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Ability to Gain Control Over One’s Own Brain Activity and its Relation to Spiritual Practice: A Multimodal Imaging Study

Spiritual practice, such as prayer or meditation, is associated with focusing attention on internal states and self-awareness processes. As these cognitive control mechanisms presumably are also important for neurofeedback (NF), we investigated whether people who pray frequently (N = 20) show a high...

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Autores principales: Kober, Silvia E., Witte, Matthias, Ninaus, Manuel, Koschutnig, Karl, Wiesen, Daniel, Zaiser, Gabriela, Neuper, Christa, Wood, Guilherme
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Frontiers Media S.A. 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5442174/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28596726
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2017.00271
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author Kober, Silvia E.
Witte, Matthias
Ninaus, Manuel
Koschutnig, Karl
Wiesen, Daniel
Zaiser, Gabriela
Neuper, Christa
Wood, Guilherme
author_facet Kober, Silvia E.
Witte, Matthias
Ninaus, Manuel
Koschutnig, Karl
Wiesen, Daniel
Zaiser, Gabriela
Neuper, Christa
Wood, Guilherme
author_sort Kober, Silvia E.
collection PubMed
description Spiritual practice, such as prayer or meditation, is associated with focusing attention on internal states and self-awareness processes. As these cognitive control mechanisms presumably are also important for neurofeedback (NF), we investigated whether people who pray frequently (N = 20) show a higher ability of self-control over their own brain activity compared to a control group of individuals who rarely pray (N = 20). All participants underwent structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and one session of sensorimotor rhythm (SMR, 12–15 Hz) based NF training. Individuals who reported a high frequency of prayer showed improved NF performance compared to individuals who reported a low frequency of prayer. The individual ability to control one’s own brain activity was related to volumetric aspects of the brain. In the low frequency of prayer group, gray matter volumes in the right insula and inferior frontal gyrus were positively associated with NF performance, supporting prior findings that more general self-control networks are involved in successful NF learning. In contrast, participants who prayed regularly showed a negative association between gray matter volume in the left medial orbitofrontal cortex (Brodmann’s area (BA) 10) and NF performance. Due to their regular spiritual practice, they might have been more skillful in gating incoming information provided by the NF system and avoiding task-irrelevant thoughts.
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spelling pubmed-54421742017-06-08 Ability to Gain Control Over One’s Own Brain Activity and its Relation to Spiritual Practice: A Multimodal Imaging Study Kober, Silvia E. Witte, Matthias Ninaus, Manuel Koschutnig, Karl Wiesen, Daniel Zaiser, Gabriela Neuper, Christa Wood, Guilherme Front Hum Neurosci Neuroscience Spiritual practice, such as prayer or meditation, is associated with focusing attention on internal states and self-awareness processes. As these cognitive control mechanisms presumably are also important for neurofeedback (NF), we investigated whether people who pray frequently (N = 20) show a higher ability of self-control over their own brain activity compared to a control group of individuals who rarely pray (N = 20). All participants underwent structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and one session of sensorimotor rhythm (SMR, 12–15 Hz) based NF training. Individuals who reported a high frequency of prayer showed improved NF performance compared to individuals who reported a low frequency of prayer. The individual ability to control one’s own brain activity was related to volumetric aspects of the brain. In the low frequency of prayer group, gray matter volumes in the right insula and inferior frontal gyrus were positively associated with NF performance, supporting prior findings that more general self-control networks are involved in successful NF learning. In contrast, participants who prayed regularly showed a negative association between gray matter volume in the left medial orbitofrontal cortex (Brodmann’s area (BA) 10) and NF performance. Due to their regular spiritual practice, they might have been more skillful in gating incoming information provided by the NF system and avoiding task-irrelevant thoughts. Frontiers Media S.A. 2017-05-24 /pmc/articles/PMC5442174/ /pubmed/28596726 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2017.00271 Text en Copyright © 2017 Kober, Witte, Ninaus, Koschutnig, Wiesen, Zaiser, Neuper and Wood. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
spellingShingle Neuroscience
Kober, Silvia E.
Witte, Matthias
Ninaus, Manuel
Koschutnig, Karl
Wiesen, Daniel
Zaiser, Gabriela
Neuper, Christa
Wood, Guilherme
Ability to Gain Control Over One’s Own Brain Activity and its Relation to Spiritual Practice: A Multimodal Imaging Study
title Ability to Gain Control Over One’s Own Brain Activity and its Relation to Spiritual Practice: A Multimodal Imaging Study
title_full Ability to Gain Control Over One’s Own Brain Activity and its Relation to Spiritual Practice: A Multimodal Imaging Study
title_fullStr Ability to Gain Control Over One’s Own Brain Activity and its Relation to Spiritual Practice: A Multimodal Imaging Study
title_full_unstemmed Ability to Gain Control Over One’s Own Brain Activity and its Relation to Spiritual Practice: A Multimodal Imaging Study
title_short Ability to Gain Control Over One’s Own Brain Activity and its Relation to Spiritual Practice: A Multimodal Imaging Study
title_sort ability to gain control over one’s own brain activity and its relation to spiritual practice: a multimodal imaging study
topic Neuroscience
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5442174/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28596726
http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2017.00271
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