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- Psychologists find that a week of mindfulness meditation can reduce feelings of paranoia.
- The studies also pinpoint feelings of non-judgment to correlate with paranoid thoughts.
- The study was initiated to help lower paranoia in students.
As we hunker down, with the coronavirus-related news getting progressively worse, both on the medical and economic fronts, it's hard to avoid getting uneasy if not downright paranoid. One thing that can help deal with the emotional toll – mindfulness meditation, which has been shown to reduce paranoid feelings in a new study.
The psychologists from the University of London were motivated to conduct this investigation to help lower paranoia in students, 30 to 40% of whom exhibit it, based on past research. Paranoia was defined by the scientists as "the belief that another person is, or is planning, to intentionally cause one harm—be that physical, social or psychological." Studies linked this sense among the students with isolation, feelings of powerlessness and depression.
Mindfulness, in particular, was of interest fo the scientists as its has been a key component in new cognitive-behavioral therapies for the treatment of paranoia. The authors of the study looked at mindfulness as "moment-to-moment awareness, cultivated by paying attention in a specific way, in the present moment, as non-reactively, non-judgementally, and open-heartedly as possible".
One reason for the success of mindfulness in remedying this psychological condition of paranoia is that it encourages responding to internal experiences without becoming judgmental. Via the course of three studies, with two being based on questionnaires and one experimental, the scientists looked at whether a person's levels of non-judgmental thinking is linked to their levels of paranoia and if engagement in mindfulness can affect having paranoid thoughts.
From the two questionnaire studies involving 410 and 84 people (mostly white female psychology students), the researchers concluded that a person with greater levels of non-judgement would be predicted to exhibit lower levels of paranoia.
"The current findings provide further evidence of the specific role of non-judgement in experiences of nonclinical paranoia," wrote the researchers. "Furthermore, these are the first empirical data to show that high levels of non-judgement may buffer the impact of trait paranoia on daily experiences of state paranoia.
Mind fitness: How meditation boosts your focus, resilience and brain
The last study showed in the sample of 68 people that practicing mindfulness meditation could lower the amount of paranoid thoughts. This was true even after a short period like a week. As reported by PsyPost, participants of the study were put through one prerecorded guided mindfulness lesson per day, engaging in a quick body scan, breathing mindfully and practicing choiceness awareness.
Check out the study"Mindfulness and Paranoia: A Cross-Sectional, Longitudinal and Experimental Analysis," authored by Jessica Kingston, Francesca Lassman, Carla Matias and Lyn Ellett, published in the journal Mindfulness.
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Image source: Sereno, et al
Mind & Brain
- A powerful MRI combined with modeling software results in a totally new view of the human cerebellum.
- The so-called 'little brain' is nearly 80% the size of the cerebral cortex when it's unfolded.
- This part of the brain is associated with a lot of things, and a new virtual map is suitably chaotic and complex.
Just under our brain's cortex and close to our brain stem sits the cerebellum, also known as the "little brain." It's an organ many animals have, and we're still learning what it does in humans. It's long been thought to be involved in sensory input and motor control, but recent studies suggests it also plays a role in a lot of other things, including emotion, thought, and pain. After all, about half of the brain's neurons reside there. But it's so small. Except it's not, according to a new study from San Diego State University (SDSU) published in PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences).
A neural crêpe
A new imaging study led by psychology professor and cognitive neuroscientist Martin Sereno of the SDSU MRI Imaging Center reveals that the cerebellum is actually an intricately folded organ that has a surface area equal in size to 78 percent of the cerebral cortex. Sereno, a pioneer in MRI brain imaging, collaborated with other experts from the U.K., Canada, and the Netherlands.
So what does it look like? Unfolded, the cerebellum is reminiscent of a crêpe, according to Sereno, about four inches wide and three feet long.
The team didn't physically unfold a cerebellum in their research. Instead, they worked with brain scans from a 9.4 Tesla MRI machine, and virtually unfolded and mapped the organ. Custom software was developed for the project, based on the open-source FreeSurfer app developed by Sereno and others. Their model allowed the scientists to unpack the virtual cerebellum down to each individual fold, or "folia."
Study's cross-sections of a folded cerebellum
Image source: Sereno, et al.
A complicated map
Sereno tells SDSU NewsCenter that "Until now we only had crude models of what it looked like. We now have a complete map or surface representation of the cerebellum, much like cities, counties, and states."
That map is a bit surprising, too, in that regions associated with different functions are scattered across the organ in peculiar ways, unlike the cortex where it's all pretty orderly. "You get a little chunk of the lip, next to a chunk of the shoulder or face, like jumbled puzzle pieces," says Sereno. This may have to do with the fact that when the cerebellum is folded, its elements line up differently than they do when the organ is unfolded.
It seems the folded structure of the cerebellum is a configuration that facilitates access to information coming from places all over the body. Sereno says, "Now that we have the first high resolution base map of the human cerebellum, there are many possibilities for researchers to start filling in what is certain to be a complex quilt of inputs, from many different parts of the cerebral cortex in more detail than ever before."
This makes sense if the cerebellum is involved in highly complex, advanced cognitive functions, such as handling language or performing abstract reasoning as scientists suspect. "When you think of the cognition required to write a scientific paper or explain a concept," says Sereno, "you have to pull in information from many different sources. And that's just how the cerebellum is set up."
Bigger and bigger
The study also suggests that the large size of their virtual human cerebellum is likely to be related to the sheer number of tasks with which the organ is involved in the complex human brain. The macaque cerebellum that the team analyzed, for example, amounts to just 30 percent the size of the animal's cortex.
"The fact that [the cerebellum] has such a large surface area speaks to the evolution of distinctively human behaviors and cognition," says Sereno. "It has expanded so much that the folding patterns are very complex."
As the study says, "Rather than coordinating sensory signals to execute expert physical movements, parts of the cerebellum may have been extended in humans to help coordinate fictive 'conceptual movements,' such as rapidly mentally rearranging a movement plan — or, in the fullness of time, perhaps even a mathematical equation."
Sereno concludes, "The 'little brain' is quite the jack of all trades. Mapping the cerebellum will be an interesting new frontier for the next decade."
