Objective: Meditation is one type of mental training that has been shown to produce many cognitive benefits. Meditation practice is associated with improvement in concentration and reduction of stress, depression, and anxiety symptoms. Furthermore, different forms of meditation training are now being used as interventions for a variety of psychological and somatic illnesses. These benefits are thought to occur as a result of neurophysiologic changes. The most commonly studied specific meditation practices are focused attention (FA), open-monitoring (OM), as well as transcendental meditation (TM), and loving-kindness (LK) meditation. In this review, we compare the neural oscillatory patterns during these forms of meditation.Method: We performed a systematic review of neural oscillations during FA, OM, TM, and LK meditation practices, comparing meditators to meditation-naïve adults.Results: FA, OM, TM, and LK meditation are associated with global increases in oscillatory activity in meditators compared to meditation-naïve adults, with larger changes occurring as the length of meditation training increases. While FA and OM are related to increases in anterior theta activity, only FA is associated with changes in posterior theta oscillations. Alpha activity increases in posterior brain regions during both FA and OM. In anterior regions, FA shows a bilateral increase in alpha power, while OM shows a decrease only in left-sided power. Gamma activity in these meditation practices is similar in frontal regions, but increases are variable in parietal and occipital regions.Conclusions: The current literature suggests distinct differences in neural oscillatory activity among FA, OM, TM, and LK meditation practices. Further characterizing these oscillatory changes may better elucidate the cognitive and therapeutic effects of specific meditation practices, and potentially lead to the development of novel neuromodulation targets to take advantage of their benefits.

Traditionally, laminectomy has been the preferred surgical approach for the resection of intradural spinal tumors. Recent trends towards minimally invasive techniques have generated interest in hemilaminectomy as an effective alternative surgical approach to resect spinal tumors. However, it remains unclear if the potential benefits of hemilaminectomies, used in other routine spinal procedures, apply to intradural spinal tumors. This report presents a sixyear single institutional analysis of open resection of intradural tumors using laminectomies as compared to hemilaminectomies. Methods A single institution, multisurgeon, retrospective review of 52 patients undergoing resection of intradural spinal tumors over a six-year period was performed. Estimated blood loss, operative time, post-operative complications, length of stay, and post-operative clinical spinal instability were analyzed and compared between the two surgical techniques.

Our primary objective was to retrospectively review our single institution experience using an anatomic multilayered repair of the retrosigmoid suboccipital craniotomy. Our secondary objective was to review the existing body of literature on the repair of this craniotomy and compare our outcomes to previous results. Retrospective review of 25 consecutive patients undergoing repair for the retrosigmoid craniotomy. University of California Davis Medical Center (2010-2016). A total of 25 consecutive patients who underwent retrosigmoid craniotomy and repair. Exclusion criteria included patients who were under the age of 18 years. Main outcomes included incidence of postoperative headache, cerebrospinal fluid leak, and wound infections. Postoperative headache was reported in two patients in this series (8%). None of thepatients in the series developed cerebrospinal fluid leak or wound infections. Mean follow-up period was 16 months. Our multilayered anatomic repair after retrosigmoid suboccipital craniotomy results in favorable clinical results and may help reduce the risks associated with this operation.

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