Meditation
Intervention: Study participants arrived at baseline and listened to a guided meditation for ten minutes and a Ted Talk for ten minutes. They were instructed to perform one guided meditation on their own later in the week. The control group listened to two Ted Talks back to back for a total of 20 minutes. The participants returned 7 days from baseline to repeat the tasks from baseline.
Aim: To assess the impact of guided meditation on interoception, stress, dietary habits, and cortical recruitment. Secondly, to determine which participants are more likely to respond to the effects of meditation. To determine this, we assessed personality characteristics, interoceptive awareness, dietary traits, and blood metabolites.
Basketball Study
Intervention: Participants were recruited to complete 3 basketball tasks while wearing a portable f-NIRS device, allowing for active recording of the activity during execution. The Task consisted of a basic shots drill, a dribbling and defender drill and a 3 point running drill. The groups were compared between 3 experience levels, Elite, Amateur and Novice and based on their shot attempt result.
Aim: The aim of this study was to decipher a brain region pattern that was associated with success, in order to differentiate successful cognitive thought as compared to failure within participants with various experience levels. This study also looked at the variation between experience level and results brain recruitment after a shot, looking at self reflection and cognitive processing.
Amino Acid Study
Intervention: Participants started by wearing the fNIRS (brain imaging) device on their forehead. The device was calibrated and they wore the device as they went through a series of cognitive tasks to assess their attention, motivation, and working memory. They will then remove the fNIRS device and go through a 24 hour food recall where they described in detail everything they ate and drank yesterday. Lastly, they were handed a laptop to answer a series of questions about their level of motivation, fatigue, sleep quality, and mental health.
Aim: To assess relationships among dietary amino acid intake, nutrient intake, cognition, mental health, and brain activity.
Dance Study
Intervention: Participants started by wearing the fNIRS device and a biosensor watch. The video recording equipment was then set up and they were instructed to stay inside the tape on the floor. They were then given an action phrase to incorporate into a dance choreography which they subsequently created. They were then asked to perform the choreography. They watched their performance back, highlighting if and where they felt negatively or positively about it. After that, they were able to refine their piece for a certain amount of time before performing it again.
Aim: To investigate how the brain responds to moments of creative and movement performance as a dancer. This study involved recording blood flow within the prefrontal cortex of the brain in order to understand which subregions of the brain are recruited during the dance creative process.