Embedded Files
At the DyNaC lab, we investigate the dynamics of brain function over different timescales. An important feature of our research is that we often use naturalistic stimuli, such as movies and auditory narratives, that allow us to study brain function in contexts similar to our daily life experiences. Our work spans three connected research lines across different timescales.
In a developing research line, we investigate how brain function and its dynamics change in advanced meditative states and in people who experience stabilized transformations of awareness (STA). STA refers to enduring changes in perception and awareness that become sufficiently stable to influence everyday experience and functioning. We aim to understand the neural mechanisms associated with advanced meditation and these longer-term transformations, and to investigate how changes in brain dynamics relate to changes in subjective experience and everyday functioning.
In our research line on aging, we explore how the accumulation of knowledge over the lifespan allows older adults to keep functioning well in daily life. And how the ability for older adults to predict what happens next might migate age-related change in real-world like situations. We develop novel ways to investigate this prediction in naturalistic contexts.
Our third line of research investigates how the brain segments and integrates information over time into meaningful events and neural states, where neural states are temporally stable patterns of neural activity. Across the cortical hierarchy, regions segment information at different temporal scales. We investigate the properties of this segmentation mechanism; how it relates to our experience of temporal events, how it is shaped by attention and drives memory encoding, and how it relates to the information that is represented in specific brain regions.
To study these questions, we use and develop cutting-edge techniques for measuring brain function, such as data-driven methods for neural state segmentation and encoding models and large language models to investigate language processing in naturalistic settings. Our group is committed to creating a safe, open and inclusive research environment with a healthy balance between life and work.
Common themes
Common themes
Advanced meditation and transformations of awareness
How can intensive meditation practice and other transformative experiences change the way we perceive and experience the world? What happens in the brain during advanced meditative states, and how might repeated experiences of these states lead to enduring changes in everyday awareness? In this research, we study advanced meditative states and Stabilized Transformations of Awareness (STA): lasting changes in perception, self-experience, and awareness that become sufficiently stable to influence everyday life. We combine detailed measures of subjective experience with measurements of brain function to investigate the neural dynamics associated with these states and transformations. In particular, we aim to understand what changes in brain organization accompany advanced meditation and whether enduring transformations of awareness are associated with characteristic changes in how the brain processes and integrates information.
Knowledge and experience benefit the aging brain
In society and in science, aging is often seen as a process of decline. However, if we look more deeply, we see that this is not the whole story. Many of most challenging jobs in society are performed by older adults. To understand this disrepancy, we need to consider the knowledge and experience that older adults acquire over their lifetime. Most research places older adults in artificial environments where they cannot rely on this prior knowledge. In our research we study older and younger adults in naturalistic settings, which allows them to make optimal use of their prior experiences as they are processing new information. We specifically investigate whether older adults rely more on predictive processing than younger adults and whether this allows them to maintain high levels of cognitive functioning.
Event segmentation and neural states
How does our brain enable us to perceive and remember the complex real-world experiences that we have every day? How do we segment our experience into discrete events that we can understand and remember? At which timescales do different brain regions organize our experiences? To be able to answer these questions, we have developed new analysis methods that can identify transitions between neural activity patterns in fMRI or M/EEG data (neural state boundaries). Neural state boundaries are associated with the perceptions of event boundaries that we experience subjectively. In this research, we use naturalistic stimuli like movies that are more similar to our real life experiences than the stimuli that are traditionally used in cognitive neuroscience.
Page updated
Google Sites
Report abuse