Rongxiang Tang

• Doctor of Philosophy
• Professor (Assistant) at Texas A&M University

Background Early identification of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) risk prior to irreversible brain damage is critical for improving the success of interventions and treatment. Cortical thickness is a macrostructural measure typically used to assess AD neurodegeneration. However, cortical microstructural changes appear to precede macrostructural atrophy a...

Background Early identification of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) risk prior to irreversible brain damage is critical for improving the success of interventions and treatment. Cortical thickness is a macrostructural measure typically used to assess AD neurodegeneration. However, cortical microstructural changes appear to precede macrostructural atrophy a...

Objectives: Childhood disadvantage is associated with lower general cognitive ability (GCA) and brain structural differences in midlife and older adulthood. However, the neuroanatomical mechanisms underlying childhood disadvantage effects on later-life GCA remain poorly understood. Although total surface area (SA) has been linked to lifespan GCA d...

Background Plasma neurofilament light chain (NfL) is a promising biomarker of neurodegeneration with potential clinical utility in monitoring the progression of neurodegenerative diseases. However, the cross-sectional associations of plasma NfL with measures of cognition and brain have been inconsistent in community-dwelling populations. Methods W...

This Opinion piece discusses several key research questions in health neuroscience, a new interdisciplinary field that investigates how the brain and body interact to affect our health behavior such as health mindsets, decision-making, actions, and health outcomes across the lifespan. To achieve physical, mental, and cognitive health, and promote h...

Stress is an established risk factor for negative health outcomes. Salivary cortisol and testosterone concentrations increase in response to acute psychosocial stress. It’s crucial to reduce stress for health and well-being through evidence-based interventions. Body-mind interventions such as meditation and Tai Chi have shown reduced cortisol level...

Background: Childhood disadvantage is a prominent risk factor for cognitive and brain aging. Childhood disadvantage is associated with poorer episodic memory in late midlife and functional and structural brain abnormalities in the default mode network (DMN). Although age-related changes in DMN are associated with episodic memory declines in older...

The domain of cognitive control has been a major focus of experimental, neuroscience, and individual differences research. Currently, however, no theory of cognitive control successfully unifies both experimental and individual differences findings. Some perspectives deny that there even exists a unified psychometric cognitive control construct to...

We are delighted to present you the Proceedings of the 2022 CNS meeting. The CNS meeting encourages approaches that combine theoretical, computational, and experimental work in the neurosciences, and provides an opportunity for participants to share their views. The abstracts corresponding to speakers' talks and posters are what you find collected...

Executive functions encompass effortful top‐down cognitive processes crucial for daily functioning. They are particularly vulnerable to aging in older adults and are often affected early in the course of Alzheimer’s disease. However, the neural mechanisms underlying aging‐related decline in executive functions are not well understood. Modal control...

Background Blood-based neurofilament light chain (NfL) is a promising biomarker of neurodegeneration across multiple neurodegenerative diseases. However, blood-based NfL is highly associated with renal function in older adults, which leads to the concern that blood-based NfL levels may be influenced by renal function, rather than neurodegeneration...

Executive function encompasses effortful cognitive processes that are particularly susceptible to aging. Functional brain networks supporting executive function—such as the frontoparietal control network and the multiple demand system—have been extensively investigated. However, it remains unclear how structural networks facilitate and constrain th...

Cognitive control serves a crucial role in human higher mental functions. The Dual Mechanisms of Control (DMC) account provides a unifying theoretical framework that decomposes cognitive control into two qualitatively distinct mechanisms – proactive control and reactive control. While prior behavioral and neuroimaging work has demonstrated the vali...

For the past 50 years, cognitive scientists have assumed that training attention and self-control must be effortful. However, growing evidence suggests promising effects of effortless training approaches such as nature exposure, flow experience, and effortless practice on attention and self-control. This opinion article focuses on effortless traini...

Cognitive control is a critical higher mental function, which is subject to considerable individual variation, and is impaired in a range of mental health disorders. We describe here the initial release of Dual Mechanisms of Cognitive Control (DMCC) project data, the DMCC55B dataset, with 55 healthy unrelated young adult participants. Each particip...

Background Overactivation of the salience network (SN) causes hyperarousal in insomnia patients and is associated with sleep-onset insomnia (SOI). Resting-state microstate 3 (RS-MS3) duration is closely related to SN overactivation. However, whether RS-MS3 duration is a biomarker for SOI has not yet been reported in the literature. In addition, SN...

The domain of cognitive control has been a major focus of experimental, neuroscience, and individual differences research. Currently, however, no theory of cognitive control successfully unifies both experimental and individual differences findings. Some perspectives deny that there even exists a unified psychometric cognitive control construct to...

Cognitive control serves a crucial role in human higher mental functions. The Dual Mechanisms of Control (DMC) account provides a unifying theoretical framework that decomposes cognitive control into two qualitatively distinct mechanisms – proactive control and reactive control. While prior behavioral and neuroimaging work has demonstrated the vali...

Foreword from the editors. We hosted four keynote speakers: Wolf Singer, Bill Bialek, Danielle Bassett, and Sonja Gruen. They enlightened us about computations in the cerebral cortex, the reduction of high-dimensional data, the emerging field of computational psychiatry, and the significance of spike patterns in motor cortex. From the submissions,...

The basic ability to encode numerical information and discriminate numerical quantity can be found in humans as well as certain nonhuman primates. However, humans are unique in that they can perform advanced numerical computation using abstract numerical symbols and number words after receiving formal mathematical instruction. Although similarities...

Global mental health has increasingly adopted a medicalized approach to addressing challenges and problems. However, medicalizing global mental health produces a narrow view of the problems and solutions because it mainly emphasizes biomedical factors in the globalization of mental health and is disputed cross-culturally. The focus of this chapter...

This handbook is currently in development, with individual articles publishing online in advance of print publication. At this time, we cannot add information about unpublished articles in this handbook, however the table of contents will continue to grow as additional articles pass through the review process and are added to the site. Please note...

Research investigating the effects and underlying mechanisms of mindfulness on cognitive functioning has accelerated exponentially over the past two decades. Despite the rapid growth of the literature and its influential role in garnering public interest in mindfulness, inconsistent methods in defining and measuring mindfulness have yielded variabl...

We describe an ambitious ongoing study that has been strongly influenced and inspired by Don Stuss's career-long efforts to identify key cognitive processes that characterize executive control, investigate potential unifying dimensions that define prefrontal function, and carefully attend to individual differences. The Dual Mechanisms of Cognitive...

Research investigating the effects and underlying mechanisms of mindfulness on cognitive functioning has accelerated exponentially over the past two decades. Despite the rapid growth of the literature and its influential role in garnering public interest in mindfulness, inconsistent methods in defining and measuring mindfulness have yielded variabl...

The ability to flexibly adapt thoughts and actions in a goal-directed manner appears to rely on cognitive control mechanisms that are strongly impacted by individual differences. A powerful research strategy for investigating the nature of individual variation is to study monozygotic (identical) twins. Evidence of twin effects have been observed in...

Cognitive control is a critical higher mental function, which is subject to considerable individual variation and is impaired in a range of mental health disorders. We describe here the initial release of Dual Mechanisms of Cognitive Control (DMCC) project data, the DMCC55B dataset, with 55 healthy unrelated young adult participants. Each participa...

The ability to flexibly adapt thoughts and actions in a goal-directed manner appears to rely on cognitive control mechanisms that are strongly impacted by individual differences. A powerful research strategy for investigating the nature of individual variation is to study monozygotic (identical) twins. Evidence of twin effects have been observed in...

Previous studies suggest that the practice of long-term (months to years) mindfulness meditation induces structural plasticity in gray matter. However, it remains unknown whether short-term (<30 days) mindfulness meditation in novices could induce similar structural changes. Our previous randomized controlled trials (RCTs) identified white matter c...

Sleep quality can affect the physical and mental health, as well as the personal development of college students. Mindfulness practices are known to ameliorate sleep disorder and improve sleep quality. Trait mindfulness, an innate capacity often enhanced by mindfulness training, has been shown to relate to better sleep quality and different aspects...

The Dual Mechanisms of Cognitive Control (DMCC) project provides an ambitious and rigorous empirical test of a theoretical framework that posits two key cognitive control modes: proactive and reactive. The framework’s central tenets are that proactive and reactive control reflect domain-general dimensions of individual variation, with distinctive n...

The growing popularity of mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) has prompted exciting scientific research investigating their beneficial effects on well-being and health. Most mindfulness programs are provided as multi-faceted packages encompassing a set of different mindfulness techniques, each with distinct focus and mechanisms. However, this ap...

A growing body of research indicates that mindfulness training can have beneficial effects on critical aspects of psychological well-being, cognitive function, and brain health. Although these benefits have been generalized to the population level, individual variability in observed effects of mindfulness training has not been systematically invest...

Mindfulness training (MT) has shown promise in improving psychological health among college students yet has rarely been evaluated as an addition to the college academic curriculum. Here, we demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of a first-year MT seminar offered to residential students at a selective private university, evaluating its impa...

Previous studies have shown that physical exercise and mindfulness meditation can both lead to improvement in physical and mental health. However, it is unclear whether these two forms of training share the same underlying mechanisms. We compared two groups of older adults with 10 years of mindfulness meditation (integrative body-mind training, IBM...

The growing popularity of mindfulness-based interventions has prompted exciting scientific research regarding their beneficial effects on well-being and health. Most mindfulness programs are provided as multi-faceted packages encompassing a set of different mindfulness techniques, each with distinct focus and mechanisms. However, this approach over...

Finding a universal panacea for everyone is an impossible mission, as each individual is unique in many observable ways. For psychological interventions that aim to promote individual health and well-being, finding one intervention that addresses all psychological problems and symptoms is equally impossible. Given the interindividual variability pr...

Meditation can be a lifetime practice and part of a healthy lifestyle. To illustrate that meditation is a contemplative practice that can be engaged over the course of one’s lifespan, we begin our discussion with the implementation of meditation programs in education settings for children and adolescents. For instance, meditation programs have been...

Despite considerable scientific progress in revealing the effects and mechanisms of meditation, there are still many critical research questions needing to be better addressed and explicated to advance our understanding of meditation. In previous chapters we summarize representative empirical findings with regard to the effects of meditation, as we...

It is widely known through daily observation and scientific research that people from Western and Eastern civilizations hold different thoughts, values, and beliefs that have the potential to affect meditation practice and outcomes. There has been ample evidence indicating that people from different cultures, such as Chinese and American cultures,...

Meditation practices engage our sympathetic and parasympathetic systems to induce a relaxing, calm, and effortless state of consciousness. It also requires the balanced coordination of these two systems to maintain a meditative state throughout the duration of practice. In this chapter we extensively discuss a theoretical and mechanistic framework...

Individual differences in response to medical treatment and procedures are widely recognized by physicians and healthcare professionals. Even for psychological interventions offered within clinical contexts, individual variability can often be observed by therapists. Notably, not only are such differences visible at a one-on-one patient to therapis...

Many people are interested in meditation, but do not recognize the importance of individual differences in affecting the learning and practice of meditation. Consequently, they do not understand why there are so many people who try meditation, but later on quit practicing it. People clearly respond to meditation differently and these differences ma...

Scientific investigations of individual differences are particularly prominent in the field of psychology and are also widely known among the general public due to numerous reports by mass media. One of the most fruitful research areas concerning individual differences has been personality psychology, which is dedicated to the study of individual p...

The brain supports a wide array of daily functions, from monitoring bodily states and associated physiological and metabolic processes to engaging higher-level cognitive processes for fulfilling different task demands. During meditation, specific brain regions and networks involving attention, interoceptive awareness, emotion, and self-related proc...

The scientific investigation of meditation is a rapidly growing field of study involving multimodal techniques and methodologies that leverage the strengths of the most recent technological advances in psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Some of the frequent used measurement include psychological instruments, physiology assessments, genotyping,...

Mindfulness training has shown promise in improving psychological health and cognitive function. Mindfulness skills may be particularly beneficial in helping first-year students’ transition to college, as this can be a time period of considerable lifestyle changes and increased stress. Previous research has demonstrated positive effects of mindfuln...

Psychological well-being is a core feature of mental health, and may be defined as including hedonic (enjoyment, pleasure) and eudaimonic (meaning, fulfillment) happiness, as well as resilience (coping, emotion regulation, healthy problem solving). To promote psychological well-being, it is helpful to understand the underlying mechanisms associated...

Using an extracellular medium with high potassium/low magnesium concentration with the addition of 4-AP we induced epileptiform activity in combined hippocampus/entorhinal cortex slices of the rat brain [1]. In this in vitro model of temporal lobe epilepsy, we observed the repeating sequences of interictal discharge (IID) regimes and seizure-like e...

Emerging evidences have shown that one form of mental training—mindfulness meditation, can improve attention, emotion regulation and cognitive performance through changing brain activity and structural connectivity. However, whether and how the short-term mindfulness meditation alters large-scale brain networks are not well understood. Here, we app...

Reasoning and decision-making, as an important aspect of a person's high-level cognition, may be influenced by cultural differences. For example, Asians tend to frame the decision to help as a matter of moral responsibility, whereas Americans are more likely to frame it as one's personal choice. In this chapter, we will discuss the cultural differe...

Presentation on "25th Annual Computational Neuroscience Meeting: CNS-2016 " BMC Neuroscience 17, 112-113 (2016).

Background: The core clinical symptoms of addiction include an enhanced incentive for drug taking (craving), impaired self-control (impulsivity and compulsivity), emotional dysregulation (negative mood) and increased stress reactivity. Symptoms related to impaired self-control involve reduced activity in anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), adjacent p...

Prefrontal and parietal cortex, including the default mode network (DMN; medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), and posterior cingulate cortex, PCC), have been implicated in addiction. Nonetheless, it remains unclear which brain regions play a crucial role in smoking addiction and the relationship among these regions. Since functional connectivity only m...

ICGenealogy: towards a common topology of neuronal ion channel function and genealogy in model and experiment Ion channels are fundamental constituents determining the function of single neurons and neuronal circuits. To understand their complex interactions, the field of computational modeling has proven essential: since its emergence, thousands...

Mindfulness meditation or mindfulness-based interventions have been shown to have beneficial effects on health, well-being, and a number of clinical disorders, including anxiety, depression, addiction, stress-related symptoms, and chronic pain. In this article, we focus on the mechanism and application of mindfulness meditation. We propose an integ...

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) is a significant cause of disability in the United States and the mild TBI (mTBI) is the most prevalent. Previous research indicates the positive effect of mindfulness training on symptoms of chronic mTBI such as cognitive functioning and emotion [1]. However it remains unclear which brain regions play a crucial role in...

Prefrontal and parietal cortex, including the default mode network (DMN; medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), and posterior cingulate cortex, PCC), have been implicated in addiction. Nonetheless, it remains unclear which brain regions play a crucial role in smoking addiction and the relationship among these regions. Since functional connectivity only m...

Resolving conflict is a pivotal self-control ability for human adaptation and survival. Although some studies reported meditation may affect conflict resolution, the neural mechanisms are poorly understood. We conducted a fully randomized 5 h trial of one form of mindfulness meditation—integrative body-mind training (IBMT) in comparison to a relaxa...

The beneficial effects of bilingualism on executive functions have been shown through studies that demonstrated the outperformance of bilingual individuals than monolingual individuals in cognitive tasks involving attention, working memory and conflict resolution. However, the neural mechanisms of how bilingualism influence these cognitive processe...

Asymmetry in frontal electrical activity has been reported to be associated with positive mood. One form of mindfulness meditation, integrative body-mind training (IBMT) improves positive mood and neuroplasticity. The purpose of this study is to determine whether short-term IBMT improves mood and induces frontal asymmetry. This study showed that 5-...

Our previous research showed that short term meditation training reduces the time to resolve conflict in the flanker task. Studies also show that resting alpha increases with long term meditation practice. The aim of this study is to determine whether short term meditation training both increases resting alpha activity and reduces the time to resol...

One form of meditation intervention, the integrative body-mind training (IBMT) has been shown to improve attention, reduce stress and change self-reports of mood. In this paper we examine whether short-term IBMT can improve performance related to creativity and determine the role that mood may play in such improvement. Forty Chinese undergraduates...

Self-transcendence (ST) is one of specific human experiences often related to harmony with nature or feeling oneness with others or the self as an integral part of the whole universe. The Temperament and Character Inventory (TCI) is a widely used personality measure, and ST is one of personality dimensions (Cloninger, 1994; Cloninger et al., 1994)....

More than 5 million deaths a year are attributable to tobacco smoking, but attempts to help people either quit or reduce their smoking often fail, perhaps in part because the intention to quit activates brain networks related to craving. We recruited participants interested in general stress reduction and randomly assigned them to meditation traini...

The neuroanatomical correlates of temperament in human have been examined extensively but not comprehensively. Most studies have focused on certain brain regions of gray and white matter, such as prefrontal cortex , amygdala, anterior cingulate cortex, etc, however, less is known about the contribution of other areas to human temperament [1-4]. Pre...