Of Meditation, Monks, and Music:
Dr. Davidson Speaks on Systematic Mind-Body Training
Matthieu Ricard—a geneticist, Buddhist monk, author, and photographer—comes to Madison from Nepal to be studied by Dr. Davidson's team. Here, he has been fitted with a "net" of EEG electrodes.
© Waisman Brain Imaging Lab
Can people increase their level of happiness—and experience associated benefits to health—by learning and practicing meditation as a skill? The answer appears to be yes, says Richard J. Davidson, Ph.D., of the University of Wisconsin (UW)-Madison. Based on his research, Dr. Davidson likens meditation to certain other trainable skills that produce changes in the brain and body, such as playing a musical instrument or being proficient in a sport. His research group has studied meditation extensively in subjects ranging from Tibetan Buddhist monks who have meditated intensively for decades to college students with no previous meditation experience.
Dr. Davidson spoke at the June 2008 meeting of the National Advisory Council for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. He is Vilas Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at UW-Madison, and director of that university's Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience and Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior.
Can Happiness Be Enhanced?
Happiness, Dr. Davidson said in his opening remarks, is an important concern in the United States, with its pursuit guaranteed in our Constitution. It is, he said, "a state, a trait, and a skill." It appears to be health enhancing and to have underlying biological characteristics in the brain and body. But, is biology destiny, where happiness is concerned? Are people stuck at a "set point" for happiness beyond which they cannot move? And, if many things widely believed to produce happiness (such as material things) are unreliable in producing it, are there other approaches to consider?
Dr. Davidson believes, based on research, that levels of happiness can be changed—significantly—as a result of certain types of systematic training that bring about changes in the brain and body. For this, we can thank the fact that the brain is adaptable and changeable—a property called neuroplasticity. Types of training that aid neuroplasticity, he says, include meditation, musical training, training in a motor skill (such as juggling), physical exercise, and receiving maternal nurturing behavior.
There is also evidence that levels of some "virtuous qualities" that appear to be associated with happiness—such as compassion,1 "loving kindness," and clarity of attention—can also be raised through meditation, Dr. Davidson said.
Richard Davidson (left) and Matthieu Ricard (right), following an MRI scan
© Waisman Brain Imaging Lab
An Unusual Group of Experts
His team's wide-ranging work has included studies of monks, meditation teachers, and other long-term practitioners of meditation who live in Nepal and India. They travel to Madison periodically to be hooked up to an assortment of high-technology equipment so that the electrical and hemodynamic (blood-circulation) activity in their brains can be observed during meditative and non-meditative states. They have also collaborated with the scientists in the design of these experiments. Each expert has at least 10,000 hours of meditation practice, with some having as high as 50,000. In their tradition, they practice a type of Tibetan Buddhist meditation called "pure compassion" or "non-referential compassion" in which the intent is to generate a state of being that is permeated with compassion.
"My colleagues and I are especially interested," Dr. Davidson commented, "in practices that are explicitly designed to cultivate compassion voluntarily. This is a central message of the Dalai Lama," whom he cited as the inspiration and moving force behind this series of studies.
Dr. Davidson's first study of these practitioners, published in 2004, used EEG (electroencephalogram, a test that studies the brain's electrical activity through electrodes placed on the scalp) to observe as the meditators alternated between periods of meditation and a neutral state. They were compared with a control group that had no prior experience with meditation, but were taught a similar meditation technique that they practiced for 1 week.
As the long-term practitioners shifted from a neutral state to a meditative state, unlike the control group, they showed "a very sharp transition to prolonged periods of high-amplitude, synchronized oscillations in the [brain's] gamma-frequency range," Dr. Davidson said. "These shifts were very dramatic and pronounced, and are not entirely explained by muscle activity. This pattern of gamma-signal activity is seen [in people in general] during focused attention and other kinds of specific perceptual tasks. However, previously it was observed only for very short periods of time, less than 1 second. In these practitioners, we saw it displayed for minutes.
"We also saw synchrony [coordination] between distant EEG sites," he continued. "The results suggest that this form of meditation induces strong connectivity among disparate brain circuits, and show what the brain is capable of doing during a voluntary mental task."
His team used a different tool, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI),2 to observe brain activity in an NCCAM-funded study of these long-term practitioners when they were presented, during meditation and rest states, with a series of emotional sounds. A control group was used that had learned a similar meditation technique and practiced it for 2 weeks before being tested. All participants were exposed to sounds that had either positive emotional content (a baby laughing), negative content (a woman screaming in distress), or neutral content (background noise in a restaurant).
The investigators found that each participant, when exposed to the emotional sounds while meditating, had increased activity in several regions of the brain important in detecting feelings and emotions. However, the expert meditators showed much more of this type of activity than the novices, especially when they heard the negative sounds. The researchers concluded that this type of meditation may change the brain and increase tendencies for compassion, kindness, and attentiveness to others, and also that longer training in meditation may lead to greater capacity for empathy.
Dr. Davidson's team is conducting another study, with NCCAM support, on whether neural responses (i.e., the responses of the nervous system) to stimuli with emotional content are affected by short-term use of compassion meditation. This study also includes a dimension looking at altruistic behavior. The results are currently being analyzed, but "our preliminary evidence suggests that even short-term training in meditation can change the brain," he said.
Other Effects From Meditation
Dr. Davidson's group has also studied meditation practitioners with regard to how their practice affects attention—a mental faculty important to processes such as mental focus, perception, memory, and consciousness—and the brain's circuitry involved.
An NCCAM-funded study by Dr. Davidson and his colleagues looked at the effects of meditation on a task challenging attention and on related brain activity. The type of meditation studied was concentration meditation, which may be described as focusing sustained attention on an object such as the breath or on a small visual stimulus. One group practiced this meditation as part of an intensive retreat, for 3 months and 10 hours per day. They were compared with a control group that had just learned a similar technique and practiced it 20 minutes daily for 1 week. The task on which all participants were tested, before and after their meditation experiences, challenged attention and memory using a rapid series of letters and numbers. All participants improved on this task following meditation, the investigators found. The longer term practitioners, however, improved much more and also showed more efficient use of brain resources important to the task.
Ancient Practices, Future Possibilities
Dr. Davidson sees potential effects for meditation not only for individuals and their health but at a more global level as well: "The growing body of evidence on compassion, loving kindness, attention, and other related characteristics; on mental training that could enhance them; and on the effects of such training on the brain and body, all provide a scientific underpinning for the contemplative practices of many of the great classical meditation traditions," he said. "This development could also lead to a more widespread incorporation of these practices into society, including social institutions."
View An Interview with Dr. Davidson in this issue of the newsletter.
To see many recently published NCCAM-funded studies on meditation, go to www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed and enter "meditation AND nccam [gr]" in the search box.
Selected References
- Brefczynski-Lewis JA, Lutz A, Schaefer HS, Levinson DB, Davidson RJ. Neural correlates of attentional expertise in long-term meditation practitioners. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2007;104(27):11483–11488.
- Davidson RJ, Harrington A, eds. Visions of Compassion: Western Scientists and Tibetan Buddhists Examine Human Nature. New York: Oxford University Press USA; 2001.
- Lutz A, Brefczynski-Lewis J, Johnstone T, Davidson RJ. Regulation of the neural circuitry of emotion by compassion meditation: effects of meditative expertise. PLoS ONE. 2008;3(3):e1897.
- Lutz A, Greischar LL, Rawlings NB, Ricard M, Davidson RJ. Long-term meditators self-induce high-amplitude gamma synchrony during mental practice. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. 2004;101(46):16369–16373.
- National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. Meditation for Health Purposes. Bethesda, MD: National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. NCCAM publication no. D308.
- Slagter HA, Lutz A, Greischar LL, et al. Mental training affects distribution of limited brain resources. PLoS Biology. 2007;5(6):1228–1235.
1. In the third reference listed above, the authors note that numerous contemplative traditions define compassion as "the wish to relieve others' suffering" and define loving kindness as "the wish of happiness for others."
2. With fMRI, researchers look at functioning in the brain or other organs by detecting changes in the chemical composition and/or blood flow in these areas.
