Helen Y. Weng, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist and neuroscientist, and her research focuses on the neural mechanisms of how meditation practices may improve social behavior and mental health. Her current work involves adapting research methodology to increase diverse representation in the neuroscience of meditation from a social justice perspective. This includes using community engagement …
Search results for:
neuroscience
Neurological Identities: Challenging the Brain as the Locus of Difference
As cognitive neuroscience steps up its focus on neurological distinctions between different ‘kinds of people,’ patient populations, cultural groups and social categories have begun to be understood in terms of brain-based differences. These differences are often articulated in terms of structural or functional differences, as visualized through neuroimaging techniques. In this talk, Suparna Choudhury will …
Continue reading “Neurological Identities: Challenging the Brain as the Locus of Difference”
Suparna Choudhury
Suparna Choudhury is Assistant Professor and Co-Director of the Culture, Mind & Brain Program at the Division of Social & Transcultural Psychiatry, McGill University, where she works on the adolescent brain at the intersection of anthropology and cognitive neuroscience. Trained originally as a neuroscientist, Suparna has worked as a researcher in London, Paris, Berlin, and …
2018 Summer Research Institute
The 2018 Mind & Life Summer Research Institute extends the arc from the 2016 and 2017 programs that addressed themes of context, social connectivity, and intersubjectivity by engaging critical topics relevant to cultural difference and human diversity. The weeklong immersive program will examine social and psychological patterns, both implicit and explicit, to discuss how difference is constructed at personal, interpersonal, and socio-structural levels. Scientific, humanistic, and first-person contemplative perspectives will give attention to processes of othering and how we can overcome conflict by embracing difference.
Helen Weng: Using Science to Spread a Message of Compassion, Equity, and Inclusion
In late 2019, Helen Weng, PhD was honored with the Mind & Life Institute Annual Service Award. The award is given to individuals who are distinguished by the breadth and depth of their involvement with Mind & Life, and who embody its core values of compassion, integrity, curiosity, inclusion, and excellence. Below is a tribute …
Breaking Habits: Self-Transcendence and Health Behavior Change
What promotes adaptive attitude and behavior change? In this talk, it will be proposed that self-transcendence, or the drive to care for the well-being of others beyond self-interests, is key to increasing receptivity to change. Psychological and neurocognitive mechanisms of self-transcendence that help make people more open to change in the domains of social attitudes …
Continue reading “Breaking Habits: Self-Transcendence and Health Behavior Change”
Mental Habits, Prediction Machines, and Controlled Hallucinations
Just as behavioral habits define our behavioral lives, mental habits define our psychological lives. Mental habits can be thought of as the perceptual, emotional, and cognitive processes that shape and bias how we perceive self, others, and the world. This talk will describe a view of mental habits from the perspective of cognitive neuroscience, focusing …
Continue reading “Mental Habits, Prediction Machines, and Controlled Hallucinations”
Measuring, Understanding, and Changing Mental Habits
This presentation will first explore possible domains of mental habits, including personality, social interaction, identity, emotion, mind wandering, and contemplative practice. From the perspective of grounded cognition, the question will be raised as to how “mental” are mental habits, given that they appear to be strongly grounded in external situations (and conversely that physical habits …
Continue reading “Measuring, Understanding, and Changing Mental Habits”
Clifford Saron
Clifford Saron is a research scientist at the Center for Mind and Brain and MIND Institute at the University of California, Davis. He received his Ph.D. in neuroscience from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1999. In the early 1990s, he coordinated field research investigating Tibetan Buddhist mind training under the auspices of the …
Juan Santoyo
Juan is an early-career researcher from Colombia who works in neuroscience and contemplative research. His training has involved studying the neurophysiological dynamics underlying meditation training and sensory perception in humans, and the structure and dynamics of sensory systems in mice. Through this, he has been involved in the development of strategies for neurophenomenological research as …
