Willoughby Britton

Dr. Britton earned a B.A. in Neuroscience from Colgate University in 1996 and a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Arizona in 2007.  She is the recipient of two National Research Service Awards (NRSA) and a Career Development Award (CDA) from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). She is currently the Director of Brown’s Clinical …

David Vago

Dr. David Vago is Research Associate Professor and Director of the Contemplative Neuroscience and Mind-Body (CNMB) Research Laboratory in the Department of Psychology at Vanderbilt University. He is core training faculty for the Vanderbilt Brain Institute and Vanderbilt Institute for Infection, Immunology, and Inflammation. He is also a research associate in the Functional Neuroimaging Laboratory, Brigham …

Uri Hasson

Uri Hasson grew up in Jerusalem. As an undergraduate, he studied philosophy and cognitive sciences at the Hebrew University. He completed his PhD in Neurobiology at the Weizmann Institute in Israel and was a postdoctoral fellow at NYU before moving to Princeton. He is currently a Professor in the Psychology Department and the Neuroscience Institute …

Marieke van Vugt

Marieke van Vugt is an assistant professor at the Bernoulli Institute of Mathematics, Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence of the University of Groningen (Netherlands). She obtained her PhD in neuroscience focusing on the role of brain oscillations in recognition memory with Dr. Michael Kahana at the University of Pennsylvania in 2008. She then went on …

Anthony Phillips

Anthony Phillips, Ph.D., has expertise in brain function and behavior. He was Scientific Director of the CIHR Institute of Neurosciences, Mental Health and Addiction (2009–2017), Founding Director of the University of British Columbia (UBC) Institute of Mental Health, and is currently professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Senior Investigator with the UBC Djavad Mohafhagian …

Early Childhood Development and Social Emotional Learning

Day One begins with an overview of key insights derived from developmental, affective, and contemplative neuroscience on the processes of change, epigenetic influences on development, early brain development, and the nurturing of social and emotional skills over the first 20 years of life. This will provide scientific background for the Dialogue and raise fundamental questions …

The Whole Person Sits: Social Imaginaries of Practitioners and Researchers in the Scientific Study of Meditation

In a 1984 interview, Francisco Varela stated that “science, in its core, its active living core, is pure contemplation. It has little or nothing to do with manipulation.” In 2018, the utility of engaging in contemplative practice is pervasively promoted as justified by scientific evidence of its benefits. Yet this evidence is often weak, taken …

Gaelle Desbordes

Gaelle is a Mind & Life Fellow with years of previous experience conducting research in contemplative neuroscience. After receiving a Masters degree in computer science and a PhD in cognitive and neural systems, she served on the research faculty at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School where she investigated the effects of meditation …

Closing Keynote: What is Mindfulness? An Embodied Cognitive Science Perspective

This keynote lecture proposes that mindfulness includes cultural practices, habits of attending, and ways of using the body in the social and material world. Current neuroscience conceptions of mindfulness as an inner mental state or trait that can be correlated with unique patterns of brain activity are therefore inadequate because they leave out the wider …

Master Lectures: Minding Mindfulness: Issues, Models, and Findings in the Scientific Study of Meditation

This talk will describe attentional, emotional and physiological processes modified over the course of three months of full-time training in, and practice of, meditative quiescence (Shamatha) and beneficial aspirations for self and others (loving kindness, compassion, empathetic joy and equanimity). This multidisciplinary longitudinal, randomized wait-list controlled study is known as The Shamatha Project. Scientific measures …