Biography
Scientific research
Davidson studies the connection between brain activity and emotion.
Popularization of science
Davidson is known as a scholar of meditation and a promoter of meditation as a health practice, comparing the health benefits of meditation to those of exercise. In 2012, together with science journalist Sharon Bigley ( English) wrote the book The Emotional Life of Your Brain: How Its Unique Patterns Affect the Way You Think, Feel, and Live - and How You Can Change Them.
Prizes and awards
Major works
Journal articles:
| 1979 | Weinberger D. A., Schwartz G. E., Davidson R. J. Low-anxious, high-anxious, and repressive coping styles: psychometric patterns and behavioral and physiological responses to stress // Journal of abnormal psychology. - T. 88, issue. 4 . - P. 369. |
| 1990 | Davidson R. J. et al. Approach-withdrawal and cerebral asymmetry: Emotional expression and brain physiology: I // Journal of personality and social psychology. - T. 58, issue. 2. - P. 330. |
| 1992 | Davidson R.J. Anterior cerebral asymmetry and the nature of emotion // Brain and cognition. - T. 20, issue. 1 . - pp. 125-151. |
| 1997 | Sutton S. K., Davidson R. J. Prefrontal brain asymmetry: A biological substrate of the behavioral approach and inhibition systems // Psychological Science. - T. 8, issue. 3. - pp. 204-210. |
| 1998 | Davidson R.J. Affective style and affective disorders: Perspectives from affective neuroscience // Cognition & Emotion. - T. 12, issue. 3. - pp. 307-330. |
| 1999 | Davidson R. J., Irwin W. The functional neuroanatomy of emotion and affective style // Trends in cognitive sciences. - T. 3, issue. 1 . - pp. 11-21. |
| 2000 | Davidson R. J., Putnam K. M., Larson C. L. Dysfunction in the neural circuitry of emotion regulation - a possible prelude to violence // Science. - T. 289, issue. 5479. - pp. 591-594. |
| 2000 | Davidson R. J., Jackson D. C., Kalin N. H. Emotion, plasticity, context, and regulation: perspectives from affective neuroscience // Psychological bulletin. - T. 126, issue. 6. - P. 890. |
| 2002 | Davidson R. J. et al. Depression: perspectives from affective neuroscience // Annual review of psychology. - T. 53, issue. 1 . - pp. 545-574. |
| 2003 | Davidson R. J. et al. Alterations in brain and immune function produced by mindfulness meditation // Psychosomatic medicine. - T. 65, issue. 4 . - pp. 564-570. |
Books:
| 1994 | Together with Ekman P. E.). The nature of emotion: Fundamental questions. - Oxford: Oxford University Press. |
| 1995 | (With Hugdahl, Kenneth). Brain asymmetry. - Cambridge: MIT Press. |
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Passage characterizing Davidson, Richard
When Boris and Anna Pavlovna returned to the general circle, Prince Ippolit took over the conversation.
He moved forward in his chair and said: Le Roi de Prusse! [The Prussian king!] and having said this, he laughed. Everyone turned to him: Le Roi de Prusse? - asked Ippolit, laughed again and again calmly and seriously sat down in the depths of his chair. Anna Pavlovna waited for him a little, but since Hippolyte decidedly did not seem to want to talk anymore, she began a speech about how the godless Bonaparte stole the sword of Frederick the Great in Potsdam.
“C"est l"epee de Frederic le Grand, que je... [This is the sword of Frederick the Great, which I...] - she began, but Hippolytus interrupted her with the words:
“Le Roi de Prusse...” and again, as soon as he was addressed, he apologized and fell silent. Anna Pavlovna winced. MorteMariet, a friend of Hippolyte, turned decisively to him:
– Voyons a qui en avez vous avec votre Roi de Prusse? [So what about the Prussian king?]
Hippolytus laughed, as if he was ashamed of his laughter.
- Non, ce n "est rien, je voulais dire seulement... [No, nothing, I just wanted to say...] (He intended to repeat the joke that he heard in Vienna, and which he had been planning to put all evening.) Je voulais dire seulement, que nous avons tort de faire la guerre pour le roi de Prusse. [I just wanted to say that we are fighting in vain pour le roi de Prusse. (Untranslatable play on words meaning: “over trifles.”)]
Boris smiled cautiously, so that his smile could be classified as mockery or approval of the joke, depending on how it was received. Everyone laughed.
“Il est tres mauvais, votre jeu de mot, tres spirituel, mais injuste,” said Anna Pavlovna, shaking her wrinkled finger. – Nous ne faisons pas la guerre pour le Roi de Prusse, mais pour les bons principes. Ah, le mechant, ce prince Hippolytel [Your play on words is not good, very clever, but unfair; we are not fighting pour le roi de Prusse (i.e. over trifles), but for good beginnings. Oh, how evil he is, this Prince Hippolyte!],” she said.
The conversation continued throughout the evening, focusing mainly on political news. At the end of the evening, he became especially animated when it came to the awards bestowed by the sovereign.
“After all, last year NN received a snuff box with a portrait,” said l “homme a l” esprit profond, [a man of deep intelligence,] “why can’t SS receive the same award?”
“Je vous demande pardon, une tabatiere avec le portrait de l"Empereur est une recompense, mais point une distinction,” said the diplomat, un cadeau plutot. [Sorry, a snuff box with a portrait of the Emperor is a reward, not a distinction; rather a gift.]
– Il y eu plutot des antecedents, je vous citerai Schwarzenberg. [There were examples - Schwarzenberg.]
“C"est impossible, [This is impossible," the other objected.
- Pari. Le grand cordon, c"est different... [The tape is a different matter...]
When everyone got up to leave, Helen, who had said very little all evening, again turned to Boris with a request and a gentle, significant order that he should be with her on Tuesday.
“I really need this,” she said with a smile, looking back at Anna Pavlovna, and Anna Pavlovna, with the sad smile that accompanied her words when speaking about her high patroness, confirmed Helen’s desire. It seemed that that evening, from some words spoken by Boris about the Prussian army, Helen suddenly discovered the need to see him. She seemed to promise him that when he arrived on Tuesday, she would explain this need to him.
Arriving on Tuesday evening at Helen's magnificent salon, Boris did not receive a clear explanation of why he needed to come. There were other guests, the countess spoke little to him, and only saying goodbye, when he kissed her hand, she, with a strange lack of a smile, unexpectedly, in a whisper, said to him: Venez demain diner... le soir. Il faut que vous veniez… Venez. [Come for dinner tomorrow... in the evening. I need you to come... Come.]
On this visit to St. Petersburg, Boris became a close person in the house of Countess Bezukhova.
The war was flaring up, and its theater was approaching the Russian borders. Curses against the enemy of the human race, Bonaparte, were heard everywhere; Warriors and recruits gathered in the villages, and contradictory news came from the theater of war, false as always and therefore interpreted differently.
The life of old Prince Bolkonsky, Prince Andrei and Princess Marya has changed in many ways since 1805.
In 1806, the old prince was appointed one of the eight commanders-in-chief of the militia, then appointed throughout Russia. The old prince, despite his senile weakness, which became especially noticeable during the period of time when he considered his son killed, did not consider himself entitled to refuse the position to which he had been appointed by the sovereign himself, and this newly discovered activity excited and strengthened him. He was constantly traveling around the three provinces entrusted to him; He was pedantic in his duties, strict to the point of cruelty with his subordinates, and he himself went down to the smallest details of the matter. Princess Marya had already stopped taking mathematical lessons from her father, and only in the mornings, accompanied by her nurse, with little Prince Nikolai (as his grandfather called him), entered her father’s study when he was at home. Baby Prince Nikolai lived with his wet nurse and nanny Savishna in the half of the late princess, and Princess Marya spent most of the day in the nursery, replacing, as best she could, a mother to her little nephew. M lle Bourienne, too, seemed to be passionately in love with the boy, and Princess Marya, often depriving herself, yielded to her friend the pleasure of nursing the little angel (as she called her nephew) and playing with him.
At the altar of the Lysogorsk church there was a chapel over the grave of the little princess, and in the chapel a marble monument brought from Italy was erected, depicting an angel spreading his wings and preparing to ascend to heaven. The angel's upper lip was slightly raised, as if he was about to smile, and one day Prince Andrei and Princess Marya, leaving the chapel, admitted to each other that it was strange, the face of this angel reminded them of the face of a deceased woman. But what was even stranger, and what Prince Andrei did not tell his sister, was that in the expression that the artist accidentally gave to the face of the angel, Prince Andrei read the same words of meek reproach that he then read on the face of his dead wife: “Oh, why did you do this to me?..."
Psychologies: You were one of the first people to become interested in emotions more than 40 years ago. According to you, then it was tantamount to scientific suicide. What made you continue your research?
Richard Davidson: I believed that emotional reactions told something extremely important about what it means to be human. Even in my youth, I was amazed at how differently we react to the same events. Emotions are the basis of individuality; they are what make us unique. Look around - as soon as you think about a person, an emotional portrait of him appears in our heads: how friendly or irritable he is, open to new things or cynical. It soon became clear to me that emotions are directly related to our health and well-being. And that if we learn to understand and manage them, we can improve our lives.
You are currently working on the neurophysiology of emotions. What does this scientific field study?
She explores how our emotions relate to processes occurring in our central nervous system. Neurosciences - neurobiology, neurophysiology, neurogenetics - have literally blossomed in the last 15 years thanks to new methods for studying brain structures, primarily thanks to MRI. For example, we discovered a connection between emotions and brain areas and, based on this data, described six emotional styles. Each of them reflects one aspect of our behavior and corresponds to a specific neural circuit in our brain.
The activity of parts of the brain and even their structure can change as a result of new experiences
For example, our ability to experience positive emotions depends on the functioning of the prefrontal cortex and nucleus accumbens. An optimistic view of the world is characteristic of those whose core receives many signals from the prefrontal cortex. And a high level of self-awareness, when we are well aware of our own bodily sensations, corresponds to a high level of activity in the central zone of the brain (the islet of Reille).
Are you saying that we can change the activity of our neural circuits and, as a result, our emotional styles at will?
Of course, the development of emotional styles largely depends on our genes, but the contribution of life experience is also very large. Emotional styles develop early in life in response to learning. We now know that the activity of parts of the brain and even their structure can change as a result of new experiences. This means that we can influence our emotional reactions by solving problems and doing exercises aimed at changing a specific neural circuit, its activity or structure. For example, you can develop the ability to better sense your body's signals, be more attentive, and look at the future more optimistically.
Certain diseases, such as depression or asthma, are also associated with the activity of certain areas of the brain. Does this mean that by doing a set of exercises, you can get rid of suffering over time?
It is important to understand that exercise is not a cure, but it can significantly reduce symptoms. In the case of asthma, neural circuits that are activated in response to stress are associated with inflammatory processes in the lungs of asthmatics. It may be that teaching patients to respond differently to stress could change the corresponding brain circuits and reduce the inflammation thought to be responsible for asthmatic attacks.
If people learn to focus on what really matters, we will live in a different world
For depression, we used mindfulness practice: we taught patients to consciously direct attention to their negative thoughts about themselves and about the world around them. But at the same time you need to observe them from the outside, simply as thoughts that come and go; not to identify with them, but, on the contrary, to distance themselves. This technique significantly reduces symptoms of depression. But it only works with daily practice, because you need to accustom and train your brain to react differently.
You say “direct attention”, you use the practice of mindfulness in your work. Attention - what is this from a scientific point of view?
Mindfulness is the extent to which we are able to focus our attention and remain in that state without distractions or allowing our mind to wander.
Then explain how you define mindfulness meditation.
One of the analogues of the word “meditation” in Sanskrit is “acquaintance”. We can say that in the East a whole family of mental practices was developed, which were called meditation. And in essence, it is a set of different strategies for familiarizing a person with his own mind. Mindfulness meditation refers to a type of meditation in which practitioners learn to intentionally and without judgment direct their attention to an object, emotion, or thought. And because they learn not to judge themselves, their actions and mental processes, and other people, they learn to react differently emotionally in stressful situations.
I am confident that meditation practices have enormous potential not only for transforming the consciousness of individuals, but also, as a consequence, for the world in which we live. I think few would dispute the fact that if people on the planet become more compassionate and kind to each other, learn to better manage their emotions and their lives, and focus their attention on what really matters, we will live in a completely different world.
Perhaps it is better to start teaching children mindfulness as early as possible, at the age of 3-4 years?
I'm glad you asked this because the answer to this question interests me too. In the United States, we are conducting a large-scale study involving preschoolers aged 4–5 years. For them, we have developed a “Kindness Program” that lasts 12 weeks. For example, we ask children to lie on the floor and place small stones on their stomachs. Then we ask them to watch for five minutes as the pebble moves down and up with their belly in time with their breathing. When this short practice is done several times throughout the day, each child will achieve a total of 90 minutes of meditation over the course of a week.
Scientists have found that meditation practices actually change the human brain
We monitor the level of empathy in children, indicators of their social behavior, academic performance, ability to control their emotions... The first results show that children easily master these techniques. They begin to study better, feel better, get sick less, and interact better with classmates and adults.
I see a photograph of the Dalai Lama behind you. How did meeting him affect you?
He changed my ideas about what should be the subject of scientific study. When we first met in 1992, he asked me: “Why do scientists study only illness, only negative emotions? Why don't you explore happiness? And this question completely shocked me. I was literally speechless. I didn't have an answer. Indeed, why does it seem obvious to study depression and anxiety, but we don't use the same methods to study kindness and compassion?! It was the Dalai Lama who inspired me to change the direction of my research - and I began studying happiness, kindness, and compassion.
In Buddhism, suffering is associated with ignorance; Meditation practices help eliminate ignorance and thus get rid of suffering. Can we say that psychotherapy today agrees with this postulate?
I would have formulated it more softly. By studying both Buddhist practices and secular varieties of meditation, scientists have found that these practices actually change the brain and, as a result, a person becomes healthier, both physically and psychologically. The subjective assessment of one’s health and well-being is also changing. But there are those few for whom meditation does not work, and we do not yet know why this happens.
Six Dimensions of Our Emotional Life
Why do some of us easily “cool down” after a quarrel, while others worry for a long time? Why does someone feel great despite failure, while others fall into despair at the slightest trouble? Richard Davidson explains this behavior by different "emotional styles." We, as a rule, are not aware of how they manifest themselves in us in a given situation. Let's try to figure it out.
- “Resilience” (or “emotional flexibility”) determines how quickly we recover from adversity.
- “Attitude” shows how long we are able to experience positive emotions after a pleasant event.
- “Self-awareness” describes how aware we are of our bodily sensations, whether we understand what our body is saying. When we are sad or curious, how do these feelings manifest in the body?
- “Social intuition” talks about how attentive we are to the nonverbal signals we receive from other people: their intonation, facial expressions, changes in posture, eye movements.
- “Context sensitivity” refers to how accurately we are able to judge our social environment: the way we behave with a partner is different from the way we interact with a boss or a therapist.
- “Mindfulness” refers to whether we are able to voluntarily focus our attention on something and hold it for as long as we need it. Or are we immediately distracted? Is it easy to unsettle us?
In several US trials, people accused of serious crimes - such as pedophilia - have been acquitted because the behavior was caused by brain tumors or brain abnormalities. The defendants simply could not behave differently. But then it turns out that we are all hostages of our brain, our prefrontal cortex or amygdala?
This is a very serious matter. There are situations when a person really cannot influence some aspects of his behavior. And this is due to structural and functional disorders in the functioning of his brain resulting from injuries or organic lesions. But I believe that in a broader sense, we all need to take responsibility for our actions.
Of course, we are influenced by the external environment and the specific features of the functioning of our brain, but each of us has a “molecule” of free will. And I believe that we should view each other as beings responsible for our own lives.
What would you tell the parents of a teenage son who tells them he can't study and can only play DotA because that's the way his brain is wired?
It is absolutely unacceptable to allow a teenager to manipulate you under the pretext that his brain works that way. But you can work with him to develop strategies that will help him strengthen some neural circuits in his brain. For example, those responsible for the ability to focus attention.
You and your colleagues have shown that mindfulness even changes... gene expression.
Yes, and these are very important results! Just 8 hours of mindfulness practice can change the expression of our genes. What does it mean? Each of our genes has something like a “volume control”: it can announce itself barely audibly or loudly. In the case of mindfulness practice, changing expression means suppressing genes associated with inflammatory processes in the body. This opens up new horizons for science and medicine.
And the last question - do you meditate yourself?
I practice every day, 30 to 45 minutes, usually 45 minutes. I use mindfulness practice, loving-kindness meditation, and several other Tibetan practices that promote kindness and compassion. And now I absolutely cannot imagine my life without them.
About the expert
Richard Davidson- neuroscientist, psychologist, professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Ecology of Health: Richard Davidson is a distinguished neuroscientist who was one of the first to study the effects of meditation on the human brain.
Richard Davidson is a distinguished neuroscientist who was one of the first to study the effects of meditation on the human brain.
Dr. Davidson, you are considered one of the founders of emotional neuroscience. What is she studying?
Emotional neuroscience is the study of the neural mechanisms underlying human emotions. It has literally blossomed in the last 15 years due to the fact that we have new methods for studying and interpreting the structure of the brain - primarily fMRI technology. And we were able to discover a connection between certain human emotions and the specific areas of the brain with which these emotions are associated.
And it was thanks to these new methods that you managed to discover the six emotional styles of a person, which you write about in your new book The emotional life of your brain (“How emotions control the brain”, Peter, 2012)?
Yes it is. Each of these six emotional styles essentially describes the range of emotional reactions that people experience in connection with various situations that require emotional stress. It turns out that each of these six emotional spectra corresponds to specific neural circuits in our brain. This is very important to understand - I did not sit down one day and decide to come up with six emotional styles, they emerged as a result of a huge number of empirical observations and experiments.
Could you briefly describe these styles and what specific neural circuits they are associated with?
We call the first emotional style “Resilience”(it can also be called “Emotional flexibility”) - it describes how quickly or slowly a person recovers from troubles. Those who recover quickly from setbacks show high activity in the left prefrontal cortex and active connections between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala (which is associated with fear and anxiety responses).
We called the second emotional style “Forecasting”- this is kind of the flip side of resilience, it describes how long a person is able to experience and maintain positive emotions after some pleasant event. The prefrontal cortex and nucleus accumbens are responsible for our ability to predict. If the nucleus receives many signals from the prefrontal cortex, the person has a positive outlook. Low core activity due to low input from the prefrontal cortex will give a negative, pessimistic view of the world.
Third style - “Self-awareness”, it is related to how well a person is aware of the internal processes in his body, his bodily sensations, which are also associated with the emotions that he is experiencing at the moment. In other words, when you are sad or when you are curious, how do these feelings manifest in your body? What signals is your body giving you? This style corresponds to activity in the central region of the brain or insula of Reille. It is the insula of Reille that receives signals from the internal organs, so a high level of activity in this area leads to a high level of self-awareness.
Fourth - “Social Sensitivity”(or “Social intuition”). It describes how attentive and sensitive a person is to various non-verbal signals that come to him from the social environment, from other people. These signals can be intonation, facial expressions, changes in body posture, or some movements or glances. A neural circuit consistent with this style connects the amygdala and the fusiform gyrus. Low levels of activity in the gyrus and high levels of activity in the amygdala will result in a person demonstrating extreme insensitivity to other people.
Fifth style - “Sensitivity to context”(or “Situation Sensitivity”). For example, the way you behave with your husband or wife is different from the way you would behave with your boss, or with your meditation teacher, or with your therapist. This style describes how accurately we are able to assess social context. It is connected to the hippocampus, which is also known for its role in the formation of long-term memories. It is the hippocampus that is responsible for adjusting behavior to a specific situation. The larger and more active it is, the better a person evaluates the context.
The sixth style is “Mindfulness”. Are you able to voluntarily focus your attention on something and keep it on that task or that object for as long as you need it, or are you immediately distracted? And how easily can any external irritants unsettle you? It turned out that in attentive people the prefrontal cortex has strong phase synchronization in response to external stimuli.
Each of these styles is present in every person at any given time; they can be called six dimensions of our emotional life. But, as a rule, we are not aware of how this style is manifested in us, whether it is strongly developed or weakly developed, and which of the six styles dominates at what points in time.
You were one of the first to become interested in human emotions more than 40 years ago. You write in your book that in those years this was tantamount to scientific suicide. Then what motivated you to conduct and continue this research?
Even early in my career, I was absolutely amazed by how differently people react to the same events and circumstances. I became involved in the study of emotions because I believed that our emotional responses tell us something extremely important about what it means to be human, which is the basis of our human identity.
It is emotions that make us unique, unlike anyone else. Look around - as soon as you think about a person, some kind of emotional portrait will definitely be associated with his image: how friendly or irritable he is, open to new things or cynical.
A little later, it became clear to me both as a person and as a scientist that emotions are strongly connected to our physical health and well-being. And that if we learn to understand and manage them, we will learn to change the quality of our lives.
At the beginning of your research, you believed that the activity of certain neural circuits was set from birth and could not be changed. However, you are now arguing that through certain mental exercises we can change the activity of our neural circuits and, as a result, our emotional styles and the quality of our lives.
Genetics certainly contributes to the development of every emotional style. But the most significant contribution to their formation comes from our life experience and the circumstances in which it is formed. Emotional styles are largely formed in response to learning, sometimes at a very early age. In addition, thanks to the discovery of the phenomenon of neuroplasticity, we now know that the activity of certain parts of the brain and even their structure can change in response to new experiences.
And then by offering a person specific tasks and exercises aimed at changing the activity and/or structure of a certain neural circuit, we can actually change the way all six emotional styles manifest themselves. A person can develop the ability to better sense their bodily signals, read context better, be more attentive, and look at the future more optimistically.
I understand correctly that you now know that if a person has depression or asthma, this is associated with activity in a certain area of the brain. You give him a set of exercises and after three months or six months or a year he no longer has depression or asthma?
It is very important to understand that these exercises cannot cure your physical or mental illness. But they can significantly reduce symptoms. You see, this is not complete research - we still have a lot of things to learn about emotional styles and how they can be changed.
We cannot currently quantify how these exercises change each circuit. But we definitely see that this is happening and that the corresponding emotional style is changing. Symptoms of depression and asthma are greatly relieved.
Can you give specific examples?
Yes, sure. For example, in the case of depression, we used mindfulness practice. We taught depressed patients to consciously pay attention to their negative thoughts about themselves and the world around them, but at the same time observe them from the outside, simply as thoughts that come and go. Do not identify with them, acquire a certain distance in relation to them. We even taught them not to perceive these thoughts as THEIR thoughts, but to treat them neutrally, as someone else's thoughts.
This technique has proven incredibly effective in reducing symptoms of depression. But it only works with constant, daily practice. It’s not enough to read about it, you have to train your brain to react differently.
In the case of asthma, we still have many questions; we are in the process of research. But we have found that the circuits in our brain that are activated during the stress response are closely linked to the inflammatory processes in the lungs of asthmatics, which are thought to be responsible for attacks. And then we hypothesized that if we taught them to respond differently to stress, it would change the corresponding brain circuits and affect the inflammatory process.
We use simple mindfulness techniques from Jon Kabat-Zinn's Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program to teach asthmatics how to perceive and respond to stressful events differently.
The key principle is that we often cannot change the circumstances of our lives immediately, and some events happen suddenly, but we can always change our attitude towards them.
And do you already have results?
We haven't completed the study yet, but we are seeing dramatic reductions in asthma symptoms. We cannot say that we have cured these people. But their illness practically does not make itself felt.
Could you define what attention is scientifically and how you define mindfulness meditation for yourself?
In modern scientific terms, attention has many different aspects. When I use the term “attention” in my book, I mean the extent to which a person is able to focus his attention and is able to remain in that state of focused attention without getting distracted or allowing his mind to wander. From the point of view of neuroscience, this ability includes a large number of different processes in our brain, the result of which it is.
One of the definitions of the word "meditation" in Sanskrit is "awareness." We can say that in the East a whole family of mental practices was developed, which were called meditation, and in essence it is a set of different strategies for familiarizing a person with his own mind.
Mindfulness meditation refers to a type of meditation in which practitioners learn to intentionally and without judgment direct their attention to an object, emotion, or thought. And because they learn not to judge themselves, their actions and mental processes, and other people, they learn to change their emotional responses to external and internal stimuli.
I see a photograph of the Dalai Lama behind you, and in your book you write that meeting him literally changed your ideas about what should be the subject of scientific study...
Yes, we met in 1992, and he had a very profound impact on my life and my career. When we first met, he asked me: “Why do scientists always study only illness, only negative emotions? Why don’t you study happiness?”
And this question completely shocked me. I didn't have an answer. I was literally speechless. Indeed, why does it seem obvious to study depression and anxiety, but we don't use the same methods to study kindness and compassion?!
It was the Dalai Lama who inspired me to change the direction of my research - and we began studying happiness, the practice of loving kindness, and compassion.
Buddhism has been promising people relief from suffering for centuries. This is one of his key points - suffering is associated with ignorance, you do not have to suffer. And there are meditation practices that will help you eliminate ignorance and get rid of suffering. Can we say that modern science has agreed with these postulates? And that your “behaviour-inspired mindfulness-based therapy” also helps relieve suffering for those who need a more secular approach?
I would formulate this more softly. Today there is a large amount of scientific evidence obtained from numerous studies of both Buddhist practices and secular varieties of meditation. This data shows that these practices do change a person's brain in certain ways, and as a result, the person becomes much healthier both physically and psychologically. His subjective assessment of his health and well-being also changes.
At the same time, there were people for whom nothing had changed; meditation had no effect on them. They are few, but they are there, and we still have no idea why this happened. It is true that when research into new drugs is carried out, there are always people for whom the drug does not work.
Recently, in several trials in the United States, those accused of serious crimes - such as pedophilia - were found not guilty because their lawyers proved that the behavior was caused by tumors or other brain disorders. The defendants simply could not behave differently.
But if you look at it more broadly, it looks like we are all hostages of our brain, our prefrontal cortex or amygdala. And then where is the line between these accused and, say, your teenage son who says that he cannot study, but can only play DotA, because that is the structure of his brain?
This is a very, very important and serious issue. There are situations where, as a result of injury, such as a car accident or as a result of organic lesions, a person really cannot influence some aspects of his behavior, and this is associated with structural and functional disorders in the brain. But I believe that in a broader sense, we all need to take responsibility for our actions.
Human beings are naturally endowed with free will. And although each of us is enormously influenced by the external environment and the specific features of the functioning of our brain, this molecule of free will is always present in us. And I believe that we should view each other as beings responsible for our own lives.
It is absolutely unacceptable to allow a teenager to manipulate you under the pretext that his brain works that way. But what you can do is try to work with him to develop special strategies that will help him strengthen some neural circuits in his brain. For example, those responsible for the ability to focus attention. Or for receiving positive feedback.
If early childhood environments and experiences have such a profound impact on the formation of our psyche, and if these processes can be influenced, then it seems obvious to begin teaching children the practice of mindfulness at the age of 3-4 years. Are there any scientific studies on this?
I'm glad you asked about this, because this is exactly the question that interested me. And we are currently conducting a large-scale study, it is not finished yet. This is a big project here in the USA, involving preschoolers 4-5 years old. We developed a special program that we called the “Kindness Program.” It lasts 12 weeks and includes simple mindfulness and kindness practices, adapted for children.
For example, we ask them to lie on the floor and place small pebbles on their tummies, and ask them to watch for five minutes as the pebble moves down and up with their belly in time with their breathing. When this short practice is done several times throughout the day, each child will achieve a total of 90 minutes of meditation over the course of a week.
We use a very strict research protocol, and before and after the program we measure the level of empathy in children, indicators of their social behavior and academic performance, ability to cognitive control - there are a lot of different criteria.
And the first data we have received is extremely promising. They show that children, firstly, can perfectly master these techniques, and secondly, these practices bring them great benefits - they learn better, feel better, get sick less, interact better with classmates, parents, and teachers.
Your research suggests another thought. Until recently, information was one of the main factors influencing the quality of your life, your future, your health. The better your computer, the faster the Internet, the more sources of varied information available, the more advantages you have, starting from childhood, and this affects your income, health and lifestyle in the future.
However, the more science learns about the human brain and how we can change it, the clearer it becomes that meditation practices can give a person access to the enormous resources hidden within himself, regardless of his financial situation. And this can greatly change the world in the future. What do you think of it?
I think this is certainly a valid observation. And now there are many international organizations that are teaching the simplest secular techniques of mindfulness to thousands, tens of thousands of people in Africa - children and adults. Many poor parts of Asia also have such programs, although there, of course, meditation is part of the culture.
I am sure that these practices have enormous potential in terms of transforming the consciousness of individual people and, as a result, the world in which we live. I think few would dispute the fact that if people on the planet became more compassionate and kind to each other, more able to manage their emotions and their lives, and focus their attention on the things that really matter, we will live in a different world.
Could you say a few words about your latest projects? A week ago (December 2013 - author's note) a message was published that your group has proven that mindfulness practice changes gene expression...
Yes, thanks for the question! These are very important results! We were able to work with scientists from France and Spain to prove that even a short period of mindfulness practice, just 8 hours, can change the expression of our genes. To be clear, our genetic makeup does not change. But we can say that each of our genes has something like “loudness control,” and depending on this, it declares itself barely audibly or very loudly. And we can change this volume, almost turn it off.
We found that 8 hours of practice allows us to suppress genes that are associated with inflammatory processes in the body. Namely, inflammation is the main component of a huge number of different chronic diseases, for example, asthma already mentioned today. And if meditation has such a strong effect on this inflammatory process, then this opens up new horizons for science and medicine.
Well, the last question - do you meditate every day? And if it’s not a secret, then how long and what practices have you been doing?
This is absolutely no secret. I practice every day, 30 to 45 minutes, usually 45 minutes, and I do different practices. I practice mindfulness and I practice loving-kindness meditation and some other Tibetan practices aimed at developing kindness and compassion. And now I can no longer imagine my life without them. published
The brain's algorithms are unique, and they influence the way we think and feel. Good news: we can change them!
RICHARD J. DAVIDSON
Translated from English Yu. Kozhemyakina
ISBN 978-1594630897 English
ISBN 978-5-4461-0515-1
© Hudson Street Press, 2012
© Translation into Russian LLC Publishing House "Piter", 2017
© Edition in Russian, designed by Peter Publishing House LLC, 2017
© Series “Your own psychologist”, 2017
The same brain doesn't suit everyone
If you believe most self-help books, popular psychology articles, and TV doctors, then you probably assume that people's reactions to major life events are fairly predictable. Most of us, according to the “experts,” act in pretty much the same way when dealing with any experience: there is the same grief that everyone experiences; there is a certain sequence of events that happen when we fall in love; there is a standard reaction to betrayal; There are typical ways for almost every normal person to react in a certain way to the birth of a child, to the fact that you are underestimated at work or to unbearable workloads, to the defiant behavior of teenagers, as well as to the inevitable changes that happen to us over the years. The aforementioned “experts” confidently recommend steps we can all take to become emotionally resilient again, to withstand failure in life or love, to become more (or less) sensitive, to manage our fears without doubting our abilities... and to become more resilient in every way. what we would like.
But my research over more than thirty years has shown that these one-size-fits-all assumptions are even less valid in the emotional sphere than in medicine. For example, scientists are conducting research into how human DNA samples will react to (among other things) prescribed medications. These studies ushered in the era of personalized medicine, where the treatment one patient receives for a certain disease will be different from that received by another patient with the same disease. This happens for the essential reason that the genes of two patients cannot be identical. (One important example to support this: The safe amount of warfarin, a blood thinner, a patient can take to prevent blood clots depends on how quickly their genes metabolize the drug.) When it comes to how people react to anything presents life to them on how they can develop and nurture the ability to experience joy, create loving relationships, cope with failure and generally live life to the fullest, the prescriptions must be individualized. In this case, it's not just that our DNA is different - although it is true, and DNA certainly influences our emotional characteristics - but also what our patterns of brain activity are. Just as the medicine of tomorrow may be driven by deciphering a patient's DNA, so the psychology of today may be driven by the goal of understanding the characteristic patterns of brain activity that underlie the emotional traits and states that define each of us.
Throughout my career as a neurologist, I have seen thousands of people who had reactions of the same origin, but at the same time responded in completely different ways to the same events in life. For example, some remained cheerful when faced with stress, while others became anxious, depressed, and unable to respond to adverse events. Cheerful people, one way or another, can not only withstand various stressful situations, but also benefit from it, turning failure into an advantage. This is the mystery that still motivates me to conduct research in this area. I wanted to know how different people react to divorce, the death of a loved one, job loss, or any other adversity. I was also interested in what determines people’s reaction to triumph in their career, the conquest of a loved one, the realization that for their sake a friend will even walk through burning coals, to various reasons for happiness. How and why do people differ so greatly in their emotional responses to successes and failures in life?
The answer that has emerged from my work is that different people have different emotional types , which are a set of emotional reactions and experiences that vary in type, intensity and duration. Just as each person has unique fingerprints and facial features, each of us has a unique set of emotional parameters that are part of who we are. Those who know us well can often predict how we will respond to a particular emotional challenge. For example, by my emotional type I am a fairly optimistic and lively person, I accept the challenges of fate, quickly recover from unfortunate events, but sometimes I tend to worry about things that are beyond my control. (My mother, marveling at my joyful personality, called me her “fun boy.”) The emotional type is the reason why some of us recover quite quickly from a painful divorce, while others plunge into self-flagellation and despair. That's why one half-brother bounces back quickly after losing his job, while the other half-brother feels like a failure for years. The emotional type is the reason why one friend acts as the vest that everyone cries into, while the other stays away - emotionally and literally - whenever her friends or family need sympathy and support. This is why some people can read body language and voice intonation like a billboard, while for others these nonverbal cues are like a foreign language. And this is why some people can gain insight into states of mind, heart, and body that others have no idea are possible. Every day provides us with countless opportunities to observe emotional types in action. I have spent a lot of time in various airports and I can say that there are rarely flights that do not provide a chance for “field research”. As I think we all know, there are more reasons to change flight schedules than there are planes leaving O'Hare Airport on Friday night. This includes bad weather, waiting for the flight crew during a transfer, technical difficulties, and even emergency lights in the cockpit that no one can figure out... the list goes on and on. Thus, I have had many opportunities to observe the reactions of passengers (as well as my own) who, while waiting to take off, hear an announcement that the flight is delayed by an hour, two hours, indefinitely, or canceled altogether. A general groan is heard. But if you take a careful look at each passenger individually, you will see a wide range of emotional reactions. Here's a college student in a hoodie, bobbing his head to the rhythm of the music pouring into his ears from his headphones, barely looking around before focusing back on his iPad. Here is a young mother traveling with a small child who is constantly fidgeting, muttering: “Oh, this is just wonderful!”, after which she grabs him and heads towards the food court. There is also a woman in a business suit: she quickly approaches the employee standing near the boarding gate and calmly but decisively demands that they find another flight for her - just take her to the negotiations! So a gray-haired man in a tailored suit jumped up to an airport employee and, loud enough for everyone to hear, demanded to know whether she even understood how important it was for him to get to his destination? He insists that the girl call her boss, and by this point, with a reddened face, he shouts that the current situation is absolutely unacceptable.
World-renowned neuroscientist Richard Davidson wants you to know three things: 1. You can train your brain to change it. 2. These changes can be measured. 3. New ways of thinking can change your brain for the better. Just recently it sounded like science fiction. Today, the world's most cited mindfulness researcher and his colleagues take it for granted and continue their cutting-edge experiments at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. About their work they told a correspondent from Mindful magazine(August 2014).
Translation © Mindfulness Practice
Your brain is different from the rest of your body in that it is designed to constantly change. “The brain is not something static. It changes all the time,” says Richard Davidson, a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. “Whether we're learning to play tennis or playing Words with friends on our phones, we're changing our brains,” he enthuses. - The brain is not a car that comes off the assembly line and remains unchanged (except when it is broken). The brain continues to change throughout our lives.” And Davidson thinks that's very good news.
Why is “neuroplasticity” such good news? Let's name one very compelling reason. Davidson's research shows that spending just 30 minutes a day teaching our brains to do something differently has real results - and these changes can not only be seen in brain scans, but also measured. These studies are carried out by 60-65 scientists, doctors of medical sciences, research assistants and master's students at the “Center for the Study of Healthy Minds” ( Сenter for Investigating Healthy Minds, hereinafter - Center) at the Weissman Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, which Davidson founded in 2008 and became its director.
“We can consciously set the direction in which plastic changes in our brains will occur,” says Davidson, sitting in his sunny February office in Madison.
“For example, when we focus on good, healthy thoughts and set our intentions accordingly, we can potentially influence the plasticity of our brain and effectively change it in ways that lead to real improvements in our lives. And it inevitably follows that qualities such as warmth and well-being must be recognized as skills that can be developed.”
Outside the wide windows of his office on the university campus, cold sheets of snow flow, covered with geometric shadows of the Weissman Center, connected to the Center for the Study of Healthy Thinking and located next to the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics in Madison.
It's bitterly cold in the middle of winter here in Madison, which contrasts with the warmth among locals. Once you call a taxi, you will definitely be asked: “Do you mind if there is another passenger in the car and you split the payment?” During the sessions, the university seems to be literally bursting at the seams, but at the same time it manages to preserve the homely American spirit. It is not surprising that this is where the Center is located, which studies the practice of meditation, as well as research into such qualities of our mind as kindness, compassion and the ability to forgive.
A few minutes spent by a meditator in an fMRI chamber will provide a huge amount of data that will take months of work to analyze and interpret.
The opening of this center marked a personal and personal triumph for Davidson. When he was a graduate student in the mid-1970s, he shocked his professors by going to India to research meditative practices and Buddhist teachings. After three months spent in India and Sri Lanka. Davidson returned home completely confident that he would study meditation.
But his professors quickly disabused him, warning him that if he had any hope of pursuing a scientific career, he had better give up thoughts of meditation and follow a more traditional path. So Davidson became a secret practitioner and neuroscientist dedicated to the deep study of human emotions.
According to Davidson, in those early years, meditation research was not convincing - it was an extravagant attempt to obtain magical results that did not follow standard protocols and did not rely on the methodology of previous studies in similar fields.
For example, a study that purportedly found a link between crime sprees and the activity of transcendental meditation practitioners in one city has long tarnished meditation research in general and contributed to further keeping any of it secret.
He also says that "the science and methods of that time were not suitable for the study of subtle inner experience." They lacked modern technologies such as fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging), which provides a moving picture of brain activity.
They had no understanding of epigenetics, the process by which the structure of our genes can change throughout our lives. “But above all,” adds Davidson, “we lacked an understanding of neuroplasticity. It is now a generally accepted fact that the brain is an organ that changes in response to experience and, most importantly for our research, in response to training.”
The Center's staff practice together in the meditation hall. Personal experience with meditation helps researchers better understand what they study.
Healthier, happier lives
Basically, the Center is engaged in what in modern medicine is called “translational research” - that is, it immediately tests all scientific discoveries in clinical practice, on real people living ordinary lives. This helps both these people and the scientists who immediately see practical applications for their discoveries. It also creates an educational circuit through which the public can see and appreciate the benefits of meditation from a scientific point of view. Davidson has dedicated his life to scientific discoveries demonstrating that training the mind can help people become happier and healthier.
To many meditators, talk of the “brain” seems materialistic, as if all we are is a lump of electrically charged flesh. Likewise, many scientists feel uncomfortable talking about something as intangible as consciousness. Where is it located? How can we measure it?
Davidson is comfortable and accustomed to talking about both of these topics - just like many other modern researchers. Of course, defining and describing consciousness is not as easy as describing the brain, but the Center uses the term “healthy minds” because these minds—different types of minds—can be trained effectively in a variety of ways. And such training literally “leaves its marks” on the brain - they can be detected and measured.
These measurable results are extremely important - they not only help Western science better understand the nature of the brain and its capabilities, but also provide convincing evidence of the benefits of meditation to government agencies in the United States such as the Department of Education, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Defense and even the Department of Energy.
As a neuroscientist and New York Times bestselling author, Davidson has been featured extensively in popular media outlets, from Time to the Harvard Business Review. Research work and writing books take up all of his time. Although he's been a meditator himself for more than 20 years, Davidson knows firsthand how difficult it can be to fit another “habit” into a busy 21st-century work schedule—despite scientific evidence that it leads to greater happiness and a better quality of life.
“Neuroscience has shown that short practices done many times throughout the day are a really powerful way to create lasting changes in the brain,” says Davidson. - Of course, we still have a lot of research to do. And one of the questions is: what is better - to meditate once for 30 minutes a day or to take three 10-minute practice breaks during the day? We don't know yet."
But Davidson is extremely passionate about the issue. So much so that this year he is participating in a new initiative - the development of corporate programs. “We want to develop a set of short practices that will be distributed throughout your day that you can follow on your computer and get immediate feedback. It’s like a Fitbit for the mind.”
Any skilled speaker - and Davidson is one of them - understands the power of a precise and concise phrase. Still, it's impressive how deftly he switches from talking about highly complex neuroscientific concepts to discussing very simple human concerns—like how to actually improve your life.
Our conversation takes a new direction. What we're saying is that sometimes learning mindfulness can mistakenly become mere personal efficiency training - through increased concentration, rote training of attention and awareness. Davidson notes: “We must always remember that all our actions should also benefit other people. That makes all the difference.”
Davidson's research and views are of interest throughout the world and have already had a significant impact on the political and business communities. A couple of weeks before our meeting, he attended the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland (2014), where he spoke to world leaders and CEOs about these healthy qualities of the mind and why it is so important for us to develop them.
Teaching wellbeing as a skill
It took Davidson decades of rigorous scientific research to confidently say that well-being is a skill that can be learned and developed. And in the course of these studies, the main discovery was neuroplasticity, which is now a generally accepted concept.
“The study of neuroplasticity has given us a broad conceptual framework for the study of meditation. And we saw that even a short period of practice produced measurable changes in the brain.”
“Our brains are constantly changing, consciously or not - often unconsciously. We tend to be pawns in the game of the forces that surround us. Our research, on the contrary, invites everyone to take more responsibility for their minds and their brains.”
So what can be measured and how? Fortunately, technology is constantly offering new instruments and non-invasive techniques to monitor the functioning of the human brain. The center uses the best of them: magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and positron emission tomography (PET-CT scanner), which create three-dimensional scans of functional processes in the body and brain.
At once massive and elegant, these devices stand in the darkened and cool rooms of the Center. The ceiling above the MRI is removable: a special manipulator can lift any of them and move it to another place or replace it with another device as needed. It took raising millions of dollars from sponsors to make such constructive solutions possible.
The center develops video games that train children's brains to become kinder and more empathetic.
One of the main areas of research at the Center, which requires all these devices, is how our brain affects our body and vice versa. Davidson emphasizes that “it's a two-way trip.” By changing our brain, we change our body, and changing our body can change our brain.
The center develops short practices for use in the workplace. Pop-ups appear on your computer or phone screen all day long. Users often say in their feedback that it is like a Fitbit for the mind.
“One of the important focuses of our research is inflammation, which is associated with many chronic diseases,” says Davidson. “We have increasing evidence that at the most basic biological level, certain types of meditation practices can regulate the functioning of inflammatory systems.” They reduce the intensity of special molecules—we call them “anti-inflammatory cytokines”—that are directly associated with inflammation.”
He mentions the Center's research, which was published in February 2014 in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology: “We studied gene expression in peripheral blood lymphocytes, with a particular focus on genes associated with inflammation.”
To do this, Davidson and other scientists, including Melissa Rosenkranz, studied participants in a one-day intensive meditation course. According to Davidson's description, these were “people just like you and me - they have jobs” and they lead ordinary lives. On the one hand, they were well acquainted with meditation, and practicing for a whole day in the laboratory was a manageable task for them. On the other hand, they were not long-term meditators like the Tibetan monks whose brains Davidson studied in the 2000s by attaching electrodes to their brains during and after meditation.
Participants in a genetic study came to the laboratory and meditated for eight hours. They took blood samples before and after practice, and then Davidson and his team observed changes in gene expression after completing a meditation course in the laboratory. The results of this group of meditators were compared with a control group of non-meditators, whose participants came to the laboratory for a “rest day” - they watched calm videos, read and took a leisurely walk.
What happened? Participants in the control group did not show the same changes in gene expression, Davidson said. This is the first study to suggest that “we can actually see changes in gene expression after a very short period of meditation practice.”
Like any practical scientist, Davidson puts these discoveries in a broader context: “This is really just the beginning. This study raises a number of questions that we have not yet been able to answer.”
Davidson already understood that gene expression is not something “given and predetermined.” (The emotional life of your brain), written with Sharon Begley, he already told readers:
“Our DNA is more like an extensive collection of music CDs. Just because you have a disc doesn't mean you'll play it. Likewise, just because you have certain genes does not mean that they will become active (or, as geneticists say, that those genes will not be expressed). On the contrary, gene expression is strongly influenced by our environment. So, although we may have, for example, a genetic predisposition to anxiety, if we grew up in a calm atmosphere it could calm our “anxious DD” and prevent it from affecting the brain and, as a result, our behavior or temperament. It's as if we never put this disc in the player."
Davidson invites us to imagine how our lives would change if contemplative practices became a habitual and widespread part of our lives, which in turn encouraged us to develop healthy habits of mind. He also creates a social environment in which contemplative practices become habitual so that he and other scientists can directly examine the effect that meditation has on ordinary people in everyday life.
To date, the Center is conducting more than 20 studies. Some study mental and physical health and factors leading to illness. Others are looking at the effects of meditation and empathy training. Still others are concerned with the processes of child development and learning.
It's no wonder that funding agencies, the university, and a whole generation of young neuroscientists have so much faith in Davidson and his research - it can help so many people. And it’s already helping.
Current Center Research
Brain training games
Elena Pashchenko(Elena Patshenko)
Elena Paschenko accepted a position at the University of Wisconsin-Madison after working at the University of Geneva in Switzerland. She is currently participating in a study funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
As part of the study, two video games were developed for teenagers aged 11-12 years, and these games are now being tested by children. One of the games is designed to develop mindful awareness, especially body awareness. Another, Crystals of Kaydor, promotes empathy, kindness and prosocial behavior (that is, acts for the benefit of other people).
Crystals of Kaydor amazes with its graphics. The player travels to the planet Kaidor, which resembles Earth and is inhabited by alien creatures that have the same emotions as humans. One of the tasks of the game is to determine by external signs what emotion they are experiencing (surprise, joy, fear, etc.) when meeting Kaidorians, and when their emotions begin to intensify, mark this on a special scale.
“We took brain scans of the children before and after the game,” says Davidson. “We also offer them many different behavioral tests and use other techniques. And we will be watching them for some time.”
While in the early stages of the study, details are not disclosed. At least some information and results should be expected no earlier than the end of this year ( article published in August 2014 - Approx. ed.). However, the Center's scientists participating in the project can hardly hide their enthusiasm.
Richard Davidson can say only one thing with certainty: an hour and a half spent playing this game can actually contribute to structural changes in the brain. And these changes can be measured.
According to Davidson, this project is intended to “answer the question of whether we can use video games as new tools for training the mind. And whether such games can have more beneficial effects than Grand Theft Auto or regular video games.”
“There is now no doubt that violent video games have negative emotional consequences,” says Davidson. “So we strive to convince all stakeholders - parents, children, game designers and the entire gaming industry - that it is actually possible to create interesting and fascinating games that children will want to play, but which will also develop kindness and healthy qualities of mind.”
Veterans and anxiety
Dan Grupe
When Dan Group (PhD in psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison) began studying the brain activity, structure and function of people with various anxiety disorders, he didn't think he'd end up looking at brain scans of American veterans returning from Iraq. But this is precisely the area in which his work has significant impact.
The group participated in a study of the effects of yogic breathing practices (sudarshan kriya) on veterans returning from combat zones with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
“We invited these guys, collected full information in the form of detailed self-reports from the participants, did brain scans and assessed their current level. They looked at the structure of the brain and the white matter pathways that connect different parts of the brain, and how their brains worked. We then gave them a test involving the risk of receiving an electrical shock.
“Participants were shown one of two colored squares. The blue square meant “you will never get electrocuted.” Yellow - “you may get an electric shock.” We then observed brain activity during reactions to these “threats”: maybe he will hit, maybe he won’t; and if it hits, you don’t know when it will happen.
“We found differences in functional connectivity between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala,” says Grup. - Veterans with high levels of PTSD had impaired communication between these areas. When we are not in danger, a certain part of the prefrontal cortex is activated, which sends a signal to the amygdala, reducing its activity. However, in veterans, this part of the prefrontal cortex generally “did not notice the difference” between states of danger and safety.”
In fact, these were men who returned from the battlefield, where you need to always be on alert and be able to save your life and the lives of those around you. And their brains were trained to fight.
“In the same study, we found that those veterans who had high levels of hyperarousal and hypervigilance showed the smallest difference in activity in this part of the prefrontal cortex.”
Kindness Training Program
Lisa Flook and Laura Pinger
The Center's “Kindness Program” is currently being tested in Madison schools. The program has three main goals: emotional and social learning, emotional regulation, and the development of prosocial skills.
“We hope that developing these skills will improve children's emotional health and social functioning and help them become more capable learners,” says teacher Laura Pinger.
The course is designed to help both children themselves and teachers. The program is a collaboration between Lisa Flook, whose research interests include early childhood well-being, and Laura Pinger, a 30-year mindfulness teacher (Davidson was once one of her students.)
Data collection and analysis is ongoing, but initial data shows that preschoolers have “improved reaction times on computer-based attention tests and improved social skills compared to children who did not participate in the program.”
Pinger offers another perspective on the program: “What’s interesting to me personally is the feedback from parents who write or tell teachers that the impact of the kindness curriculum is noticeable even at home.” She remembers the mother of one of the boys - she had never heard her son talk about understanding other people's feelings. But now he talks about it at home and it has really changed the way he interacts with his siblings.
“We give the course materials to the children and include a letter explaining to parents what we discussed in class. But it’s really surprising that the course has such an effect that is noticeable to parents even at home.”
Meditation and the practice of empathy
Effects of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program and the Health Improvement Program on the Brain's Response to Pain (In Beginners)
In 1979, Jon Kabat-Zinn recruited chronically ill patients who had failed traditional treatments to participate in his new eight-week stress reduction program. He called it MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction). Since then, there has been a lot of serious research into how mindfulness-based techniques improve physical and mental health - compared to other psychological methods.
But although MBSR has been shown to be effective in clinical settings for patients suffering from chronic pain, it was not clear which brain mechanisms are involved in the process of pain relief and regulation.
This Center study will compare the MBSR program to another therapeutic program, the Health-Enhancement Program (HEP), which includes nutrition education, music therapy, functional movement, and gentle exercise.
To monitor beginner meditators, scientists will use fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging), which shows a moving image of neural activity during a painful task. After completing this assignment, newcomers will be randomly assigned to one of the courses - MBSR or HEP. And after eight weeks of the program, participants will complete the “pain task” again, and again after four months. During this time, scientists will monitor changes in the participants' brains and their ability to regulate pain.
The effects of two meditation practices on the brain's response to pain (in experienced meditators)
Pain is an unpleasant experience, whether it be painful emotions or physical pain. But we can regulate it using various cognitive mechanisms in our brain. In this study, during an experiment (involving exposure to heat, sometimes intensifying and reaching the point of pain), scientists compared how two meditative practices affect the regulation of pain: Focused Attention Meditation, which involved concentration and maintaining the focus of attention as heat source, and on some other object; and Open Presence, or open awareness of everything that is happening in the present moment - without any effort, without reacting, without rejecting, but also without allowing the experience to take over you entirely.
Scientists will use fMRI to compare the brain's response to pain during these two types of meditation in two groups of participants - experienced meditators and beginners.
Changing the brain and developing generosity through compassion practice
Is empathy an emotional skill that can be trained?
The Center's scientists suggested that practicing empathy makes us more generous, as our brains are more sensitive to the suffering of other people. The researchers divided the participants into two groups. One group received daily online empathy training for two weeks, while participants in the control group (this group was needed to understand whether the same positive results could be obtained without appropriate training and without undergoing similar programs) learned to formulate their “stress thoughts.” ” in a more positive way. All participants then had their brains scanned while being shown a series of pictures - some of them showing people in pain (such as a fire victim or a crying child).
After two weeks, the Center's researchers found that those participants who had learned empathy were more generous during an economic game that involved exchanging something with others - compared to the control group. The increase in generosity in the group that practiced compassion meditation was associated with changes in the brain's response to human suffering - these are the areas responsible for empathy and an increase in positive emotions.
Center Grant: The Wisconsin Center for the Neuroscience and Psychophysiology of Meditation
This large-scale, five-year study examines the neural mechanisms underlying two forms of meditation: mindfulness and loving-kindness meditation.
It studies how meditation affects the very way the brain regulates emotions; how you can use meditation to train attention, the ability to cope with fear and regulate pain; and the effects of meditation on brain plasticity are being studied.
Although research has shown that meditation helps people regulate their emotions and even control their response to pain, little is known about the mechanisms by which these changes occur. According to Davidson, “These projects will help us understand whether meditation actually creates lasting changes in the brain, what those changes are, and whether these practices will be useful in everyday life for both those suffering from health problems and “normal people.”
Economic decision making and well-being
The traditions from which meditation and mind-training practices were borrowed claim that these practices influence individual well-being and promote “prosocial behavior”—behavior that benefits others, such as empathy and kindness. In testing this claim, scientists are studying whether the rigidity or flexibility of the “self-schema” influences the tendency to cling to or let go of emotions. And, in turn, how this affects our response to pleasant or unpleasant experiences.
Stages of this study:
- Develop and scientifically confirm behavioral and questionnaire criteria for the “I schema”, including those found in meditative traditions - for example, how flexible or rigid a person’s ideas about the structure of his “I” and personal boundaries are.
- Test the relationship between these criteria and behavior to benefit others using economic decision-making tasks developed in this laboratory.
- Test the relationship between these criteria and well-being by examining responses to painful stimuli in an fMRI scanner.
- To check the relationship between changes in the “self-schema” and the effect of meditation on the response to pain.
Physical health and illness
The role of stress and emotions in the occurrence of asthma
Can mindfulness practice reduce asthma symptoms and regulate inflammation in asthmatics? What role do stress and emotions play in this? Using neuroimaging techniques, scientists will measure neural activity associated with the experience of stress and see whether the processes that unfold in the brain can predict the future development of inflammation and asthma-related symptoms.
In the future, thanks to this type of research, a “behavioral intervention” such as a “Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program” may be used to treat asthmatics. What is “behavioral intervention” or “neuronally inspired behavior therapy”? This is a form of therapy in which we can determine what neural activity underlies the emotional trait you want to change, and then change that activity through specially designed meditation exercises. As a result, Davidson says, a person can develop a “healthier emotional style,” as Sharon Begley mentions in Mindful magazine (October 2013).
YogaAutism (formerly known as Spectrum Yoga Therapy)
In collaboration with YogaAutism Madison, the Healthy Minds Research Center is studying the effects of yoga and breathing practices on autonomic nervous system arousal and stress hormone levels in autistic people. During the program, students first focus on feeling calm and able to participate in the exercises, and then perform a series of movements that fully engage the diaphragm and restore healthy breathing.
Psychological effects of tai chi (taijiquan)
The Center is conducting research on how tai chi affects cognitive function and mental balance in young people (17 to 21 years old). Tai Chi is an ancient Chinese practice that involves performing smooth, slow movements while focusing on the body. Participants (University of Wisconsin-Madison students taking an introductory tai chi course) will be tested. Thanks to the results obtained, it will be possible to study the effectiveness of tai chi for the treatment of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) in adolescents and students.
Veterans and anxiety
The center helps American veterans returning from war. Among the Center's goals are to expand available treatments for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and make significant leaps in understanding the brain mechanisms associated with the disorder. During this pilot study, veterans participated in a program that included breathing exercises and yoga. The researchers collected self-reports from participants, which cited improved sleep, decreased chronic pain, and a generally more optimistic mood, among other benefits.
Education and development
Mindfulness Practice for Middle School Students and Teachers
In this pilot study, an experienced instructor from the Healthy Minds Research Center taught a mindfulness course to teachers and students in the Madison Metropolitan School District. The course itself lasted 10 weeks and consisted of 10 hours of training.
Students from four classes were divided into active and control groups. The active group completed an age-appropriate mindfulness training course. The program included key elements such as observing your breath and body sensations and developing awareness of your feelings and thoughts.
According to participants in the active group, they became more in control and responsible for their actions, made fewer mistakes, and completed the task more effectively using their short-term memory. In addition, teachers noticed that after the course these students began to regulate their emotions much better.
Teacher Health Study
This study aims to explore the stress teachers experience in the classroom and how mindfulness practices impact psychological symptoms and burnout by improving attention and developing self-compassion. The results of a pilot study of a modified “Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Program” specifically tailored for teachers are reported.
The results suggest that this course may have good prospects, as participants showed significant reductions in stress symptoms and improved concentration. In contrast, the group of teachers who did not participate in the program showed a decrease in cortisol production, as well as, in several cases, a significant increase in burnout.
Well-being and behavior
Exploring the ability to forgive
“Often, to understand the meaning of forgiveness, we need to do things that are an expression of forgiveness.”
This study examines the relationship between willingness to forgive as a character trait, behavior (manifestations of forgiveness in actions), and physiological reactions. The project is focused on studying the relationship between forgiveness, behavior and muscle tension in healthy adults who have been hurt by the actions of loved ones.
Behavior is assessed using an economic decision-making task that uses an electromyograph (a device that records the electrical activity of skeletal muscles) to measure the voltage of the corrugator muscle (also called the “worry muscle”).
The neuroscience of “prosocial value” (doing things for the benefit of others)
How does another person become valuable to us? How do we “imbue” each other with this value? This is a primary question for studying the science of altruism. The Center's scientists observe MRI scans of participants' brains as they decide whether to give money to a stranger or keep it for themselves. The result should be a diagram of the parts of the brain that are involved in this process.
This project is being implemented with the support of the John Templeton Foundation, which provided a grant “Developing Virtuous Character Qualities” as part of an interdisciplinary scientific initiative.
Individual differences between positive emotions and their reflection at the biological level
Positive emotions, the ability to experience and enjoy them, are important for health and well-being, but previously almost all research in this area has focused on negative experiences. Using fMRI, scientists will track which neural processes correspond to positive emotions in participants - they will be asked to participate in a game that involves receiving rewards for some actions in their daily lives. Researchers want to better understand what "enjoyment" is and what the individual differences in this positive emotion are across participants.
The Center's scientists summarized previous research in this area: "We found that participants who were able to maintain activity in the nucleus accumbens - the pleasure center responsible for positive emotions and reward - also reported an increase in the level of well-being in their lives. At the same time, depressed participants showed less duration of activity in this brain region."
Scientists will be studying this neural activity for some time. The goal of the work is to create a technique that will help maintain positive emotions, which can be a way to combat depression.
Positive emotions and behavior
By studying the emotional reactions of participants - when they smile, frown, etc. – Scientists are trying to understand the connection between positive emotions and different types of empathy. Participants watched video clips from the reality show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition while researchers measured their reactions. Participants were also given tasks that tested their ability to make altruistic decisions, such as determining the size of a donation.
Exploring the Positive Qualities of Attention
How can you learn to give your undivided attention to a person or task? This is a valuable ability that is not easy to develop. Through neuroimaging and play that is sensitive to manifestations of “divided attention” (such as mind wandering), scientists will explore the neural processes that support focused, sustained attention. According to the Center's scientists, this type of research "could be a springboard for studying how this type of attention can be trained."
This project is being implemented with the support of the John Templeton Foundation, which provided a grant “Developing Virtuous Character Qualities” as part of an interdisciplinary scientific initiative.
Richard Davidson's spheres of influence
Daniel Goleman, author of Emotional Intelligence, calls Davidson "a genius scientist born to be at the top of his field." This description suits him very well. Davidson's short professional biography takes up 87 pages and is all about achievements. He influenced many important areas of research.
Meditation
For 20 years he has been studying experienced meditators and beginners. Explores what happens in the brain during meditation; what are the benefits of different practices; what practices work best for different people, and how they can use them in everyday life - in schools, in doctors' offices, in hospitals, in the workplace...
Stress
Explores the neural circuits of the brain associated with psychological stress and negative emotions. Based on inspiring neuroscientific discoveries, he creates new forms of therapy that increase emotional resilience.
Neuroplasticity
I discovered that training the mind (even just half an hour a day) produces results that can be measured. Training the brain through meditation, cognitive behavioral therapy, and other techniques can help regulate emotions, reduce stress, and even develop empathy and compassion.
Health
There is ongoing research into how meditation can reduce inflammation in diseases such as asthma and chronic pain - as well as change the response to pain itself.
Aging
Investigated the processes on which psychological stability and well-being in old age depend, as well as factors influencing the increase in this well-being.
PTSD
Helped American veterans returning from the war. The goal of this study is to expand available treatments for PTSD (including meditation practices) and make significant leaps in understanding the brain mechanisms associated with this disorder.
Mental health
I recorded which brain circuits are involved in depression, anxiety disorders, and autism - I understood the causes of suffering and how it can be reduced. The combination of traditional meditation and video games specifically designed to promote mindful awareness has improved the attention span of children and adults.
Earlier childhood
Worked for 6 years to study how preschoolers, middle school students, and teachers could benefit from integrating mindfulness into the school curriculum.
1976-1992 Davidson explores the "emotional brain" and initiates the creation of a new field - "emotional neuroscience", which studies the brain mechanisms that underlie emotions.
1992 Together with three colleagues, he meets with the Dalai Lama to suggest that he begin a study of several experienced meditators. This moment marks the beginning of direct study of the effects of meditation on the brain.
2000 Davidson receives the American Psychological Association's most honorable award, the Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award, for his lifetime achievements.
2001 Tibetan monk Mathieu Ricard comes to Davidson's laboratory in Madison. And Davidson conducts research on this experienced meditator's brain before, during and after practice.
2004 Davidson and his colleagues publish the first scientific paper on the changes that occur in the brain during meditation in Tibetan monks. The article was published in the leading American scientific journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
2006 Time magazine names Davidson one of the 100 most influential people in the world.
2008 Founds the Center for Healthy Minds Research at the Weissman Center at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.
2011 - 2017 Becomes a member of the Scientific Advisory Board at the Institute of Cognitive Psychology and Brain Sciences. Max Planck in Leipzig, Germany.
2011-2013 Becomes a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in the Psychology section.
2012 Published by The Emotional Life of your brain in collaboration with Sharon Begley (in Russian translation “How emotions control the brain”).