Thesis Project Form

Research on meditation has been largely devoted to investigating its impact on mental health and well-being. This project aims to explore the neural dynamics of two styles of meditation (Focused Attention and Open Monitoring) to characterize their oscillatory profiles and possible modulation by expertise. The results would inform our understanding of the electrophysiology of meditation and give contribution in the domain of neurophenomenology.

The candidate will develop a pipeline to preprocess and analyze existing magnetoencephalography (MEG) data. The candidate will combine source-space MEG with advanced signal processing to assess the role of brain oscillations in meditation. The candidate will use statistical methods to test the impact of meditation states (focused-attention meditation and open monitoring meditation) and meditation expertise on these brain measures.

The candidate will learn standard scientific languages used in brain imaging and acquire the skills to implement and use sophisticated MEG brain imaging pipelines, from raw data to statistical analysis at the current state of the art, both from a theoretical (preprocessing, artifact rejection, solution of the MEG inverse problem) and practical (using MNE-Python) point of view. They will be actively involved in the design of the analysis and in research decisions, staying up to date on methods applied in meditation research.