PROJECTS
ASTHMA STUDY
Asthma is a common, chronic disorder with significant health and socioeconomic burden for children, adults, families and society.It has higher prevalence in African American/multi-racial and low socioeconomic/education groups. Asthma primarily affects lung function, but also appears to impacts the brain due to inadequate brain oxygenation and stress. The current study will examine the relationship between asthma and cognition by administering a computerized neuropsychological test battery to a college population. The computerized neuropsychological test battery will assesses aspects of cognition such as attention, memory (verbal, visual), language, visuospatial skills, executive functioning, sensorimotor and emotional perception.
fNIRS
Our functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) studies allow us to learn about the brain and study its functional networks. fNIRS is a non-invasive, safe, compact, portable, and low-cost way to indirectly and directly monitor levels of oxygenation and de-oxygenation of blood in the brain. This can provide information about brain activity during a cognitive task or at rest. Since fNIRS is compact and portable, it offers the exciting potential to allow an ecologically valid investigation of brain function that could be translated into clinical environments in the future.
fNIRS & MINDFULNESS
Mindfulness interventions aim to foster greater attention and awareness on present moment experience. Research widely supports the claim that mindfulness meditation exerts beneficial effects on cognitive performance, and that these benefits may not require extensive training to be realized. This seems to be strong evidence for the idea that we may be able to modify our own minds to improve our cognitive processing. Incorporating the neuroimaging device fNIRS into the present study allows researchers to investigate the brain areas and networks that mediate these positive effects and to reveal the underlying neural changes that behavioral tests seem to indicate after a brief mindfulness induction.