Neurophysiology of Silence Part A: Empirical Studies

Tal Ben-Soussan is the current Director of Research Institute for Neuroscience, Education and Didactics (RINED) in Assisi, Italy. She completed her Master's in Psycho-Biology at the Tel-Aviv University, and her PhD in Bar-Ilan University, Israel. Her expertise includes the study of the underlying electrophysiological and psychobiological mechanisms allowing cognitive and neuronal change following different training paradigms. Her work is dedicated to the aim of personal and social well-being. Prof. Joseph Glicksohn is the Head of the Research Lab of the Multidisciplinary Brain Research Center in Bar-Ilan University, Israel. He was trained in cognitive psychology (MA, PhD), with a focus on the study of subjective experience--and in particular, the microgenesis of cognition and consciousness, namely the microdevelopmental unfolding of cognition, whose earlier products, if forced into existence by whatever experimental (or natural) means, bear the hallmark of the type of cognition that one encounters in altered states of consciousness. Prof. Narayanan Srinivasan is currently a Professor and Head of the Department of Cognitive Science, Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur. He did his undergraduate degree in Physics from Madras University and Master degree in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Science, Bengaluru. He did his PhD in Psychology at University of Georgia, Athens, USA. He uses multiple approaches to study mental processes and has wide ranging interests in cognitive science and seem to be (accidentally!) getting involved in projects in different areas of cognitive science.

1. Letting it go: The interplay between mindfulness, mind wandering and creativity

2. Evaluating brain spectral and connectivity differences between silent mind-wandering and trance states

3. Quadrato Motor Training influences IL-1ß expression and creativity: implications for inflammatory state reduction and cognitive enhancement

4. Personality traits and environment: The effects of observing visual art on verbal creativity

5. The cloud of unknowing: Cognitive dedifferentiation in whole-body perceptual deprivation

6. Measures of music-like experience emergent in a sonic ganzfeld: an example of perceptual structuring on the edge of silence.

7. Increased relaxation, less boredom, and a faster passage of time during a period of silence in the forest.

8. Embodied empathy and abstract concept concreteness from the contemplative practice framework