Mindfulness meditation is a set of attention-based, regulatory and self-inquiry training regimes. Although the impact of mindfulness meditation training (MT) on self-regulation is well established, the neural mechanisms supporting such plasticity are poorly understood. MT is thought to act on attention through interoceptive salience and attentional control mechanisms, but until now conflicting evidence from behavioral and neural measures has made it difficult to distinguish the role of these mechanisms. To resolve this question we conducted a fully randomized 6-week longitudinal trial of MT, explicitly controlling for cognitive and treatment effects with an active control group. We measured behavioral metacognition and whole-brain Blood Oxygenation Level Dependent (BOLD) signals using functional MRI during an affective Stroop task before and after intervention. Although both groups improved significantly on a response-inhibition task, only the MT group showed reduced affective Stroop conflict. Moreover, the MT group displayed greater dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) responses during executive processing, consistent with increased recruitment of top-down mechanisms to resolve conflict. In contrast, we did not observe overall group by time interactions on negative affect-related RTs or BOLD responses. However, only participants with the greatest amount of MT practice showed improvements in response-inhibition and increased recruitment of dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), and right anterior insula during negative valence processing. Collectively our findings highlight the importance of active control in MT research, and indicate unique neural mechanisms for progressive stages of mindfulness training.

Extensive practice involving sustained attention can lead to changes in brain structure. Here, we report evidence of structural differences in the lower brainstem of participants engaged in the long-term practice of meditation. Using magnetic resonance imaging, we observed higher gray matter density in lower brain stem regions of experienced meditators compared with age-matched nonmeditators. Our findings show that long-term practitioners of meditation have structural differences in brainstem regions concerned with cardiorespiratory control. This could account for some of the cardiorespiratory parasympathetic effects and traits, as well as the cognitive, emotional, and immunoreactive impact reported in several studies of different meditation practices.

Numerous scientific studies are conducted on the neurophysiological effects of meditation practices and on the neural correlates of meditative states. However, very few studies have been conducted on the experience associated with contemplative practice: what it is like to meditate -from moment to moment, at different stages of different forms of practice -remains almost invisible in contemporary contemplative science. Recently, "micro-phenomenological" interview methods have been developed to help us become aware of lived experience and describe it with rigor and precision. This article presents the results of a pilot project aiming at applying these methods to the description of meditative experience, and highlights the interest of such descriptions for understanding, practicing and teaching meditation.

The nature of the dark sector of the Universe remains one of the outstanding problems in modern cosmology, with the search for new observational probes guiding the development of the next generation of observational facilities. Clues come from tension between the predictions from ΛCDM and observations of gravitationally lensed galaxies. Previous studies showed that galaxy clusters in the ΛCDM are not strong enough to reproduce the observed number of lensed arcs. This work aims to constrain the warm dark matter cosmologies by means of the lensing efficiency of galaxy clusters drawn from these alternative models. The lensing characteristics of two samples of simulated clusters in the warm dark matter (ΛWDM) and cold dark matter (ΛCDM) cosmologies have been studied. The results show that even though the CDM clusters are more centrally concentrated and contain more substructures, the WDM clusters have slightly higher lensing efficiency than their CDM counterparts. The key difference is that WDM clusters have more extended and more massive subhaloes than CDM analogues. These massive substructures significantly stretch the critical lines and caustics and hence they boost the lensing efficiency of the host halo. Despite the increase in the lensing efficiency due to the contribution of massive substructures in the WDM clusters, this is not enough to resolve the arc statistics problem.

After decades of complaints about "stepmotherly treatment," misdirected development efforts, and alien administrators, the people of Leh District in the Ladakh region of Jammu and Kashmir were finally given what was thought to be the key to a bright future for the area: autonomy in matters of development. India's central government, then headed by Prime Minister Narasimha Rao, and the state government, then led by Governor K. V. Krishna Rao, sent their heartiest congratulations and expressed ,their conviction that the swearing in of the members of the Ladakh Autonomous Hill Development Council, Leh (LAHDC), on September 3, 1995, was indeed marking the dawn of a new era. Four years have passed since that rainy day of celebration, hope, and upbeat speeches. In the eyes of many Ladakhis and observers, that time has been marked by internal rivalries, bickering, and a general lack of initiative on the part of the council. According to others, the council has failed because of the scheming and manipulations by state and national political interests. Yet others may argue that the autonomous development council model is inherently incapable of countering geopolitical and economic forces of dislocation and disenfranchisement, and merely enhances the loss of autonomy of the nation-state.In this article, an assessment of the experience of the LAHDC is offered to shed light not only on the contingencies that led to its present predicament-it is, arguably, too early to speak of failure-but also on the broader structural problems related to the autonomous council model, particularly with regard to "development" and democratic decisionmaking. The purpose of the present discussion is not