Richard Davidson’s research on healthy minds

Richard Davidson’s research, conducted at his Center for Investigating Healthy Minds in Madison, Wisconsin, focuses on the numerous ways in which contemplative practices can produce measurable changes in the human brain and body. The center is striving to find ways to teach the public about optimizing the health of each individual’s mind. Currently, much of the research is focusing on altruism and generosity, and its effect on positive thinking and feeling.

In one of the notable examples – Davidson’s group brought people into the lab early into the morning, measured their happiness, and gave them $100. They told half the subjects to buy whatever they want, and half the subjects to spend it on gifts for other people, and they returned at the end of the day. The saying “it’s better to give than receive” was proven true; the group that spent on gifts for others were significantly happier.

Davidson is also an advocate for mindfulness and emotional training. The Center showed in a 2009 study that just 30 minutes a day of emotional training, conducted alongside behavioral monitoring in the lab to study subject’s altruism and generosity, was enough to show measurable changes in altruism and generosity. This is after after 2 weeks of 30 minute sessions, 7 hours in total, there were already significant changes in behavior and decision making.

The Center for Healthy Minds has produced dozens of similar studies, many of which use brain-imaging techniques to understand the areas in the brain associated with various emotional activities. But the most general and consistent finding, a quote taken from Davidsons website, is that “Strengthening prosocial and self-regulatory skills is possible through systematic contemplative practices, which induce functional and structural changes in the brain and support prosocial behavior and academic success”.

The findings, particularly those that demonstrate the lack of rigor needed for emotional or mindfulness training, are poignant for looking at future approaches to devices or apps. Much like our body’s ability to grow muscle with regular training, it’s clear that our minds are ready and willing to make changes even with slight nudges. The key moving forward might be developing new ways to take out willpower and to have certain messages communicated automatically into the individuals life. The mindfulness app is useful, but maybe new ways to focus on altruism and generosity in particular would be useful; one of the areas that Davidson’s work demonstrates best.

Links:

Overview: http://richardjdavidson.com/research/

List of key findings: http://www.investigatinghealthyminds.org/cihmFindings.html