{"id":105,"date":"2020-02-28T19:40:55","date_gmt":"2020-02-28T19:40:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-esc-introtocollegereadingandwriting\/?post_type=chapter&p=105"},"modified":"2020-08-05T18:07:43","modified_gmt":"2020-08-05T18:07:43","slug":"the-buddhist-and-the-neuroscientist","status":"publish","type":"chapter","link":"https:\/\/courses.lumenlearning.com\/suny-esc-introtocollegereadingandwriting\/chapter\/the-buddhist-and-the-neuroscientist\/","title":{"raw":"The Buddhist and the Neuroscientist","rendered":"The Buddhist and the Neuroscientist"},"content":{"raw":"What compassion does to the brain[1]<\/sup>\r\n\r\nby Kathy Gilsinan<\/em>\r\nJuly 4, 2015<\/em>\r\n\r\nIn 1992, the neuroscientist Richard Davidson got a challenge from the Dalai Lama. By that point, he\u2019d spent his career asking why people respond to, in his words, \u201clife\u2019s slings and arrows\u201d in different ways. Why are some people more resilient than others in the face of tragedy? And is resilience something you can gain through practice?\r\n\r\nThe Dalai Lama had a different question for Davidson when he visited the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader at his residence in Dharamsala, India. \u201cHe said: \u2018You\u2019ve been using the tools of modern neuroscience to study depression, and anxiety, and fear. Why can\u2019t you use those same tools to study kindness and compassion?\u2019 \u2026 I did not have a very good answer. I said it was hard.\u201d\r\n\r\n\"\"\r\n\r\nThe Dalai Lama was interested in what the tools of modern neuroscience could reveal about the brains of people who spent years, in Davidson\u2019s words, \u201ccultivating well-being \u2026 cultivating qualities of the mind which promote a positive outlook.\u201d The result was that, not long afterward, Davidson brought a series of Buddhist monks into his lab and strapped electrodes to their heads or treated them to a few hours in an MRI machine.\r\n\r\n\u201cThe best way to activate positive-emotion circuits in the brain is through generosity,\u201d Davidson, who founded the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at University of Wisconsin, Madison, said in a talk at the Aspen Ideas Festival. \u201cThis is really a kind of exciting neuroscientific finding because there are pearls of wisdom in the contemplative tradition\u2014the Dalai Lama frequently talks about this\u2014that the best way for us to be happy is to be generous to others. And in fact the scientific evidence is in many ways bearing this out, and showing that there are systematic changes in the brain that are associated with acts of generosity.\u201d\r\n\r\nDavidson and his colleagues ran a simple experiment on eight \u201clong-term Buddhist practitioners\u201d whose had spent an average of 34,000 hours in mental training. They asked the subjects to alternate between a meditative state and a neutral state in order to observe how the brain changed. One subject described his meditation as generating \u201ca state in which love and compassion permeate the whole mind, with no other consideration, reasoning, or discursive thoughts.\u201d\r\n\r\n\"\"\r\n\r\n\u201cWhen we did this, we noticed something remarkable,\u201d Davidson said. \u201cWhat we see are these high-amplitude gamma-oscillations in the brain, which are indicative of plasticity\u201d\u2014meaning that those brains were more capable of change, for example, in theory, of becoming more resilient. The researchers also found in MRI scans of monks that a region of the brain known as the\u00a0anterior insula<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0was activated. \u201cEvery neuroscientist will have their favorite part of the brain,\u201d Davidson said. The anterior insula is one of his, because it\u2019s where a lot of brain-body coordination takes place. \u201cThe systems in the brain that support our well-being are intimately connected to different organ systems in our body, and also connected to the immune and endocrine systems in ways that matter for our health,\u201d he said. The brain scans showed that \u201ccompassion is a kind of state that involves the body in a major way.\u201d One example: Davidson and coauthors found\u00a0in another study<\/a>\u00a0that meditation improved immune response to an influenza vaccine\u2014and the subjects were not \u201cprofessional\u201d Buddhist meditators, but people who had gone through an eight-week training program in mindfulness meditation. And a short \u201ccompassion training\u201d course, Davidson and colleagues found in a 2013 study, exhibited more altruistic behavior compared with a control group.\r\n\r\nThe study of Buddhist brains\u00a0has burgeoned<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>since Davidson first met the Dalai Lama. But it\u2019s still not known precisely how compassion alters the brain to promote better health or better behavior. Gamma waves and lit up insula can only tell you so much about the linkages between the mind and the body, and, in turn, about what it really takes to think your way to a better character.*<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0Davidson\u2019s research suggests, he said, that \u201cwe can all take responsibility for our brains.\u201d In which case, cultivating responsibility itself might be the first step.\r\n\r\n[1] <\/sup>This article was originally published on the website TheAtlantic.com and is republished here with The Atlantic's permission.\r\n
Outside<\/em> magazine offers an interesting article about another influence on your brain.\u00a0 This is Your Brain on Exercise<\/a> explains the evolving neuroscience that shows multiple benefits of exercise on the brain.<\/div>","rendered":"

What compassion does to the brain[1]<\/sup><\/p>\n

by Kathy Gilsinan<\/em>
\nJuly 4, 2015<\/em><\/p>\n

In 1992, the neuroscientist Richard Davidson got a challenge from the Dalai Lama. By that point, he\u2019d spent his career asking why people respond to, in his words, \u201clife\u2019s slings and arrows\u201d in different ways. Why are some people more resilient than others in the face of tragedy? And is resilience something you can gain through practice?<\/p>\n

The Dalai Lama had a different question for Davidson when he visited the Tibetan Buddhist spiritual leader at his residence in Dharamsala, India. \u201cHe said: \u2018You\u2019ve been using the tools of modern neuroscience to study depression, and anxiety, and fear. Why can\u2019t you use those same tools to study kindness and compassion?\u2019 \u2026 I did not have a very good answer. I said it was hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The Dalai Lama was interested in what the tools of modern neuroscience could reveal about the brains of people who spent years, in Davidson\u2019s words, \u201ccultivating well-being \u2026 cultivating qualities of the mind which promote a positive outlook.\u201d The result was that, not long afterward, Davidson brought a series of Buddhist monks into his lab and strapped electrodes to their heads or treated them to a few hours in an MRI machine.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe best way to activate positive-emotion circuits in the brain is through generosity,\u201d Davidson, who founded the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at University of Wisconsin, Madison, said in a talk at the Aspen Ideas Festival. \u201cThis is really a kind of exciting neuroscientific finding because there are pearls of wisdom in the contemplative tradition\u2014the Dalai Lama frequently talks about this\u2014that the best way for us to be happy is to be generous to others. And in fact the scientific evidence is in many ways bearing this out, and showing that there are systematic changes in the brain that are associated with acts of generosity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Davidson and his colleagues ran a simple experiment on eight \u201clong-term Buddhist practitioners\u201d whose had spent an average of 34,000 hours in mental training. They asked the subjects to alternate between a meditative state and a neutral state in order to observe how the brain changed. One subject described his meditation as generating \u201ca state in which love and compassion permeate the whole mind, with no other consideration, reasoning, or discursive thoughts.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen we did this, we noticed something remarkable,\u201d Davidson said. \u201cWhat we see are these high-amplitude gamma-oscillations in the brain, which are indicative of plasticity\u201d\u2014meaning that those brains were more capable of change, for example, in theory, of becoming more resilient. The researchers also found in MRI scans of monks that a region of the brain known as the\u00a0anterior insula<\/a><\/strong>\u00a0was activated. \u201cEvery neuroscientist will have their favorite part of the brain,\u201d Davidson said. The anterior insula is one of his, because it\u2019s where a lot of brain-body coordination takes place. \u201cThe systems in the brain that support our well-being are intimately connected to different organ systems in our body, and also connected to the immune and endocrine systems in ways that matter for our health,\u201d he said. The brain scans showed that \u201ccompassion is a kind of state that involves the body in a major way.\u201d One example: Davidson and coauthors found\u00a0in another study<\/a>\u00a0that meditation improved immune response to an influenza vaccine\u2014and the subjects were not \u201cprofessional\u201d Buddhist meditators, but people who had gone through an eight-week training program in mindfulness meditation. And a short \u201ccompassion training\u201d course, Davidson and colleagues found in a 2013 study, exhibited more altruistic behavior compared with a control group.<\/p>\n

The study of Buddhist brains\u00a0has burgeoned<\/a>\u00a0<\/strong>since Davidson first met the Dalai Lama. But it\u2019s still not known precisely how compassion alters the brain to promote better health or better behavior. Gamma waves and lit up insula can only tell you so much about the linkages between the mind and the body, and, in turn, about what it really takes to think your way to a better character.*<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0Davidson\u2019s research suggests, he said, that \u201cwe can all take responsibility for our brains.\u201d In which case, cultivating responsibility itself might be the first step.<\/p>\n

[1] <\/sup>This article was originally published on the website TheAtlantic.com and is republished here with The Atlantic’s permission.<\/p>\n

Outside<\/em> magazine offers an interesting article about another influence on your brain.\u00a0 This is Your Brain on Exercise<\/a> explains the evolving neuroscience that shows multiple benefits of exercise on the brain.<\/div>\n\n\t\t\t
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Candela Citations<\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t
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