Today, Liz Phelps and Cliff Saron presented. The morning session involved engaging discussion concerning what emotion is. How to define it from both the Western cognitive neuroscience and psychological perspective and from the Buddhist perspective. Richie Davidson indicated that emotion can be operationalized in two ways:
1. Detecting stimuli that signal importance to the organism
2. Generating affective responses (that may motivate action).
Liz showed data that indicated that emotion increases confidence for emotional events, but not accuracy of the details. So in some sense, emotion is acting more as a time stamp that collects the “gist” of the context in which emotion occurred. Where you were when the twin towers collapsed on 9/11/2001? You may be able to report the gist of where you were and never forget the “gist” of that memory, but you are actually no better at remembering the details of the event and that day compared to a neutral event, like what you had for breakfast this morning.
From the Buddhist point of view, here is Robert Thurman:
Robert commented on the Tibetan concept, Vedana, which is typically translated as “feeling”. He stressed that it should rather be translated as sensation, the physical process. The translation typically confuses sensations of pain and pleasure and the associated mental reactions with emotional reactions, which are more vague and higher level in terms of conceptual processing. There remained to be a clear category for the vague “feelings”
Richie stated later in reference to a discussion on wholesome (beneficial) and unwholesome (hurtful/harmful) types of distinction in emotion,
“The Brain does not respect the dichotomy that the Greeks have handed to us”
and His Holiness states, “For one whose heart is pure, there is no negative act”
Tags: richard davidson, robert thurman
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Was there any discussion on the results of the Shamatha Project?
I am sure there was. My colleague, Cliff Saron, is PI and his presentation today was all about the Shamatha Project. I am here in California in body, in Dharamsala in spirit. I am hoping there will be a post with more details about Cliff’s presentation today.
I am sure there was.
Thanks Erika.
I do believe you are the same Ms. Erika Rosenberg in the documentary Monks, In the Lab?
Thanks for taking the time to respond. I was hoping to hear some overview from Cliff, although it’s easy to understand how such a short span of time is easily filled, given the fine quality of the participants and their unique specialization.
I also would have enjoyed hearing Cliff’s overview of the Shamatha Project. I have been following Wallace and Saron’s progress with this project since it’s inception (I am an unselected participant) and would have enjoyed hearing an abstract of the outcomes.
Jeris JC Miller
Social Media Program Manager
Seeds of Compassion 2.0/The Compassionate Action Network (@SeedsCAN)
… Yes, agree, would love to hear more about Cliff’s presentation!! So interested, as a third person observer, as a second person sharer, and having been a first person participant-guinea pig in The Shamatha Project myself. As to emotions and after effects, I can just say that these, both in the sense of valence and wholesomeness (to use the 2×2 typology that Richard and Matthieu used in the morning) have been impressive, as to pleasant and wholesome, to myself and those around me… Well, just a N=1… remark, but I know of others… In gratitude to Cliff and Alan,
Warmly, Adeline, Shamatha Project participant, Netherlands
Yes, agree, would love to hear more about Cliff’s presentation!!
Well, hopefully it will be available soon–or as a later presentation.
It would be interesting to at least know the EEG evidence. What were the traits? Any evidence of gamma?
And since Elizabeth Blackburn is known to have done measurements on telomerase, were there any known effects, compared to controls, re: telomere lengthening? If so, that could be quite a groundbreaking discovery.