The Center for Investigating Healthy Minds

Yoga Spectrum project
Melissa Rosenkranz

In partnership with a local organization, Spectrum Yoga Therapy, CIHM will conduct a pilot study examining the effects of yoga and breathing for individuals on the Autism spectrum. This therapy program, developed by Scott Anderson, first focuses students to be calm and capable of participating and then brings them through a series of movements that fully engage the diaphragm and optimize healthy breathing.

Please contact Spectrum Yoga Therapy directly if you are interested in participating or have questions. To read more about the development of Spectrum Yoga Therapy, check out this recent Madison Magazine's article.

Pre-K Kindness Project
Lisa Flook, Laura Pinger

Four and five-year old students from two classrooms at a local university preschool participated in the kindness project which began in Fall 2010.  Students in one of the classrooms participated in an 8-week kindness curriculum, while students from the other class served as the wait-list control group (who received instruction after the study was completed). The kindness curriculum (currently unpublished) was developed by instructors at CIHM and consisted of three 20-30 minute lessons each week. Lessons included breathing and movement exercises to develop awareness, selected books related to the theme of kindness and caring, and activities that provided children with the opportunity to share and demonstrate acts of kindness toward one another.  In total, the students in the kindness curriculum classroom received approximately 10 hours of instruction.

Approximately 30 students across both classrooms were tested before and after the 8-week curriculum to examine the effects of training on students’ attention and emotion regulation, relationships with classmates, and prosocial behaviors.  A variety of measurements were used to gather information from children, parents, and teachers.  Children completed computer tasks of attention and objective raters observed their behavior during individual testing sessions. Teachers completed reports of children’s behavior in the classroom, while parents reported on children’s behavior at home. All measures were collected before and after the 8-week curriculum.  Comparisons from before and after the curriculum indicated improvements in attention and increases in prosocial behaviors among children who received instruction.  The preliminary results of this pilot project suggest that the kindness curriculum may be helpful in promoting self-regulatory skills and behaviors that are important to social and academic competence.

To see a video of a May 2011 public talk regarding this topic click here. Choose Presentation Title: Mindfulness in Education.

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MMSD Teacher Wellness Program
Lisa Flook, Laura Pinger

The Madison Metropolitan School District collaborated with CIHM during the 2010-2011 academic year to evaluate the effects of mindfulness training for elementary school teachers and their students. Approximately 20 teachers from grades K-5 participated in the study. Teachers underwent an 8-week modified mindfulness-based stress reduction program developed and taught by experienced instructors from the UW Health Integrative Medicine Center for Mindfulness and CIHM.  The training consisted of weekly 2-hour class sessions, daily homework completed outside of class, and a full day of mindfulness practice led by the instructors. Class sessions involved experiential activities and practices to develop attention and awareness and reduce stress.  Activities included mindfulness of breathing, body sensations, emotions, and thoughts, mindful movement, and kindness practices. In total, teachers participated in approximately 23 hours of training.

Teachers were assessed before and after the 8-week training period on a range of measures including cognitive tasks, physiological markers of stress (via saliva sampling), behavioral observation of teachers in the classroom by trained research staff, and self-reports of stress, mindfulness and well-being. Results indicated that teachers who underwent the mindfulness training reported increased mindfulness and well-being, reduced stress, and demonstrated more effective teaching behaviors. The results of this pilot project suggest the potential for mindfulness training to enhance teachers’ sense of well-being and buffer stress associated with the demands and challenges of the classroom environment.  Data from students are still being collected.

To see a video of a May 2011 public talk regarding this topic click here. Choose Presentation Title: Mindfulness in Education.

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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
Emma Seppala

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?

Are you a veteran? If so, thank you for your service! If you are an OIF/OEF male veteran, you may qualify for participation in our study. If you or someone you know might be interested, visit our study's website for more information.

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

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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.

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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.

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