Principal Investigator
Sara Lazar, PhD
Associate Researcher in Psychiatry, Massachusetts General Hospital
Assistant Professor in Psychology, Harvard Medical School
Sara W. Lazar, PhD is an Associate Researcher in the Psychiatry Department at Massachusetts General Hospital and an Assistant Professor in Psychology at Harvard Medical School. The focus of her research is to elucidate the neural mechanisms underlying the beneficial effects of yoga and meditation, both in clinical settings and in healthy individuals. She is a contributing author to Meditation and Psychotherapy (Guilford Press). She has been practicing yoga and mindfulness meditation since 1994. Her research has been covered by numerous news outlets including The New York Times, USA Today, CNN, and WebMD, and her work has been featured in a display at the Boston Museum of Science.
Lab Members
Gunes Sevinc, Ph.D.
Postdoc Research Fellow
Gunes is a postdoctoral research fellow in the Department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital & Harvard Medical School. Her PhD dissertation focused on neural networks associated with moral cognition, especially those involved in the detection of morally relevant stimuli. Her current research interests include the relationship between mindfulness meditation and moral cognition. She is specifically interested in the structural and functional changes associated with mindfulness practice as they relate to moral behavior and prosociality. Currently, she is utilizing multivariate neuroimaging analysis methods to investigate the effects of mindfulness practice in improving cognition.
Muhlis Burak Cindik
Clinical Research Coordinator
Burak is a Clinical Research Coordinator in the Lazar Lab and co-lead on the BrainTrain study for older adults, a neuroimaging study for adults with Mild Cognitive Impairment, and a study investigating the effects of different types of exercise on mood. In 2019, Burak graduated from Northeastern University where he received his Bachelor’s degree in Behavioral Neuroscience with a minor in Sociology. He is most interested in combining neuroscience with other scientific fields of research in his future studies.