I am interested in how various meditation styles, concentrative meditation practice, Prayer of the Heart and spiritual development change the phenomenological constitution of the human self, including such aspects as the intra-psychic ontopoiesis, hyletic (embodied) ordering of the experience, and egological and non-egological conditions. I am also interested in how the experience of the non-dual consciousness affects our development,  and how the experience of natural spiritually active substances (entheogens) influence our attention and cognition.  I work on development the meditation –based models of consciousness useful in the neurophenomenological experiements, and apply these models in the first-person based dense array electroencephalography, and cognitive science research. These models help us to understand how to enhance attention, improve cognitive and optimize emotional functions. I am interested in trans-disciplinary studies of brain mechanisms underlying phenomena yet not explored by science but known to spiritual practitioners, such as Kundalini rising, or internal experiences of light (photisms)  and synesthesia (light-sound), which accompany concentrative meditation. I believe that these spirituality-related phenomena enhance human cognitive and attention capacities, and optimize emotions, and apply effects that I find in developing methods of training and clinical interventions.

I work within the following research themes and approaches:

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News

Our collaborative research with Maria Kozhevnikov received rapid recognition in US and international media from various fields, including scientific, art and health news and blogs, as well as resources for meditation practitioners and sport physiologists.

Buddhist Deity Meditation Might Temporarily Boosts Visual-Spatial Processing

• Science Daily
• USA today
• Science news
• First Science
• Medical news
• Medical news today
• Medicinenet
• Medindia
• Biological psychology

Current Projects

1. Effects of Visual, Linguistic and Somatic Imagery in Various Meditation Styles: Pilot Phenomenological  and Psychological Study. Project is supported by ITP faculty grant.
2. Neurophenomenological design of meditation research. Neurophenomenology Center Development: Pilot EEG study.
   Project is supported by Spitzer Family Foundation grant.
3. Dense Array Encephalograhy of Various Meditation Styles: Pilot Study. Project is supported by Zimmer Family Foundation grant.
4. Articulating the Self: Phenomenological interviewing and EEG in non-dual awareness and concentrative body-focusing meditation.
   Project is supported by the Mercy Center, Burlingame.
5. Cultural Phenomenology of the Heart-Self Comparative religious historical phenomenological study of the esoteric perspectives centered around the notion of the Spiritual Heart-Self.  Project is supported by the Mercy Center, Burlingame.

Grants and Awards

2009

ITP faculty mini-grant (3k) for the research of  the effects of imagery in meditation styles

2009

additional 10k award from the Spitzer Family Foundation for the development of Neurophenomenology Center

2008

2010   award from The Spitzer Family Foundation for the Development of Neurophenomenology Center at ITP (120k)

1986-1992      

Development of ELISA diagnostic kit for identification of anti-galactocerebroside auto-antibodies. Major biotechnology grants from the Shemyakin National Institute of Bioorganic Chemistry, Moscow, Russia.

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