The Center for Investigating Healthy Minds

Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) training for the teachers at the Waisman Center Early Childhood Education Program
Frances Haeberli

The objective of this research project is to gain insight into Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) as an intervention to reduce the daily stress levels and increase the sense of well-being of pre-school teachers. MBSR was developed by Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn of the University of Massachusetts Medical Center as an intervention for achieving stress reduction. In this pilot research project we are investigating the extent to which MBSR can be used as a program to improve the mental and physical health of teachers. The subject population will be drawn from the group of teachers who work at the Waisman Center Early Childhood Education Program. This is a specialized early childhood education program providing programming to children with and without disabilities in a fully integrated context. The research project will observe and monitor the impact of the MBSR intervention on social stress and basic affective and attention functions, and the well-being of the teachers.

Veteran health and well-being programs and research

Twenty percent of the approximately 2 million veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan suffer from the debilitating symptoms of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). This high rate of PTSD may be the reason behind alarming increases in suicidal behavior among returning veterans. In particular, the suicide rate among male veterans aged 18 to 29 years has increased by 26% from 2005 to 2007. In Wisconsin alone, although veterans make up less than 8% of Wisconsin’s population, they account for 20% of its suicides according to data compiled through death certificates, police reports and other public documents from 2001 through 2007.

There is an urgent need to find ways to address the distress of returning combat veterans. Dedicated to serving those who have served, CIHM is both offering free complementary and alternative programs to local veterans and developing a research agenda to evaluate the effects of these types of programs for returning veterans.

Complementary and alternative treatments are gentle, cost-effective, prevention-based and free of side-effects. Moreover, veterans regain a sense of self-mastery and control because they can self-administer the techniques rather than depend on a clinician. Research pioneered by our laboratory as well as other laboratories nation-wide indicates that complementary and alternative treatments may help increase resilience and decrease psychological distress. We therefore plan to evaluate and compare different complementary and alternative programs to each other in a veteran population using multiple methods from brain imaging, to psychophysiology and clinical evaluation. The results of our research will help us answer the three following questions1) Are complementary and alternative programs beneficial for veterans with PTSD? 2) If so, which programs are most effective? And 3) Do different people benefit from the programs differently, depending on their psychological differences?

Our research is currently underway. For more information or to participate in our study, please email veterans@investigatinghealthyminds.org. Download informational brochure here.

The free wellness programs we are offering to local veterans and their families include the Project Welcome Home Troops breathing workshop in collaboration with the Madison VA Hospital and the Milwaukee VA Hospital. For information on upcoming workshops please email veterans@investigatinghealthyminds.org

Effects of short-term compassion meditation training on the brain and helping behavior
Helen Weng, Andrew Fox, Diane Stodola

We are training people with no meditation experience in compassion meditation, a meditation where one focuses on wishing freedom from suffering for different kinds of people. We are comparing compassion meditation training to a matched cognitive reappraisal training, where people learn to think about stressful situations in their life in a different, more effective way. We are examining brain activity in response to pictures of human suffering before and after compassion and reappraisal training to see how both strategies may be regulating emotional responses in different ways. Importantly, we expect compassion meditation to not only help people regulate their emotions but also promote helping behavior. We are measuring helping behavior using economic game and donation tasks.

Neuroeconomic measures of helping behavior
Helen Weng, Andrew Fox, Donal MacCoon, Elizabeth Vanderwerff, Diane Stodola

Economic games are a simple, controlled way of studying social behavior using economic exchanges. We are applying this methodology to study helping behavior. We have designed novel economic games to model redistribution of wealth from a wealthier dictator to a poorer recipient, as well as direct helping to a poorer recipient. Redistribution of wealth has been found to be motivated by trait empathic concern. We are currently studying what traits motivate punishment and helping behavior. We are also investigating whether different kinds of meditation (particularly compassion meditation) may influence economic game behavior. The games are also being used as a potential way to measure sustainable well-being.

Mindfulness meditation effects on automatic emotion regulation in the brain
Helen Weng, Antoine Lutz, Frances Haeberli, Diane Stodola

We are investigating how mindfulness meditation may effect of neural processing of emotional pictures when people have a certain belief about the pictures. Mindfulness meditation teaches people to be present to whatever thoughts and emotions arise, and we are hoping to understand this process by investigating how brain areas are connected to each other before and after mindfulness training.

Exploring the positive qualities of attention
Daniel Levinson

The ability to give undivided attention to a person or task is a valuable but challenging capacity to develop. The present study is aimed towards designing a behavioral game sensitive to divided attention, such as mind wandering, that is compatible with the methodological constraints of neuroimaging. This would facilitate investigation of brain processes supporting undivided attention, and may provide a springboard for exploration of how such attention is trained.