Posts by Sara Lazar, PhD
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Mindfulness Training Promotes Neuroplasticity In Young Adults with A History of Childhood Maltreatment
In a pilot study, mindfulness training promoted hippocampal plasticity with associated improvements in clinical symptoms and episodic memory.
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Neural Mechanism Identified for Anxiety Reduction with Mindfulness Training
Psychiatrists have obtained functional MRI evidence that brain restructuring, leading to improvements in extinction of fearful associations, explains why mindfulness training can reduce stress and anxiety.
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Mindfulness Training Reduces Proactive Interference in Working Memory
Researchers at Mass General have shown for the first time why mindfulness training affects both working memory and hippocampal volume—and why it might help treat a much broader range of conditions.
Biography
Sara W. Lazar, PhD, is an associate researcher in the Psychiatry Department at Massachusetts General Hospital and an assistant professor in psychology at Harvard Medical School. The focus of her research is to elucidate the neural mechanisms underlying the beneficial effects of yoga and meditation, both in clinical settings and in healthy individuals.
She is a contributing author to Meditation and Psychotherapy (Guilford Press). She has been practicing yoga and mindfulness meditation since 1994. Her research has been covered by numerous news outlets including the New York Times, USA Today, CNN, and WebMD, and her work has been featured in a display at the Boston Museum of Science.
