The Center for Investigating Healthy Minds

Cultivating virtuous qualities of character: An interdisciplinary initiative

Made possible by the John Templeton Foundation, this new initiative consists of basic and translational research to a) develop both laboratory and real-world measures of key virtuous qualities including altruism and compassion; b) examine the impact of training to cultivate these qualities; and c) determine the behavioral (lab and real-world measures) and neural consequences of such training.

This research program includes the development of sensitive behavioral measures of these qualities. The behavioral measures will be developed in a large sample over a broad age span and balanced for gender so that age and gender can be examined. A key component of this stage of the research will be to determine how the lab measures predict real-world measures of these qualities. From this sample, those at the extremes of the distributions on the behavioral measures will be brought to the laboratory for imaging studies to interrogate differences in brain function associated with these behavioral characteristics.

In Years 2 and 3, we will examine the impact of short-term training to enhance compassion and altruism on brain function and behavioral changes. A rigorous comparison condition will be included so that the changes we observe can be isolated to the specific qualities that are being trained by the intervention and not to non-specific factors. We will also determine the extent to which measures of brain function predict real-world changes in these qualities. This initiative will be undertaken with humility and rigor, help answer long-standing questions about virtuous character, catalyze a new hybrid field of contemplative science and provide practical benefit to individuals across the lifespan.

The National Institutes of Health, National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM)

The Wisconsin center for the neuroscience and psychophysiology of meditation is a Center for Excellence for Research in Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CERC).

This will be a highly focused center dedicated to novel and cutting-edge research on the mechanisms through which meditation works. The initial five-year period of this Center is focused on the brain mechanisms and peripheral biological correlates of two different forms of meditation — mindfulness-based meditation and a form of meditation designed to cultivate compassion and loving kindness. There are three projects included within this Center, two by highly established investigators (Davidson and Tononi) and one by an extraordinarily promising junior investigator (Lutz). Project 1 (Davidson) is focused on the impact of compassion/loving kindness meditation on emotional reactivity and emotion regulation. This will be addressed using both functional MRI (fMRI) and measures of peripheral physiology and endocrine function. Project 2 (Lutz) is focused on the neural and behavioral correlates of mindfulness meditation on attention and pain regulation. In addition, Project 2 will examine the relation between changes in oscillatory rhythms during meditation and attention and pain processing. Project 3 (Tononi) will examine the impact of meditation on spontaneous brain activity during sleep. This project will also examine the impact of intensive meditation on regional changes in slow wave activity during subsequent sleep. Finally, this project will use transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to probe plastic changes in thalamocortical circuits by examining the impact of TMS pulses on evoked gamma activity. Each of these projects will be conducted on the same participants so that interrelations among the various measures collected in the different projects can be examined. We believe that the understanding of the mechanisms by which meditation produces changes in behavioral and biological processes will be dramatically advanced through the work of this CERC.

The Fetzer Initiative on the Neuroscience of Compassion, Love and Forgiveness

The Center for Investigating Healthy Minds will embark on an ambitious program that will include:

1. Research to examine love, forgiveness and compassion through brain imaging and other innovative measures. This includes: (a) the development of better laboratory behavioral methods to examine love, forgiveness and compassion in conjunction with biological indices; (b) examining variation in large samples to better understand exceptional individuals and (c) continued research of different contemplative practices that may deepen our capacity for compassion.
2. Two Fetzer Fellows will be appointed each year to receive a graduate stipend to specifically focus their research attention on questions of love, compassion and forgiveness from a neuroscientific perspective.
3. An annual two-day meeting each year to attract the highest visibility to the neuroscience of love, forgiveness and compassion.

Visit the Fetzer Institute web site to learn more about the Fetzer Initiative research project.