This mid-career development award will provide protected time for Dr. Oken to mentor and to advance his capability in physiological signal acquisition and analysis. While already a successful mentor, as evidenced by his mentees becoming successful NIH-funded academicians, his time has been and will be further limited by the lack of any salary support for the T32 he directs. This successful T32 currently has 5 post-doctoral and one pre-doctoral candidate. The pre-doctoral candidate is the first on the T32 and she has declared Dr Oken to be her primary mentor for her Behavioral Neuroscience PhD thesis. In addition to increasing current mentorship roles, the K24 will allow Dr. Oken to develop a formal curricula for the T32 he directs, give CAM-related lectures to non-CAM clinical research and basic science trainees, and to allocate time to the mentorship and career development program that the OHSU associate dean is developing. Besides sufficient funding to better mentor others, Dr. Oken will also spend a significant portion of this career development award advancing his lab's capability for signal analysis and acquisition including the enhanced use of a 24-hour recording device that is interfaced with a personal digital assistant. This development will utilize the technical support of Mikel Aickin, PhD, Deniz Erdgomus, PhD, and Roger Ellingson, MSEE. These systems will be available to those on the T32 and other junior faculty interested in these techniques. Some of the career development funds will allow Dr. Oken to take graduate level Systems Science courses at Portland State University. The analysis techniques will aid development of: a physiologic measure of adherence to and quality of meditation interventions;a measure of interelectrode EEG correlation based on information theory that is likely more valid than parametric synchrony measures already used by others in the field;and a stress- sensitive measure of 24-hour heart rate variability. The personal digital assistant interfaced to the 24-hour recording device allows for frequent, experience-based sampling of self-rated measures relevant to mind-body such as perceived stress and mindfulness outside the laboratory in the subject's usual environment. These measurements will be related to the physiological measurements using systems science approaches.

Public Health Relevance

The general goal of this application is to promote Dr. Oken's ability to better mentor clinical complementary medicine researchers and to advance the field of mind-body research. This will be done by allowing Dr. Oken to decrease some of his administrative and clinical responsibilities and by developing new physiologic measures that can be used in mind-body research, including measures of stress, adherence to interventions, and positive effects on the brain. From a practical perspective this application will lead to more qualified young CAM clinical researchers and to improved clinical trials of mind-body medicine. Improved understanding of the benefits of mind-body medicine and possibly even improving mind-body techniques themselves has broad health implications to almost all medical care and health promotion.

Agency
National Institute of Health (NIH)
Institute
National Center for Complementary & Alternative Medicine (NCCAM)
Type
Midcareer Investigator Award in Patient-Oriented Research (K24)
Project #
5K24AT005121-04
Application #
8298946
Study Section
Special Emphasis Panel (ZAT1-LD (32))
Program Officer
Khalsa, Partap Singh
Project Start
2009-09-30
Project End
2014-07-31
Budget Start
2012-08-01
Budget End
2013-07-31
Support Year
4
Fiscal Year
2012
Total Cost
$196,532
Indirect Cost
$13,752
Name
Oregon Health and Science University
Department
Neurology
Type
Schools of Medicine
DUNS #
096997515
City
Portland
State
OR
Country
United States
Zip Code
97239
Oken, Barry S; Goodrich, Elena; Klee, Daniel et al. (2018) Predictors of Improvements in Mental Health From Mindfulness Meditation in Stressed Older Adults. Altern Ther Health Med 24:48-55
Memmott, Tab R; Klee, Daniel; Oken, Barry (2018) Negative Affect Influences Electrophysiological Markers of Visual Working Memory in Mildly Stressed Older Adults. Front Aging Neurosci 10:148
Oken, Barry S; Wahbeh, Helané; Goodrich, Elena et al. (2017) Meditation in Stressed Older Adults: Improvements in self-rated mental health not paralleled by improvements in cognitive function or physiological measures. Mindfulness (N Y) 8:627-638
Atchley, Rachel; Ellingson, Roger; Klee, Daniel et al. (2017) A cognitive stressor for event-related potential studies: the Portland arithmetic stress task. Stress 20:277-284
Atchley, Rachel; Klee, Daniel; Oken, Barry (2017) Set shifting reaction-time improves following meditation or simple breathcounting in meditators and meditation-naïve participants: Data from naturalistic, ecological momentary-assessment devices. Mindfulness Compassion 2:82-85
Colgan, Dana Dharmakaya; Wahbeh, Helané; Pleet, Mollie et al. (2017) A Qualitative Study of Mindfulness Among Veterans With Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: Practices Differentially Affect Symptoms, Aspects of Well-Being, and Potential Mechanisms of Action. J Evid Based Complementary Altern Med 22:482-493
Proulx, Jeffrey; Klee, Daniel; Oken, Barry S (2017) Do psychosocial predictors affect the following days' cortisol awakening response? Expanding the temporal frame with which to explore morning cortisol. Stress 20:398-403
Wahbeh, Helané; Goodrich, Elena; Oken, Barry S (2016) Internet-based Mindfulness Meditation for Cognition and Mood in Older Adults: A Pilot Study. Altern Ther Health Med 22:44-53
Wahbeh, Helané; Goodrich, Elena; Goy, Elizabeth et al. (2016) Mechanistic Pathways of Mindfulness Meditation in Combat Veterans With Posttraumatic Stress Disorder. J Clin Psychol 72:365-83
Wahbeh, Helané; Oken, Barry S (2016) Internet Mindfulness Meditation Intervention for the General Public: Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial. JMIR Ment Health 3:e37

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