal hypothesis that more education leads to higher intelligence. This unique class of
studies serves as the basis for the current meta-analysis.

We classified outcome tests in two ways. The first was into the broad intelligence subtype:
fluid intelligence (gf; tests that assessed skills such as reasoning, memory, processing speed,
and other tasks that could be completed without outside knowledge from the world);
crystallized intelligence (gc; tests that assessed skills such as vocabulary and general
knowledge); and general intelligence (g; tests that assessed a mixture of fluid and crystallized
skills).

Outcome test category. Splitting the outcome cognitive tests into three broad categories—
general (g), fluid (gf), and crystallized (gc) intelligence—we tested whether the category
moderated effect sizes. For the Control Prior Intelligence design, there were stronger
educational impacts on tests of g (1.876 IQ points, SE = 0.467, p = 5.94×10-05) than on gf
(0.836 points, SE = 0.097, p = .152), and the difference between g and gf was significant
(1.039 points, SE = 0.496, p = .036). There was only one outcome test of gc for the Control
Prior Intelligence design (1.893 points, SE = .348, p = 5.34×10-08), so we did not include it in
the moderator comparison here. For the Policy Change design, there were significant effects
for both g (2.314 IQ points, SE = 0.869, p = .008) and gf (2.272 points, SE = 0.765, p = .003),
but not gc (1.012 points, SE =1.125, p = .368); however, the effects on the three different
categories were not significantly different from one another (all difference p-values > .35).
Finally, for the School Age Cutoff design, there were significant effects of a year of
education on g (6.534 points, SE = 2.433, p = .007), gf (5.104 points, SE = 0.621, p =
2.05×10-16), and gc (5.428 points, SE = 0.170, p = 1.04×10-223); there were, however, no
significant differences between effect sizes across outcome types (difference p-values > .5).

Zitat:A new study has found that when adults and babies look at each other, their brain waves sync up. This creates what researchers call “a joint networked state” that facilitates communication between the two of them.

Zitat:The researchers recruited 193 participants at Lowlands — a large three-day music festival — and measured their blood alcohol level. The participants were told the God Helmet would electromagnetically stimulate their brain to elicit spiritual experiences, and they were also hooked up to a variety of sham medical equipment that was never turned on.

Each participant sat with the God Helmet on for 15 minutes while they were blindfolded and listened to earphones that played white noise. They were able to click a computer mouse to indicate when they were having an extraordinary experience.

Maij and his colleagues found that the God Helmet elicited a wide range of extraordinary experiences. Several participants reported strong bodily sensations, such as involuntary movements or the sensation of floating. Many also reported seeing imagery and hearing voices.

“In another study, which is currently under revision at the journal Consciousness & Cognition, we found that people who score high on absorption are especially responsive. Absorption is the tendency of some people to get fully immersed in external stimuli (e.g., watching a movie or listening to music) or internal stimuli (e.g., your own thoughts and sensations).”

“Thus, what we expect is going on is that when people undergo the placebo brain stimulation suggestion (i.e., we tell them about research on the God Helmet, we wear lab coats, we show them an fMRI scanner and they see a movie about a professor telling about her experiences with the God Helmet), some people get immersed/absorbed in this suggestion and come to experience more vividly what they are thinking,” Maij explained to PsyPost.

(04.12.2017, 11:03)Uefken schrieb: Lernen macht intelligenter. Wer hätte das hedacht. Spaß beiseite: gilt das auh für fluide Intelligenz? Dann wäre das bahnbrechend und würde alle Genrassisten und Intelligenznarzissten in die Schranken weisen.

Zitat:Only Bad for Believers? Religion, Pornography Use, and Sexual Satisfaction Among American Men.
Perry SL1, Whitehead AL2.
Author information
1a Department of Sociology , University of Oklahoma.2b Department of Sociology and Anthropology , Clemson University.
Abstract
Research has often demonstrated a negative association between pornography use and various intrapersonal and relationship outcomes, particularly for men. Several recent studies, however, have suggested that the negative association between pornography use and these indicators is stronger among more religious Americans, suggesting that moral incongruence (engaging in an activity that violates one's sacred values) and the attendant shame or cognitive dissonance, rather than pornography use per se, may be the primary factor at work. The current study tested and extended this theory by examining how religion potentially moderates the link between pornography use and sexual satisfaction in a national random sample of American adults (N = 1,501). Analyses demonstrated that while pornography use was negatively associated with sexual satisfaction for American men (not women), among men who rarely attended religious services or held a low opinion of the Bible this negative association essentially disappeared. Conversely, the negative association between frequency of pornography consumption and sexual satisfaction was more pronounced for men with stronger ties to conventional religion. These findings suggest that the connection between pornography use and sexual satisfaction, especially for men, depends largely on what viewing pornography means to consumers and their moral community and less so on the practice itself

Zitat:Optimal information processing requires appropriate mobilization of mental resources. Sleep loss increases homeostatic sleep pressure, thereby reducing mobilization of mental resources and consequently diminishing attention function. Meditation techniques engage attention processes and mobilize mental resources needed to sustain control of these processes, suggesting a promising role for meditation in counteracting attention deficits associated with sleep loss. Following a 21-day training period with a concentrative form of yoga nidra meditation, participants completed tests of sustained attention and attention interference control, and reported sleepiness and fatigue before and after restricted sleep, and then again after a session of meditation or rest following a crossover design. Sustained attention, sleepiness, and fatigue, but not attention interference control, were impaired following a single night of sleep restriction. Following a session of meditation, sustained attention performance improved and sleepiness decreased. Rest alone did not provide these benefits. These findings provide evidence that meditation can improve attention deficits following sleep loss. The impact of meditation on attention can be explained by reduced mobilization of mental processes since this improvement was associated with reduced sleepiness. A brief period of meditation training appears to be sufficient to elicit meditation benefits for attention following sleep loss. However, the duration of improvement following a bout of meditation remains unknown.

Zitat:Focused attention (FAM) and open monitoring (OMM) meditation types establish distinct metacontrol states that have immediate effects on how attention allocation strategies are utilised in subsequent, unrelated tasks. Because attention allocation is a central factor in sequential action, the present experiment investigated whether a single-session of FAM and OMM enhanced subsequent sequence performance and learning. Relative to a control listening task, a single session of FAM or OMM resulted in heightened sequence performance without affecting sequence learning on average. However, the level of effort experienced in the meditation conditions was found to significantly correlate with sequence learning indices and post hoc analyses revealed that low effort level in both meditation groups was associated with significantly greater general sequence performance improvements. Interestingly, the degree of sequence-specific learning that brought about these improvements was enhanced only by OMM and only in those reporting low effort level with this meditation type. Thus, only the combination of low effort and OMM established a cognitive control state that was beneficial for the acquisition of complex sequence structures. This work provides further insights into instantaneous effects of FAM and OMM on goal-oriented cognitive function while also raising important questions about the control of mediation-induced states.

Zitat:Within the field of neuroimaging, the discovery of a constellation of brain regions silently active when we are “resting” has provided a new view into the elusive effects of meditative practice. This network, called the default mode network (DMN), has been shown by functional neuroimaging to be active when an individual is at rest. Meta-analyses of the fMRI neurocorrelates of meditation have shown that across diverse practices, the most common general effect appears to be modulation of regions within the DMN. The specific practice of mantra meditation is a form of task-positive concentration. These kinds of task-positive activities are regarded by many to be an anti-correlate of DMN activity, thereby in theory, reducing activations within the DMN as concentration on a particular task increases. Yet previous studies on mantra meditation using language tasks as controls have reported only activations, not deactivations within the DMN. A study by Berkovich-Ohana showed that word repetition as control task could mask some of the effects of mantra, which may explain why previous studies using language repetition as control task failed to find significant DMN deactivations during mantra meditation. To investigate these differences, we analyzed mantra meditation using a finger-tapping control task which required a minimal amount of focused attention, yet enough to reduce blood flow to the major hubs of the DMN and minimally reduce network activity. Using a finger-tapping control thus modifies the research question: Can a brief course of this kind be shown to modulate DMN activations during mantra practice beyond that of a minimally active/non-language finger-tapping control
condition; and if so, can we see a training effect over time? Our results show that over a 2-week period of Kundalini yoga/meditation, participants successfully decreased activations within subregions of the DMN, namely the pregenual anterior cingulate cortex (PACC) and the precuneus, during mantra meditation with trends toward decreased activation in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) as well. These decreased activations were significant despite use of a finger-tapping control task known to deactivate these regions, indicating that mantra practice suppresses activation in these DMN regions beyond the active control task. These results emphasize the importance of the choice of control task and provide insight into the “mantra effect.” Here, we show that training in mantra meditation, like other practices such as focused attention and open monitoring, also has a suppressive effect on activity within the DMN.

Zitat:There are many studies on the effects of meditation interventions and some about meditation retreats in a group of participants, but how to study the brain of a single subject who decides to seclude himself/herself in a retreat? The aim of this study was to present a proof of concept for the feasibility of a single-subject analysis, which allows the study of meditation effects on the brain. We tested the proposed approach in a meditator entering a 5.5-week retreat. Neuroimaging data were acquired using diffusion tensor imaging, structural magnetic resonance imaging, and functional magnetic resonance imaging under resting-state condition. Comparing pre vs. post data, we noticed reductions in the visual cortices (primary and secondary), Brodmann area 8, and anterior cingulate cortex, while the amplitude of low-frequency fluctuations increased in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. A greater regional homogeneity was observed in the precuneus before the retreat. Reductions in the anterior cingulate cortex may be due to the retreat environment and routine and its focus on the management of mental affliction, allowing participants to develop a focused and calm mind (lessened conflicts). Other changes may be related to both less mind wandering and more recruitment of the attentional circuitry during the meditation practices.

Zitat:Long-term engagement in mindfulness meditation has been found to be effective in achieving optimal athletic performance through decreasing the level of anxiety, ruminative thinking, and enhancing the experience of flow. Besides long-term training effects, the past years have seen an increasing interest in the impact of single bouts of meditation on cognition. In particular, focused attention meditation (FAM) and open monitoring meditation (OMM) instantly bias cognitive-control styles toward “more” (i.e., serial processing) versus “less” (i.e., parallel processing) top-down control, respectively. In this opinion article, we argue that the distinction between FAM and OMM is particularly effective when considering different types of sports. We speculate that FAM may enhance performance in closed-skills sports (i.e., archery, gymnastic), based on serial processing, in which the environmental is predictable and the response is “self-paced.” In contrast, we consider OMM to promote performance in open-skills sports (i.e., soccer, sailboarding), based on parallel processing, in which the environmental contingencies determine an “externally-paced” response. We conclude that successful meditation-based intervention on athletic performance requires a theoretically guided selection of the best-suited techniques specific to certain types of sports.

Zitat:Nasal respiration entrains LFP oscillations in widespread regions of the rodent brain. Respiration-entrained oscillations may modulate local gamma activity.
Without tracking nasal respiration, respiration-entrained oscillations may be mistaken as delta (at low breathing rates) or theta oscillations (at high breathing rates).
Respiration and theta tend to modulate different gamma sub-bands; during REM sleep, respiration–gamma coupling decreases, while theta–gamma coupling increases.
Gamma exclusively couples to respiration in the mPFC, and not to theta, which can be present at the same time.
Respiration-entrained LFP rhythms are likely to constitute a global signal aiding cross-regional communication.
We revisit recent evidence showing that nasal respiration entrains oscillations at the same frequency as breathing in several regions of the rodent brain. Moreover, respiration modulates the amplitude of a specific gamma sub-band (70–120 Hz), most prominently in frontal regions. Since rodents often breathe at delta and theta frequencies, we caution that previous studies on delta and theta power and their cross-regional synchrony, as well as on delta–gamma and theta–gamma coupling, may have detected the respiration-entrained rhythm and respiration–gamma coupling. We argue that the simultaneous tracking of respiration along with electrophysiological recordings is necessary to properly identify brain oscillations. We hypothesize that respiration-entrained oscillations aid long-range communication in the brain.