PLoS One
2014
Donal G. Maccoon, Katherine A Maclean, Richard J. Davidson et al.
97 citations
Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is a secular form of meditation training. The vast majority of the extant literature investigating the health effects of mindfulness interventions relies on wait-list control comparisons. Previous studies have found that meditation training over several months is associated with improvements in cognitive control and attention. We used a visual...
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
November 1, 2013
Steve Paulson, Richard J. Davidson, Amishi P. Jha et al.
108 citations
Many of us go through our daily lives on autopilot, not fully aware of our conscious experiences. In a discussion moderated by Steve Paulson, executive producer and host of To the Best of Our Knowledge, neuroscientists Richard Davidson and Amishi Jha and clinical mindfulness expert Jon Kabat-Zinn explore the role of consciousness in mental and physical health, how we can train our minds to be...
PLoS One
August 28, 2013
Fabio Ferrarelli, Richard Smith, Daniela Dentico et al.
125 citations
Over the past several years meditation practice has gained increasing attention as a non-pharmacological intervention to provide health related benefits, from promoting general wellness to alleviating the symptoms of a variety of medical conditions. However, the effects of meditation training on brain activity still need to be fully characterized. Sleep provides a unique approach to explore the...
Mind Brain and Education
August 16, 2013
Lisa Flook, Simon B. Goldberg, Laura Pinger et al.
677 citations
Despite the crucial role of teachers in fostering children's academic learning and social-emotional well-being, addressing teacher stress in the classroom remains a significant challenge in education. The present study reports results from a randomized controlled pilot trial of a modified Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course (mMBSR) adapted specifically for teachers. Results suggest the...
Neuroimage
2013
Antoine Lutz, Daniel R McFarlin, David M Perlman et al.
Experientially opening oneself to pain rather than avoiding it is said to reduce the mind's tendency toward avoidance or anxiety which can further exacerbate the experience of pain. This is a central feature of mindfulness-based therapies. Little is known about the neural mechanisms of mindfulness on pain. During a meditation practice similar to mindfulness, functional magnetic resonance...
Child Development Perspectives
April 23, 2012
Richard J. Davidson, John D. Dunne, Jacquelynne S Eccles et al.
320 citations
Drawing upon research in neuroscience, cognitive science, developmental psychology and education, as well as scholarship from contemplative traditions concerning the cultivation of positive development, we highlight a set of mental skills and socio-emotional dispositions that we believe are central to the aims of education in the 21(st) century. These include self-regulatory skills associated...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
2011
Heleen A. Slagter, Richard J. Davidson, Antoine Lutz
295 citations
Although the adult brain was once seen as a rather static organ, it is now clear that the organization of brain circuitry is constantly changing as a function of experience or learning. Yet, research also shows that learning is often specific to the trained stimuli and task, and does not improve performance on novel tasks, even very similar ones. This perspective examines the idea that...
Emotion
February 1, 2010
Richard J. Davidson
370 citations
This commentary reflects on the articles in this Special Issue. The appearance of this group of articles underscores the important idea that a major target of mindfulness practice is on emotion. Transformation in trait affect is a key goal of all contemplative traditions. This commentary addresses several key methodological and conceptual issues in the empirical study of mindfulness. The many...
Emotion
2010
David M Perlman, Tim V Salomons, Richard J. Davidson et al.
203 citations
Pain is an unpleasant sensory and emotional experience that can be regulated by many different cognitive mechanisms. We compared the regulatory qualities of two different meditation practices during noxious thermal stimuli: Focused Attention, directed at a fixation cross away from the stimulation, which could regulate negative affect through a sensory gating mechanism; and Open Monitoring,...
Journal of Neuroscience
October 21, 2009
Antoine Lutz, Heleen A. Slagter, Nancy B. Rawlings et al.
499 citations
The capacity to stabilize the content of attention over time varies among individuals, and its impairment is a hallmark of several mental illnesses. Impairments in sustained attention in patients with attention disorders have been associated with increased trial-to-trial variability in reaction time and event-related potential deficits during attention tasks. At present, it is unclear whether...
Neuroimage
September 1, 2009
Antoine Lutz, Lawrence L. Greischar, David M Perlman et al.
The brain and the cardiovascular system influence each other during the processing of emotion. The study of the interactions of these systems during emotion regulation has been limited in human functional neuroimaging, despite its potential importance for physical health. We have previously reported that mental expertise in cultivation of compassion alters the activation of circuits linked with...
Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience
September 29, 2008
Heleen A. Slagter, Antoine Lutz, Lawrence L. Greischar et al.
135 citations
The information processing capacity of the human mind is limited, as is evidenced by the attentional blink-a deficit in identifying the second of two targets (T1 and T2) presented in close succession. This deficit is thought to result from an overinvestment of limited resources in T1 processing. We previously reported that intensive mental training in a style of meditation aimed at reducing...
Psychophysiology
May 22, 2008
Sahib S. Khalsa, David Rudrauf, Antonio Damasio et al.
276 citations
Attention to internal body sensations is practiced in most meditation traditions. Many traditions state that this practice results in increased awareness of internal body sensations, but scientific studies evaluating this claim are lacking. We predicted that experienced meditators would display performance superior to that of nonmeditators on heartbeat detection, a standard noninvasive measure...
Trends in Cognitive Sciences
April 1, 2008
Antoine Lutz, Heleen A. Slagter, John D. Dunne et al.
Meditation can be conceptualized as a family of complex emotional and attentional regulatory training regimes developed for various ends, including the cultivation of well-being and emotional balance. Among these various practices, there are two styles that are commonly studied. One style, focused attention meditation, entails the voluntary focusing of attention on a chosen object. The other...
PLoS One
March 25, 2008
Antoine Lutz, Julie A. Brefczynski-Lewis, Tom Johnstone et al.
942 citations
Recent brain imaging studies using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) have implicated insula and anterior cingulate cortices in the empathic response to another's pain. However, virtually nothing is known about the impact of the voluntary generation of compassion on this network. To investigate these questions we assessed brain activity using fMRI while novice and expert meditation...
IEEE Signal Processing Magazine
2008
Richard J. Davidson, Antoine Lutz
282 citations
The term neuroplasticity is used to describe the brain changes that occur in response to experience. This article examines the changes in the brain that occur during different styles of meditation practice.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
June 28, 2007
Julie A. Brefczynski-Lewis, Antoine Lutz, Hillary S. Schaefer et al.
988 citations
Meditation refers to a family of mental training practices that are designed to familiarize the practitioner with specific types of mental processes. One of the most basic forms of meditation is concentration meditation, in which sustained attention is focused on an object such as a small visual stimulus or the breath. In age-matched participants, using functional MRI, we found that activation...
PLoS Biology
May 4, 2007
Heleen A. Slagter, Antoine Lutz, Lawrence L. Greischar et al.
762 citations
The information processing capacity of the human mind is limited, as is evidenced by the so-called "attentional-blink" deficit: When two targets (T1 and T2) embedded in a rapid stream of events are presented in close temporal proximity, the second target is often not seen. This deficit is believed to result from competition between the two targets for limited attentional resources. Here we...
Current Directions in Psychological Science
April 1, 2005
Paul Ekman, Richard J. Davidson, Matthieu Ricard et al.
295 citations
Stimulated by a recent meeting between Western psychologists and the Dalai Lama on the topic of destructive emotions, we report on two issues: the achievement of enduring happiness, what Tibetan Buddhists call sukha, and the nature of afflictive and nonafflictive emotional states and traits. A Buddhist perspective on these issues is presented, along with discussion of the challenges the...
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
November 8, 2004
Antoine Lutz, Lawrence L. Greischar, Nancy B. Rawlings et al.
1,325 citations
Practitioners understand "meditation," or mental training, to be a process of familiarization with one's own mental life leading to long-lasting changes in cognition and emotion. Little is known about this process and its impact on the brain. Here we find that long-term Buddhist practitioners self-induce sustained electroencephalographic high-amplitude gamma-band oscillations and...
Psychosomatic Medicine
2004
Richard J. Davidson, Jon Kabat‐zinn
35 citations
University of Wisconsin Madison, Wisconsin University of Massachusetts Medical School Amherst, Massachusetts
Psychosomatic Medicine
July 1, 2003
Richard J. Davidson, Jon Kabat‐zinn, Jessica R. Schumacher et al.
2,924 citations
OBJECTIVE: The underlying changes in biological processes that are associated with reported changes in mental and physical health in response to meditation have not been systematically explored. We performed a randomized, controlled study on the effects on brain and immune function of a well-known and widely used 8-week clinical training program in mindfulness meditation applied in a work...
Psychosomatic Medicine
June 1, 1978
Gary E. Schwartz, Richard J. Davidson, Daniel J. Goleman
398 citations
Davidson and Schwartz (1) have proposed a psychobiological analysis of anxiety that emphasizes the patterning of multiple processes in the generation and self-regulation of this state. The present article specifically reviews recent research on cognitive and somatic components of anxiety. A dual component scale which separately assesses cognitive and somatic trait anxiety is described and...
Donal G. Maccoon, Katherine A Maclean, Richard J. Davidson et al.
9 citations
Background: Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is a secular form of meditation training. The vast majority of the extant literature investigating the health effects of mindfulness interventions relies on wait-list control comparisons. Previous studies have found that meditation training over several months is associated with improvements in cognitive control and...