The ReSource Project is a large-scale, interdisciplinary study on the effects of mental training on the brain, subjective experience, health, and behavior. Over an eleven-month period, participants practice a variety of mental exercises aimed at cultivating attention, interoceptive awareness, perspective-taking on self and others, meta-cognition, compassion, empathy, and prosocial motivation. These exercises include meditative techniques …
This breakout group will focus on professional development for those who wish to pursue a career in contemplative neuroscience. Some initial comments will be offered and then opportunities for questions and answers will be available.
High-quality social relationships help us live longer, happier, and healthier lives—facts that hold true, as far as anyone knows, regardless of geography or culture. Although links between relationships and health have been observed for decades (if not millennia), the mechanisms responsible for them remain speculative. For this talk, I’ll first describe our work on one …
Positive reinforcement, i.e. the increase in frequency of behaviors that are associated with a desired outcome, and negative reinforcement, i.e. the increase in frequency of behaviors to avoid undesired outcomes, are the fundamental forces that shape daily behavior. However, in its extremes both processes result in rigid and potentially self-damaging behaviors. For example, excessive engagement …
Approach behavior occurs when an individual wants to get closer to a stimulus in the outside world that is viewed as rewarding. In contrast, avoidance behavior comprises actions that brings distance between the individual and a stimulus in the outside world and is often related to impending or experienced punishments, which threaten the integrity of …
Mind & Life Institute board member and neuroscientist Dr. Richard Davidson tells the story of how meeting the Dalai Lama redirected his work towards studying kindness and compassion.
The paper stages a conversation between Eastern monastic spirituality and the contemporary neurophenomenology of depression. The claim is that, much as the heart once functioned as a symbol for the structured core of the human being, the brain has now come to act as a symbol around which imaginative visions of human nature are pooling. …
The ReSource Project is a large-scale, multimethod, longitudinal study investigating the effects of different mental training practices on subjective experience, behavior, brain, and physiology. Over nine months, 180 participants underwent a structured curriculum with three separate modules training: (1) attention and interoceptive awareness; (2) loving kindness and prosocial motivation; and (3) cognitive perspective taking and …
