Attention & Cognitive Control - Mind & Life Institute

Dialogue 11|Session 1

Overview

Cognitive control is defined as the ability to act (or think) in accord with intention. These were once taboo topics within the biobehavioral sciences. However, with the rise of cognitive science and new developments in brain behavior research, the phenomena of attention and cognitive control have, over the past three decades, become central and burgeoning areas of research.

To date, however, there has been little if any attention paid by attention and cognitive control researchers to Buddhist teachings and empirical observations on these matters. This seems like a missed opportunity, in that Buddhism is very clear that training the attention–teaching the mind to focus on its inner contents in a sustained manner–is a gateway to an expansion of one’s capacity in general to exert cognitive control both over the contents of one’s own thoughts and (possibly) also the processes of one’s own body.

What are the implications both of Buddhist teaching and empirical investigation into the scope of cognitive control for modern attention and cognitive control researchers? And what are the implications of results from scientific studies of attention and cognitive control for Buddhist understandings of the centrality of attention as the bedrock of spiritual practice?

Dialogue 11
4 sessions
September 13, 2003
Dharamsala, Himachal Pradesh, India
share

Speakers

Ajahn Amaro is co-abbot of Abhayagiri Buddhist Monastery in northern California. He received a B.Sc. with Honours from London University in psychology & physiology. In 1977 he took up residence in a forest meditation monastery in the lineage of Ven. Ajahn Chah in Northeast Thailand. He returned to England to join Ven. Ajahn Sumedho at a newly founded forest monastery in Sussex. In 1983, he journeyed 830 miles on foot to a branch monastery in Northumberland. In 1985 he came to Amaravati Buddhist Centre and helped with teaching and administration for ten years, serving as vice-abbot for the last two years. He started coming to the USA in 1990, spending a few months each year teaching here. In 1996 Abhayagiri Monastery was opened. The main focus of his life is practicing as a forest monk, and teaching and training others in that same tradition. Since 1988 he has taken part in numerous conferences and seminars, including two in Dharamsala and one in California with the Dalai Lama and a group of Western Buddhist teachers. In 1994 in London he was also involved in a seminar, "The Good Heart", that the Dalai Lama led where he was giving commentaries on the Christian gospels.

dialogues

Anne Treisman is the James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor at Princeton University. She has two B.A. degrees from Cambridge, England, in Modern Languages and in Natural Sciences, Psychology, and a D. Phi I. degree in Psychology from Oxford. Her main area of research has been on selective attention, starting with studies of selective listening, ("the cocktail party problem" or how we can focus on one voice among two or more), and then turning to visual attention and object perception, particularly the "binding.problem". Other interests have been in the integration of information in the perception of moving objects; perceptual learning; visual memory for objects and events; and in the brain mechanisms underlying these perceptual, attentional and memory functions. She has been elected to the Royal Society, London, the National Academy, USA, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Society of Experimental Psychologists, and has received the following awards: -Killam Senior Fellowship, James McKeen Cattell Sabbatical Award; Howard Crosby Warren Medal of the Society of Experimental Psychologists; Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award of the American Psychological Association; Fellow of American Psychological Society; Golden Brain award of the Minerva Foundation (for "fundamental breakthroughs that extend our knowledge of vision and the brain").

dialogues

B. Alan Wallace is president of The Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies. He trained for many years as a monk in Buddhist monasteries in India and Switzerland. He has taught Buddhist theory and practice in Europe and America since 1976 and has served as interpreter for numerous Tibetan scholars and contemplatives, including H. H. the Dalai Lama. After graduating summa cum laude from Amherst College, where he studied physics and the ahilosophy of science, he earned his M.A. and Ph.D. in religious Studies at Stanford University. He has edited, translated, 13 authored, and contributed to more than thirty books on Tibetan Buddhism, medicine, language, and culture, and the interface between science and religion.

dialogues

David Meyer is a faculty member of the Cognition and Perception Program in the Department of Psychology at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. A mathematical psychologist and cognitive scientist, he received his Ph. D. from Michigan and subsequently worked for almost a decade as a Member of Technical Staff in the Human Information Processing Research Department at the Bell Telephone Laboratories before returning to academe. His teaching and research - sponsored by the National Science Foundation, National Institute of Mental Health, and Office of Naval Research - have dealt with fundamental aspects of human perception, attention, learning, memory, language, movement production, multitasking, executive mental control, human-computer interaction, personality and cognitive style, cognitive aging, cognitive neuroscience, mathematical models, and unified computational theories. Numerous reports of this research have appeared in books and journals such as Science, Psychological Review, Cognitive Psychology, Memory & Cognition, Journal of Experimental Psychology, Journal of Memory and Language, and volumes of the Attention and Performance symposium series. After completing their doctoral degrees, Professor Meyer's many graduate students have taken professional positions at major universities and research institutions throughout the U.S. and abroad. For his diverse scientific contributions, Prof. Meyer has been elected as a Fellow in the Society of Experimental Psychologists, American Psychological Society, American Psychological Association, and American Association for The Advancement of Science. The American Psychological Association has honored him with its Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award. His professional activities have also included extensive service on journal editorial boards, government review panels, and international administrative committees.

dialogues

Tenzin Gyatso, the14th Dalai Lama, is the leader of Tibetan Buddhism and a spiritual leader revered worldwide. He was born on July 6, 1935, in a small village called Taktser in northeastern Tibet. Born to a peasant family, he was recognized at the age of two, in accordance with Tibetan tradition, as the reincarnation of his predecessor, the 13th Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lamas are manifestations of the Buddha of Compassion, who choose to reincarnate for the purpose of serving human beings. Winner of the Nobel Prize for Peace in 1989, he is universally respected as a spokesman for the compassionate and peaceful resolution of human conflict. He has traveled extensively, speaking on subjects including universal responsibility, love, compassion and kindness. Less well known is his intense personal interest in the sciences; he has said that if he were not a monk, he would have liked to be an engineer. As a youth in Lhasa it was he who was called on to fix broken machinery in the Potala Palace, be it a clock or a car. He has a vigorous interest in learning the newest developments in science, and brings to bear both a voice for the humanistic implications of the findings, and a high degree of intuitive methodological sophistication.

Bio dialogues

John Duncan is Deputy Director of the Medical Research Council (MRC) Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, Cambridge, England. Earlier he was a Research Scientist and Senior Scientist at MRC. He also was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Psychology at the University of Oregon. He received his B.A. from Exeter College in psychology and physiology, and his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Oxford. He has research programs in cognitive psychology, neuropsychology, neuroimaging, and single cell physiology. His research addresses problems of selective attention, human intelligence, attentional impairments following brain damage, and frontal lobe function. He has published numerous articles and papers. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the International Association for the Study of Attention and Performance, and serves on the editorial boards of Cognitive Psychology and Psychological Review. He has received many fellowships and awards. He is an Honorary Professor in the School of Psychology, University of Wales.

dialogues

Jonathan Cohen is Professor of Psychology, Director of the Center for the Study of Brain, Mind and Behavior and Director of the Program in Neuroscience at Princeton University. He is also Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. He received a B.A. from Yale University, an M.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, and a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University. He has received the NIMH Training Award in Psychiatry; the Annual Resident Research Award, Northern California Psychiatric Society; the Miller Foundation Prize for Research in Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences; the NIMH Physician Scientist Award; the NIMH First Award; the Joseph Zubin Memorial Fund Award for Research in Psychopathology; and the Kempf Fund Award.

dialogues

Thupten Jinpa, PhD, was trained as a monk at the Shartse College of Ganden Monastic University, South India, where he received the Geshe Lharam degree. In addition, Jinpa holds a bachelor’s honors degree in philosophy and a PhD in religious studies, both from Cambridge University. He taught at Ganden monastery and worked as a research fellow in Eastern religions at Girton College, Cambridge University. Jinpa has been the principal English translator to His Holiness the Dalai Lama since 1985 and has translated and edited numerous books by the Dalai Lama, including the New York Times best-sellers Ethics for the New Millennium and The Art of Happiness, as well as Beyond Religion, Universe in a Single Atom, and Transforming the Mind. His own publications include, in addition to numerous Tibetan works, Essential Mind Training; Wisdom of the Kadam Masters; Self, Reality, and Reason in Tibetan Philosophy: Tsongkhapa’s Quest for the Middle View; as well as translations of major Tibetan works featured in The Library of Tibetan Classics series. He is the main author of Compassion Cultivation Training (CCT), an eight-week formal program developed at the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) at Stanford University. Jinpa is an adjunct professor on the faculty of religious studies at McGill University, Montreal; the founder and president of the Institute of Tibetan Classics, Montreal; and the general series editor of The Library of Tibetan Classics series. He has been a core member of the Mind & Life Institute from its inception. Jinpa lives in Montreal and is married with two daughters.

dialogues