This Mind & Life session highlights a new generation of contemplative scientists exploring both the benefits and complexities of meditation while carrying forward Francisco Varela’s vision of integrating first-person contemplative experience with third-person scientific inquiry. Thorsten Barnhofer presents research suggesting that mindfulness-based cognitive therapy may help people with chronic depression by reducing rumination, helping them …
This meeting underscores the plasticity in brain and mental function that exists throughout life, and the potential role of practices designed for change in actually producing beneficial changes.
The experience of acute moral distress has become a pervasive and serious problem among health care clinicians. Clinical care, especially of patients with serious and life threatening illness, requires clinicians on the front lines to discern ethically justifiable courses of action in exceedingly complex circumstances, riddled with conflict and uncertainty. Although complex moral decision-making is …
We are working to increase diversity within neuroscience of meditation studies to reflect the increasingly diverse population of the United States and to improve representation of minorities. We are using community engagement and dialogue with the East Bay Meditation Center (EBMC) in Oakland, CA, one of the most diverse meditation communities in the U.S. EBMC …
Adolescents bear the burden of complex global challenges head, yet as recent events have shown, they are also drivers of change. Youth mindfulness programmes (YMPs), now increasingly prevalent in educational and juvenile justice settings, are thought to promote resilience and emotional skills, drawing on neuroscience to inform interventions. Moreover, neurobiological ideas are frequently incorporated into …
Meditation practices are increasingly being adapted into secular formats such as “mindfulness.” In these new contexts, the spiritual or soteriolog- ical aspects of meditation have been largely put aside and the putative benefits of meditation in terms of physical and mental health are empha- sized within a scientific (and especially neuroscientific) framework. For instance, invoking …
By 2044, more than half of the US population will belong to a racial or ethnic minority group, and health disparities exist between minority groups and the general population for many health conditions. Diverse contemplative sanghas are emerging that serve underrepresented populations to support social action, multiculturalism, and safe social spaces to address effects of …
Academic psychology and neuroscience have typically centered viewpoints of the dominant culture (WEIRD: White, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic), which has influenced both the process and content of contemplative neuroscience. By incorporating more diverse perspectives through a lens of social justice, Helen Weng will present new lines of work that center viewpoints of meditators who belong …
The “Translating Neuroscience” panel will explore how to accurately and accessibly convey to the non-scientific public the discoveries of scientific research around contemplative practice while maintaining the integrity and accuracy of the research. Specifically, we will focus on the promises and challenges of communicating complex ideas from neuroscience and cognitive science about the nature of …
