Meditation is often associated with a relaxed state of the body. However, meditation can also be regarded as a type of mental task and training, associated with mental effort and physiological arousal. The cardiovascular effects of meditation may vary depending on the type of meditation, degree of mental effort, and amount of training. In the current study we assessed heart rate (HR), high-freq...

Each of 15 mothers was recorded singing a song of her choice to her 4to 7-month-old and singing the same song alone. Adult raters were very accurate at distinguishing infant-directed from infant-absent versions, and the former were independently rated as more loving than the latter. Most of the songs were consistently classified as either playsongs or lullabies. The infantdirected playsongs wer...