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Can a quality like love -— whether it’s shown toward a family member or a friend -— be neurologically measured in the brain? What is happening in the minds of people who have developed a greater capacity for forgiveness and compassion?
A new research project at the University of Wisconsin-Madison offers the opportunity to apply hard science to these seemingly ethereal questions. UW-Madison psychology professor Richard Davidson, director of the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior, has received a $2.5 million grant from the Michigan-based Fetzer Institute to launch a new research initiative on the neuroscience of compassion, love and forgiveness, investigating how these virtues manifest themselves in the human mind and whether we have the ability to nurture and expand them through practices like meditation.
Davidson already has the foundation for probing these questions through his decade-long work exploring brain function and meditation. Davidson works with a population of Tibetan monks and lay practitioners who have incorporated meditation practices into their daily lives, looking into how that practice impacts their mental and physical health.
Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) techniques, Davidson has been able to demonstrate that significant positive changes in brain behavior can be activated through meditation and other contemplative or mindfulness practices. The research has been very influential in providing evidence of “neuroplasticity,” the idea that brain function changes throughout life in response to experience and purposeful training.
“This is totally uncharted territory,” says Davidson of the Fetzer project. “This grant is really meant to launch a new field where the wisdom of the contemplative traditions can intersect with hard-nosed mainstream science to understand how the brain can be transformed, through certain exercises, to strengthen these kinds of positive qualities.”
Davidson’s ultimate goal is build a deep base of scientific evidence not only of the neurological machinery that supports these qualities, but specific practices that can have an impact on mental health and point the way to new techniques to cultivate these virtues in children and adults, including those with disabilities.
“Most commentators agree that if the world contained more people who more often displayed positive qualities such as love, forgiveness, compassion and related characteristics, some of the myriad problems that plague modern society would be less severe,” Davidson says.
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