LEARNED COMPASSION: Meditation may help enhance the ability to feel compassion toward others.
Image: ©ALDO MURILLO/ISTOCKPHOTO.COM
-
The Wisdom of Psychopaths
In this engrossing journey into the lives of psychopaths and their infamously crafty behaviors, the renowned psychologist Kevin Dutton reveals that there is a...
Read More »
Like athletes or musicians, people who practice meditation can enhance their ability to concentrate—or even lower their blood pressure. They can also cultivate compassion, according to a new study. Specifically, concentrating on the loving kindness one feels toward one's family (and expanding that to include strangers) physically affects brain regions that play a role in empathy.
"There is such a thing as expertise when it comes to complex emotions or emotional skills, such as the one of cultivating benevolence," says Antoine Lutz, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin–Madison who led the study. "That raises the possibility that you can train someone to cultivate this positive emotion."
Lutz and his colleagues, including neuroscientist Richard Davidson, director of the university's Waisman Center for Brain Imaging where the study was conducted, took fMRI scans of the brains of 16 veteran meditators as well as 16 others who had started with no meditation experience but received cursory training before they carried out a series of tests. During these tests, the researchers measured the flow of blood in the brains of both the veterans (some of them Tibetan monks) and the American novices as the subjects did or did not meditate on compassionate feelings while being subjected to various sounds with positive and negative connotations.
When engaged in compassionate meditation, the brain region known as the insula burst into action when the expert meditators heard the sound of a woman in distress. (The insula—a part of the limbic system—has been associated with the visceral feeling of emotion, a key part of empathizing with another's emotional state.)
And when these experts heard the female screams or the sound of a baby laughing, their brains showed more activity than the novices in areas like the right temporal-parietal juncture, which plays a role in understanding another's emotion.
"The way you are going to understand the emotion of someone else is by somehow simulating, experiencing the emotion. It makes sense that we found some activation of the brain region which is critical for the experience of an emotion," Lutz says. Similarly, "sometimes you can understand someone but not necessarily experience the emotion … it makes sense that you get activation in a brain region that is more contemplative."
Although the research does not prove that compassion can be learned, it does suggest that possibility—and that could have implications for treating a range of issues. "Can this type of training be used for depression?" Lutz asks. "Another question is whether this form of mental training and empathy can have an impact for education. We don't know yet."
The researchers have already begun a long-term study to see if and how the brain can be trained as well as to compare how different forms of meditation, such as simple concentration versus focusing on compassion, affect the brain differently. In the meantime, compassionate meditation is as simple as visualizing someone you care about, holding that feeling of loving kindness in your mind, and then extending it to others—even people you don't like.
"It primes the mind for some form of readiness to act with compassion or loving kindness," Lutz adds. "You can build on this very basic, natural feeling that you have for close relatives and extend that to a stranger."
See what we're tweeting about
11 Comments
Add CommentMeditation is an interesting tool. Traditional Jewish learning of Torah by children should be studied too. I think that human beings do have a basic sense of Justice, a kind of "mirror principle" like the one taught by Hillel: "That which you hate for yourself, don't do to others".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis basic ethic as to be nutured and developped since childhood. Children study as partners (chavrutha), not as competitors.
Making Ethics and Law the main topic of education could make man better.
Yehuda
A good related resource is "Mindfulness and Psychotherapy." This is a rich area whose time has come.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisRobert McDonald, Ph.D.
Asheville, NC
Doubtless it is just the summary nature of the article, but it doesn't seem to support its claim very well.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is a selection effect in finding people who practise meditation. It is possible, even likely, that these people are meditators because of their compassionate natures.
It is a bit like taking a group of basketball players, a group of average individuals with cursory training in basketball, then observing that the basketball players are TALLER than the ordinary folks.
Thus we conclude that playing basketball will make people taller.
there is a really interesting conversation between Richard Davidson and Daniel Goleman (the author of Emotional Intelligence) about the applications of this research. It is published on www.morethansound.net
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisLutz asks whether training in meditation can be used for depression. Yes, it can and has been - with apparently impressive results. See, for example: [i]SH Ma & JD Teasdale. Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Depression: Replication and Exploration of Differential Relapse Prevention Effects.Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 2004[/i]. The meditation practice used is called mindfulness, a derivative of Buddhist vipassana.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPerhaps a more relevant issue raised by Lutz's poorly designed study is whether adults can learn to be more empathic. Many serious crimes are committed by offenders with psychopathic personalities. A central feature of psychopathy is lack of empathy. So far, no effective way of teaching psychopaths to be more empathic has been found.
This is a good topic. I would like to mention that the original form of meditation does not consist of focusing on compassion, but is just sitting (or just standing, just cooking, etc). Compassion is an expression of our truest selves, and allowing that true self to find expression is a natural result of deep meditation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIntentionally focusing on compassion while meditating could be rather artificial, somewhat like saying "Breathe!" to oneself while the breathing is already there. It could interfere with direct development of innate compassion.
Hopefully that distinction will be of some use!
While some still doubt meditation, others are trying to transform the society through its healing powers, known by many non-western cultures for thousands of years. Director David Lynch, who has practiced meditation for decades recently donated $1million to a university for the study of meditation - here is a link to the story..http://www.thelohasian.com/2008/03/director-david-lynch-donates-1-million.html
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this-Julia Z.Fenster
Editor-in-Chief, The Lohasian
The most important and practical thing I talk about and teach as a Christian pastor, is making larger the diameter of our circles of inclusion. It is not something we cause to happen, it is something we must simply be open to have happen. When we are open, some one, some thing will happen to cause our compassion to be pushed beyond its former boundaries. When that happens, there is no stopping it, if we intentionally "stay out of the way." The circles of inclusion and compassion grow larger and larger, encompassing more and more beings.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMany different mental techniques are called meditation. The article does not mention what kind of meditation has been studied, but my guess is that it is some variety of mindfulness meditation. I have been practicing a type of meditation called Acem meditation for more than 30 years. This meditation is based on modern psychological understanding of how the mind functions, and has been developed in Norway during the last 40 years. More than 40 000 people in Norway alone has learned it, and there is a clear experience that practicing it regularly over time results in personality development of the same type as can be obtained by long term psychotherapy.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisas a long term vipassana meditator, i agree with the positive effects. though i did learn by witnessing a partner who first benefitted from vipassana and meditation, that if depression is at a deeper level, meditation can stir things up.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisread my article below from a talk i attended on a similar study to this article.
cheers
metta4u
[url http://www.divinecaroline.com/article/22189/40946-meditation-affects-brain][/url]
This is an excellent article showing the benefits of meditation. It is refreshing to see people from different spiritual traditions coming together to write about their meditation techniques. Each of these traditions use meditation to guide the spiritual quest. I use guided meditation to reduce my day to day stress and also connect to my self and feel calm and peaceful. I use free guided meditations online at http://www.clicktomeditate.com it also has a good FAQ section http://www.clicktomeditate.com/faq.html
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this