Showing papers by "Maurizio Zollo published in 2019"

Short-term Sahaja Yoga meditation training modulates brain structure and spontaneous activity in the executive control network.

Abstract: Introduction While cross-sectional studies have shown neural changes in long-term meditators, they might be confounded by self-selection and potential baseline differences between meditators and non meditators. Prospective longitudinal studies of the effects of meditation in naive subjects are more conclusive with respect to causal inferences, but related evidence is so far limited. Methods Here, we assessed the effects of a 4-week Sahaja Yoga meditation training on gray matter density and spontaneous resting-state brain activity in a group of 12 meditation-naive healthy adults. Results Compared with 30 control subjects, the participants to meditation training showed increased gray matter density and changes in the coherence of intrinsic brain activity in two adjacent regions of the right inferior frontal gyrus encompassing the anterior component of the executive control network. Both these measures correlated with self-reported well-being scores in the meditation group. Conclusions The significant impact of a brief meditation training on brain regions associated with attention, self-control, and self-awareness may reflect the engagement of cognitive control skills in searching for a state of mental silence, a distinctive feature of Sahaja Yoga meditation. The manifold implications of these findings involve both managerial and rehabilitative settings concerned with well-being and emotional state in normal and pathological conditions.

The Manager’s Notepad: Working Memory, Exploration, and Performance

Abstract: This study builds upon March and Simon’s proposition that individual‐level differences must be considered when explaining decision‐making performance. We extend their discussion on the importance of decision‐makers’ attention to explain heterogeneous patterns of exploration and exploitation within the same uncertain environment. We develop a model of decision‐making under uncertainty in which ‘working memory’ – i.e., the ability to hold multiple elements in mind to actively process them – explains the emergence of heterogeneity in exploration‐exploitation choice patterns. We validated the model in a laboratory study and two replications involving 171 individuals. Our findings show that differences in working memory allow us to identify individuals who are more likely to choose exploration over exploitation appropriately, and thus achieve higher performance. We discuss the implications for management theories, and re‐propose the work of March and Simon as a unifying framework that still can be used to generate and test managerially relevant hypotheses.