Choose a topic from Tuesday's readings that you were particularly interested in. Your job is to do some more indepth research on that topic. That may mean looking up some of the original research cited in the chapter and finding and reading the original research article. It also could mean searching the internet for other content and information out there on this topic (ranging from videos, news releases, summaries of research findings, others' blog posts, etc).
One you have completed your search and explorations I would like you to clearly state what your topic is, discuss how it relates to the readings, and thoroughly discuss what you learned about this topic from your additional resources.
It is possible to do this assignment with one source (an original research article). I encourage you to use this approach for at least half of these types of assignments. The other method, is to find suitable internet content that helps you learn more about your topic. If you choose this method, I'd like you to provide 3 sources of information (in the form of internet links). Do not be tempted to just discuss each of the links separately. You must synthesize the information, and discuss the topic as a whole.
At the bottom of your post, please include several key terms that reflect your topic, as well as your sources (either the citation for the 1 research article, and link if it is available on line, or 3 links to the internet content you discussed).
Please be prepared to discuss your topic, as a portion of each in-class day will be devoted to hearing from all of you about what you learned.
This week I have chosen to look into mindfulness organizations within the Midwest, what they do, what they stand for, and their mission statements. While we continue to expand our horizons in the form of mindfulness education and training I thought it would provide an interesting perspective to look at how mindfulness has infiltrated the Midwest, at a surprising volume. This idea also came to me while reading today’s inside UNI news. “UNI Diplomat Series - Zen in the Midwest Rev. Shoken Winecoff will lecture on "Diplomacy and Religion" from 6 to 7 p.m., Tuesday, March 25, in 115 SRL. Winecoff is the founder and abbot of Ryumonji Zen Monastery, a training monastery for Zen priests in the Midwest.”
Shoken Winecoff of the Ryumonji Zen Monastery:
Shoken is one of the main faces in the uprising of meditative training practices in the Midwest, he was formerly a Catholic priest, and now he has transferred to a Zen priest. Winecoff teaches dharma. Winecoff is currently a resident monk at the Ryumonji Zen Monastery, this monastery is located in rural Dorchester Iowa (about 20 miles northeast of Decorah) (KPVL Radio). Winecoff was taught by Dainin Katagiri Roshi, a soto zen teacher, who moved to Minneapolis from Japan in 1973. This is when Mindfulness in the Midwest really took off. Winecoff received dharma transmission from Katagiri Roshi in 1989, and then practiced for three years n Japan at Zuioji Senmon Sodo. Before Winecoff became a zazen practitioner he was a catholic priest. He got his start in zazen by visiting a zazen studio, and realizing that these forty minute sittings were really helping him. Ryumonji Zen Monastery (RZM) or Dragon Gate Temple, is a buddhist monastery, it is registered as a formal temple with soto zen headquarters in Japan (Ryumonji.org). RZM focuses on zazen (sitting meditation), and welcomes all, and practices in non-denominational meditation.
http://sweepingzen.com/shoken-winecoff-interviewed-by-kpvl-89-1s-circle-connect/
-Voice interview.
http://www.kpvlradio.org/shoken-winecoff-from-ryumonji-zen-monastery-on-kpvls-circle-connect/
-Winecoff’s Bio
http://www.ryumonji.org/history/
The Midwest Meditation and Psychotherapy Institution: This institution was formed in early 2010, and is located in Minneapolis, MN. They look to use westernized psychotherapy practices in association with “wisdom of buddhist psychology and meditation practices” (MWMeditationPsychotherapy.Org). This non-profit organization focuses on educating and training mental health professionals to use mindfulness. They use the recent empirical evidence to show the positives of mindfulness training.
http://www.mwmeditationandpsychotherapy.org
Transcendental Meditation Fairfield, Iowa: This is the most famous version of midwestern meditation. “The Transcendental Meditation technique taught in Fairfield, Iowa is a simple, natural, effortless process practiced 15-20 minutes twice daily while sitting comfortably with eyes closed. It is unique among techniques of meditation, distinguished by its effortlessness, naturalness and profound effectiveness (tm.org).
Being from an area near Fairfield and taking this class has really opened up my eyes to the stigma projected onto those who meditate. It’s simply not understood, and therefore feared. Its common for those in Fairfield to use defensive othering to put those who meditate in an out-group. My sisters boyfriend if from Fairfield, and I have heard him project these stigmas onto those who meditate. For a group of people who do nothing wrong, and promote peace and well-being this stigma is concerning. I’m really glad that I chose to look into Meditation in the Midwest after a few weeks, and deeper understanding; because now I can truly appreciate what they stand for; and I’m proud to say that I live so close to such an interesting cultural aspect.
http://blog.zap2it.com/pop2it/2012/03/oprah-winfrey-visits-transcendental-meditation-town-fairfield-iowa.html
http://www.tm.org/transcendental-meditation-fairfield
http://abcnews.go.com/Nightline/transcendental-meditation-vedic-city-iowa/story?id=9218475
http://www.meditateiniowa.org
In Dorjee Chapter 4, I found the section under neuroscientific evidence on compassion interesting and wanted to find out more about the study. The study tested brain responses of expert and novice mediators to emotional sounds while practicing loving kindness/compassion meditation. Increased activation in the insula, anterior cingulate regions, and temporoparietal regions suggest increased emotional processing, heightened responsiveness to distress sounds, and even level of readiness to help.
Loving-kindness is the wish of happiness for others. Compassion is the wish to relieve others’ suffering. In Lutz et al.’s article (2008), “Regulation of the neural circuitry of emotion by compassion meditation: effects of meditative expertise,” they studied two different groups, consisting of expert meditators—those who’ve had more than 10,000 hours of practice in Buddhist mediation—and novice mediators—those who were interested in meditation, but had no experience it in besides the week before. Neuroimaging took place during compassion meditation. Stimuli presented were that of negative, neutral, and positive sounds. Stronger responses were found when the sound of a distressed voice was played more than that of a laughing baby or background noise of a crowd. All participants in both groups had stronger neural responses to all emotional sounds during that compassion meditation than when they were at rest. Expert mediators exhibited stronger responses to negative stimuli than to positive emotional sounds than the novice meditators did. Results supported the main hypothesis that brain regions associated with emotions and feelings are modulated in response to emotional sounds in the state of compassion.
I enjoy finding that it is possible to enhance loving-kindness and compassion in a training manner similar to attentional and sensory-motor skills. The goal is to weaken egocentric traits so that altruistic traits might arise more frequently. Empathy processes can be modulated through training. Meditative practice of compassion may enhance emotion sharing, as well as perspective taking.
Key terms: neuroscientific; compassion; loving-kindness; meditation; insula; anterior cingulate regions; temporoparietal regions; altruistic; emotion
Lutz A., Brefczynski-Lewis J., Johnstone T. and Davidson R.J. (2008b) ‘Regulation of the neural circuitry of emotion by compassion mediatation: effects of meditative expertise’, PLoS ONE 3(3): e1897.
In the reading this week, it was mentioned that positive and negative emotions showed increased activity in different parts of the brain. It said that negative emotions activated the lateral prefrontal cortex and positive emotions activated the medial prefrontal cortex. As I am interested in the brain I decided to look up an article about brain activity in response to different emotions. In the experiment, researchers attempted to evoke various emotional states in the participants, who were asked to rate the arousal and valence of 30 emotionally evocative sentences. The brain images were acquired using a 3.0T Signa GE scanner using a quadrature head coil. They found that unpleasant emotions induced greater neural activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), frontal pole, the aMCC/rostrodorsal ACC, supplementary motor area, occipito-temporal junction, and cerebellar hemisphere. Blood oxygen level-dependent (BOLD) signal intensity in these brain regions increased corresponding to greater degrees of unpleasantness. The DLFPC and frontal pole have been previously associated with regulating emotions, consciously suppressing negative emotions, and mediating the anticipation of unpleasant emotions. It is suggested that these brain regions may be activated in negative emotions, as those emotions may induce goal-directed plans of actions, generally in avoiding the unpleasant stimulus. I thought this was pretty interesting. Pleasant emotions, on the other hand, induced greater neurological activity in the midbrain (primarily the substantia nigra), ventral striatum, and right caudate nucleus. These are also the brain regions involved in the mesolimbic dopaminergic system that control the experiences of pleasure and reward. Arousing emotions showed increased activity in the left thalamus, left caudate nucleus, left clobus pallidus, left parahippocampal gyrus, left amygdala, premotor cortex, occipio-temporal junction, and cerebellar vermis. These too showed greater activity corresponding with greater arousal. This was a very interesting study, and although it’s findings differed from that of the Dorjee book, they reported to be generally consistent with previous meta-analyses of emotional activation in the brain. I very much enjoy learning about the neuroscience of cognitive phenomena for multiple reasons. I enjoy the scientific reasoning behind things that seem to be so incredibly unscientific, such as emotions. I also enjoy seeing that our mental states can be explained as simply as electrical activity in a three pound mass of tissue.
Colibazzi, T., Posner, J., Wang, Z., Gorman, D., Gerber, A., Yu, S., Zhu, H., Kangarlu, A., Duan, Y., Russell, J.A., & Peterson, B.S. (2010). Neural systems subserving valence and arousal during the experience of induced emotions. Emotion (Washington, D.C.), 10, 377-89
Key Terms: positive and negative emotions, valence, arousal, neuroscience
This week I wanted to do more research on compassion. Instead of finding a research article from the book I looked up compassion and its effects on the body. I found videos of Dr. Barry Kerzin who is the personal physician to the Dali Lama and a Buddhist monk himself. He specifically studies meditation and the cultivation of compassion, and its effects on the body. I found his videos really interesting; he talked about studies that show how compassion helps to improve a person’s life. A study that I found amazing was dealing with woman who had breast cancer. All the women had the same treatment except one of the groups was also given TLC “tender loving care” by a psychologist during the treatment. The study showed that the women that received this TLC had higher scores on a life satisfaction scale. The TLC group also lived longer then the normal group. This was interesting to me, I expected them to have a better mental state but to hear that they also lived longer was cool. Getting to hear and watch a video instead of having to read a long or boring article was nice, I was able to understand what was going and learn more then I normally do when reading an article. He explained how gamma-wave activity and how they believe it works in long term meditators. He explained how compassion and meditation help people to not be thrown out of balance when things happen to individuals. I was interested to hear him talk about all the different things that can get someone out of balance. Just by understanding what gets us out of balance can help us notice and fix this unbalance. He started an institute called the Human Values Institute in Japan; they talk about consciousness in a lot of their research. In one his videos he also talks about noticing kindness in people we care about and how that is easy but noticing it in others we don’t know or like is much more difficult. The way he explained how to notice and give kindness to those we don’t know is to look around at everything and to think about who made or helped to create what is around them. He had a lot of videos that I wasn’t able to watch but plan to when I get the time.
Key terms: compassion, Dali Lama, TLC, gamma-wave activity, meditation, kindness, balance
http://altruismmedicine.org/dr-barry-kerzin-compassion-what-is-happening-in-the-mind-heart/
For my research topic, I thought the chapter was pretty interesting as a whole. So, I searched, “Emotional Balance Dzogchen” and looked though the links hoping to find new interesting information. The first article I came across was named, “Buddhist Insights for Accepting and Respecting Our Emotions”. It begins by explain how those closest around you may know your responses or can predict what happens next when determining your emotional state better than your own self can. How you react to specific arguments and the time it takes for you to let it go and move on from a fight or argument. Why we are so clued into other rather than ourselves is because, as the article explains, we live in habit and routine. We live by predicting our days to follow, our friendships, and relationships. And when we feel annoyed or angry we don’t have to work to show other, they simply know. And it’s the same way with your own self and others emotions. The point of this article is that our emotions pave a path for us to follow in order to approach how we feel the right way, instead we have been trained to ignore this guidance and jump to conclusions which then make us angry and the situation worse. So if we want to understand ourselves we must face our emotions. To do this, in times when we feel upsetting emotions, Buddha teaches that the first thing we must do is reach a state of relaxation and calmness instead of blowing up within seconds. Open up your heart and mind while also becoming aware of your surroundings and breath. Then when you are calm and open you can learn to respect your own emotions and others approaching the emotional situation in a much more positive, soothing, and enriched way.
The next article I read was, “Loving Kindness and Compassion In The Dzogchen Tradition”. Here the interesting point the article makes is that we all hold a natural happiness that is not related to an object or person that produces it. The hardest part is recognizing this natural happiness deep within in us because we are so focused on tangible forces of happiness. However, once identified we can then begin to wish this happiness for all other people, even those we would consider our enemies. One other thing I enjoyed about this article was how it intertwined our modern lifestyle and its conceitedness it has with our body. How it disturbs our energy balance. It explains that as infants we are born with no karma and our seeds of energy are pure. But, as we all know the older we get and the more we grow we are easily influenced and are trained to be happy and taught what things should make us happy in life and the terrible things we should strive to get. The article then goes into correcting this though different meditation practices and things to do throughout the day. This website is pretty awesome. It may be a cool idea to add to the facebook page, or suggest to others. it covers a lot of cool teachings, lessons, and meditation practices.
Terms: emotional balance, loving kindness, compassion, happiness, predictable, energy balance, karma, modern lifestyle, seeds of energy
For this chapter I chose to focus on emotional regulation. I found a research article that looked at multiple studies to find a link between emotional regulation and meditation. Specifically, the researchers looked at silent and sitting meditation. The researchers broke silent and sitting meditation into two specific types: focused attention and open monitoring. Focused attention is exactly what it sounds like; subjects focus on a specific idea or item for an extended period of time. For open monitoring meditation, subjects experienced all-encompassing attention. Subjects let thoughts passively go through their mind without passing judgment or reacting emotionally.
The researchers found that meditation can change emotional regulation in specific ways. Overall, they found that participants did present better emotional regulation of negative emotions. More traditional practices for emotional regulation focus on the idea of reappraisal. People may experience a negative emotion, but they intentionally re-evaluate this emotion and this often results in them experiencing a more positive emotion. With meditation however, they found that participants didn’t necessarily reappraise their emotion but rather they reappraised themselves. I took this to mean that a subject may experience a negative emotion towards a person or situation and may then accept this emotion as what it is and move on.
The second particular aspect of emotional regulation researchers looked at was attentional deployment. Attentional deployment related to emotional regulation because it focuses on knee-jerk reactions to situations. Researchers found that those who implemented meditation has significantly longer term results in attentional deployment than those who used the more typical method of distraction. Meditation may help people slow down or change their automatic reaction to certain events or people. Researchers also noted that this could have important implications for working on biases.
I found this research incredibly interesting because it looked at specific and scientifically measured benefits of meditation that I hadn’t fully explored before. I enjoyed the fact that they could offer explanations as to why meditation may cause these effects and why those effects might cause certain behaviors.
Terms: Emotional regulation, silent and sitting meditation, focused attention, open monitoring, reappraisal, negative emotions, attentional deployment, biases
Menezes, C., Pereira, M., & Bizarro, L. (2012). Sitting and silent meditation as a strategy to study emotion regulation. Psychology & Neuroscience, 5(1). Retrieved March 13, 2014, from http://www.psycneuro.org/index.php/path/article/view/225/622
My topic for this week’s blog is the correlation between mindfulness and compassion fatigue. I found two studies regarding this correlation. The first study involved a population of 41 trauma volunteers and survivors within an agency dealing with trauma victims. The researchers’ hypothesis was composed of three parts. The first being that mindfulness would be positively correlated with compassion satisfaction. The second, mindfulness would be inversely correlated with compassion fatigue, and finally there would be differences between participant with a history of trauma and those with no history. A survey was given to these participants that tested for mindful attention and person quality of life (which included three subscales of compassion).
The results of the survey found a significant positive correlation between compassion satisfaction, inverse significant correlation between mindfulness and burnout compassion, and finally no significant differences in participants with a history of trauma and those with no history. These findings provide support to the notion that an increase in mindfulness may help improve compassion satisfaction. The problem with this study however, was that it used a very small population composed of volunteers. The results on the other hand were not very surprising to me. Compassion satisfaction is very dependent on the individual, their personality, and how much support they receive. Individuals in this study had sought out help and chose to be in this environment thus were proactive and most likely mindful of their situation. In addition, it also depends on the type of trauma experienced. Individuals who have lost a loved one may be more compassionate toward others experiencing a loss. After I lost my Dad in Iraq, I feel great compassion toward others who loss someone close as I have experienced similar pain. Those who may experience trauma such as rape or even POW may show less compassion as they have experienced aggressive acts and for individuals such as POW experienced this over a long period of time. After such a long period they may become desensitized or coerced into feeling less compassion. Meditation may help individuals deal with such hash pain and may help them function better and obtain higher levels of compassion.
The next study I found was one involving a mindfulness course to prevent compassion fatigue in individuals within the healthcare system. Medical professionals experience gore, stress, suffering, aggression, and more within their patients and patients’ families. These components may overall contribute to compassion fatigue. Researchers implemented a mindfulness course to 93 healthcare professions for 8 weeks, 2.5 hours a week. The course implemented body scan, mindful movement, meditation siting and walking, education, and finally discussion. This course was offered 11 times over a period of 6 years. At the end of each course, participants engaged in a survey measuring compassion and physical and mental wellbeing. The overall conclusion of this study found that an educational course on mindfulness improved stress levels (reduced), improved compassion fatigue, and found an overall physical and mental wellbeing for healthcare professionals.
Overall it is apparent that mindfulness and meditation can improve compassion, attentiveness, stress levels, and finally overall wellbeing. This being said, meditation should be used in all individuals, especially those with high levels of stress and have experienced trauma.
Terms: mindfulness, compassion, attentiveness, stress, wellbeing, correlation, mindful movement, compassion fatigue, aggression, walking meditation, quality of life
http://baywood.metapress.com/app/home/contribution.asp?referrer=parent&backto=issue,2,7;journal,14,181;linkingpublicationresults,1:300314,1
http://eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=2&sid=4b323cad-75c9-44ad-8271-c0c778b358c2%40sessionmgr4002&hid=4205
This week I wanted to research forgiveness. I looked on EBSCO and most of the articles involved religion and weren’t experimental. After searching for a while, I found a very recent study done about the neural effects of receiving an apology. It involved an experiment which put participants in two different groups: A and B. Player A was given a multiple choice question and if they got the answer right, player B would get 100 points. If A got it wrong, B only got 50 points. Player A’s pay off depended on player B’s decision and willingness to forgive player A. Player A had the option of sending player B a message before B decided what A would receive. If player A got a question wrong and sent B an apology, B could either forgive A or not. If B forgave A, player A received 140 points and if they weren’t forgiven, they were given 110 points. For the MRI portion of the experiment, player B received a set of 120 questions answered by A, 30 were correct and 90 were incorrect. Of the 90 incorrect, 45 were followed by an apology message and 45 were not. Player B then decided whether or not to forgive player A. The study showed that player B was more likely to forgive player A if A had apologized. Receiving an apology also increased activity in the left frontal, temporal, and parietal regions of the brain which are also associated with empathy. The researchers then questioned why not all areas of the brain associated with empathy were activated. They presented a few explanations, one being that empathy is not well-defined and therefore can be difficult to measure. They also said that no pictures being used may have inhibited the effect of mirror neurons, which is a topic I have done an exploration blog about in the past. This study is very recent and is the first to look at neural correlates of receiving an apology. I think it was very thorough and well done. It demonstrated that apologies are very important in the process of forgiveness and that forgiveness involves empathy.
Terms: Neural effects of apologies, forgiveness, frontal, temporal, parietal lobes, empathy, mirror neurons
Strang S, Utikal V, Fischbacher U, Weber B, Falk A (2014) Neural Correlates of Receiving an Apology and Active Forgiveness: An fMRI Study. PLoSONE 9(2): e87654. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0087654
For today’s blog, I decided to take a look at one of the articles cited in chapter 4 of Dorjee about anger and its effect on the heart. In the chapter, Dorjee stated that anger has been linked to increased heart rate and repeated experience of anger has been shown to result in higher risk of heart arrhythmias. This article was a little more difficult to read than previous articles because it was from a cardiology journal instead of a psychology journal, making a lot of the technical terminology foreign to me. After a lot of googling, I was able to understand that the purpose of the study was to see whether T-wave alternans (which are variation in the T-wave of an EKG, which measures the recovery of the ventricles after a heart beat) induced by anger could predict future abnormalities in ventricle function in patients that have implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs), which are devices that correct abnormal heart function using electricity. Essentially, when a heartbeat is irregular either being too fast or trembling instead of contracting properly, the ICD corrects the irregularity by sending an electric impulse to the heart. They are usually implanted in people that are at risk for sudden cardiac arrest due to irregular heartbeats.
Sixty-two participants that were given ICDs 3 months previously underwent mental stress tests in order to induce anger. Their EKGs were taken in order to measure possible irregularities in heartbeat. What they found was that people who experienced higher TWA induced by anger were more likely to experience heart arrhythmias. They said this suggested that the repolarization or recovery of the heart after a beat can become unstable due to strong emotions, in this case anger. Strong emotion increases sympathetic arousal, meaning more adrenaline is produced. The adrenaline influences TWA, indicating that the sympathetic system has an impact on heart function and recovery. Unstable repolarizations of the heart might be one reason that stress can be linked to sudden death. If the heart is unable to recover properly after a beat, it may be prone to failure.
Some things I’m not certain about after reading the article is if this study also holds true for people who do not suffer from regular heart arrhythmias. The study focused on patients that already required an ICD, but from the chapter in Dorjee, it seems that the results are being generalized to the whole population, which I’m not sure is accurate.
I thought this study, though more difficult to read than previous articles, was just as interesting. Luckily, from knowledge I gained via previous biology classes I’ve taken and the Internet, I was able to understand what the article was talking about. I thought it was interesting to see in detail one mechanism of stress having a negative impact on health. However, excluding a preexisting heart condition, this impact can be controlled. Through meditation, we learn not to ruminate on negative emotions like anger. We also learn to better regulate our emotions by letting them go. By not allowing anger to fester, the emotion loses strength and has a smaller impact on the body. Reducing the impact of anger reduces the stress put on the heart. Through meditation, we cannot only improve our mental well-being, but also our physical well-being.
Terms: Anger, emotions, heart rate, heart arrhythmias, T-wave alternans, EKG, ventricle, implantable cardioverter-defibrillator, heart irregularity, sympathetic arousal, adrenaline
Link to article: http://content.onlinejacc.org/article.aspx?articleid=1139465
The topic I chose for this week was meditation and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). It relates to the reading because Dorjee and the research article mention positive affect. Additionally, the two relate because loving-kindness and compassion both involve being able to relate very well with other people and the ability to empathize, skills that can be more difficult for people with ASD. However, the main reason why I chose this topic was because in Otto’s class we’re having a person with ASD come in to speak and doing the preparatory assignment made me wonder if meditation could be useful for people with this developmental disability.
The research’s aim was to see if meditation could lessen the effects of the comorbid disorders of ASD such as depression and anxiety disorders. Interestingly, there has been little to no research done in this area and the research that has been done has had extremely small sample sizes without control groups. The participants had to be between 18 and 64 in age, diagnosed with ASD, and not have a neurodevelopmental disorder, be institutionalized, have substance abuse problems, have below-average intelligence, or have any changes in medication during the experiment. The participants were separated into the training and control groups. The intelligence level brought up a point I hadn’t thought of before--meditation is a practice that requires high cognitive ability. It seems like meditation is a magic helping tool, but it’s limit might play out in individuals with intellectual disabilities. Getting back on topic, there were 9 weeks to the experiment. Participants were instructed to meditate 40-60 minutes a day for 6 days a week. The meditation styles they were instructed in included mindful breathing, mindful walking, body scan, sitting meditation, mindful movements/yoga, listening meditation, and others. I was quite impressed by the broad range of meditation styles used and the large block of time expected of the participants to meditate. When instructing how to meditate, the psychologists leading the program were sure to avoid metaphors, use of imagination, and ambiguity that might cause confusion for autistic individuals. I thought this was interesting to see how meditation can be tailored to people with different needs.
As one might guess, there were significant drops in anxiety, depression, and rumination and an increase in positive affect. The concept of rumination was interesting in this study, because they found that rumination may have a positive use for people with ASD. Since these individuals have difficulty understanding aspects of social situations, it is sometimes beneficial for them to replay these scenes over and to consciously interpret the meaning. However, I would think that rumination used to improve social skills is different than ruminating on mistakes and flaws, which any person seems susceptible to.
The article also compares and contrasts the more traditional cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) with the mindfulness-based therapy (MBT). The drawbacks of CBT include how this form of therapy takes a long time to be understood by individuals with ASD, it’s unclear whether the benefits last over time, and it may have limited generalizability to the real-world. In a way, CBT and MBT are working towards the same goals through opposite means. In CBT thoughts and feelings are scrutinized, while in MBT thoughts and feelings are non-judgmentally allowed to pass by. Additionally, CBT often works at changing external factors (like the environment) while MBT works at changing internal processes. The study brought up the good point that because communication and theory of mind are difficult for autistic individuals, having an experience-based therapy rather than communication/behavioral based might be a better fit.
While the study didn’t mention these, I tend to have the hunch that meditation could help people with ASD because it promotes self-awareness and can give people a more realistic view of their strengths and weaknesses. The researches mention how this happens naturally as people age, but I tend to think meditation could bolster and improve self-awareness even more. Overall, this was probably one of my favorite pieces of research to read and it excites me seeing all the different ways meditation can be applied.
Terms: Autism Spectrum Disorder, positive affect, loving-kindness, compassion, empathize, intelligence, mindful, non-judgmentally, rumination, cognitive behavioral therapy, mindfulness behavioral therapy.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0891422212002156
This week I looked at an article which went into depth to talk about the comparison between western psychology and its views on emotion and Buddhist teachings on mental processes that relate to our understanding of emotions. As stated in both this article and in our reading, there is no direct translation of the word and idea of our temporary and consistently changing idea of emotions. Rather, the Buddhist thought is that these feelings belong to sates of mind, rather than constantly fleeting feelings. Different emotions and states of being are compared and contrasted to show the similarities and differences between our views on moods, emotions, and states of being.
One of the big reasons that I found this article so interesting is that this article was published back in 2000. This means that this article was at the forefront of the movement of looking at Buddhist teachings in relation to our understanding of psychology. This article also came out around the birth of positive psychology and was really a little bit ahead of its time. Lots of the material covered deal with positive emotion and states of being. The article also points out that most of western psychology deals with “fixing” people rather than improving the quality of life of those who are “healthy”. This was the exact idea that birthed positive psychology!
From what I understand the Buddhist form of emotion is more of a state of being or a framework of the mind. They don’t follow the idea of emotions because they are forever fleeting and not separate from our thoughts. For this rest of this paper I will be using the word “experience” in place of the Buddhist experience of our equivalent emotions. Buddhists believe that there are some experiences and mindsets that are conductive to genuine enduring happiness. This is similar to our idea of being content. This is expressed by the mind being in a state of equilibrium and an unfiltered awareness of reality.
At the time that this was written, psychology hadn’t done a very good job at looking at what the mind could really do. We were so focused fixing what is wrong in people that we didn’t look at people’s strengths and how to cultivate them. Buddhists on the other hand practiced positive states of mind, and have therefore practiced different strengths that they had. Buddhists practice a lot of contentness because one of the largest toxins they see is “craving” and is defined by Buddhists as “having the desire to acquire objects for one’s self”. This is not only not productive to positive feeling, but it leads to irrational decision making and many times the loss of the sense of control (i.e. drug addiction).
Terms: Buddhist,emotion, state of mind, positive, moods, positive psychology.
http://www.investigatinghealthyminds.org/ScientificPublications/2005/EkmanBuddhistCurrentDirectionsInPsychologicalScience.pdf
The article I read this week discussed the efficacy of meditation of adolescents in high schools. While we have talked about this several times and I have discussed it in a former reading blog, I have yet to read an empirical article investigating and discussing the merits of meditative interventions in the schools.
The study done investigates the efficacy of three different types of meditative states: transcendental meditation (also called concentration meditation), mindful meditation and relaxation technique. With three control groups of twenty students each, another twenty students were assigned to each meditative technique. All were told to do their meditative state for fifteen minutes twice a day. This is shorter than the time for adults to see if adolescents could obtain the same results with less time. Additionally, the study was repeated with students from different countries and low income schools.
The study found that, in each meditative state, students reported higher self-esteem, more positive emotions and, overall, greater emotional regulation than the students in the control groups. These results are particularly astounding given the relationship between emotional balance and deviant activity.
For example, criminological theory links self-esteem directly with criminal behavior. Persistent and career criminals both have been found to have lower self-esteem. This lack of self-esteem inhibits their ability to address their problems using legitimate resources. They do not believe they can address their problems using “new” ways, which are generally ‘legitimate, and default back to their ordinary ways. Furthermore, more serious criminals temporarily boost their esteem when defying social norms and obligations because it makes them feel as if they have some autonomy and control over their lives. However, the operative word in this sentence is temporary; shortly after, their self-esteem drops back to the low levels it was before. They find themselves going back to these deviant actions to feel that confidence again, however brief it may be. Essentially, these criminals lack the self-confidence and self-esteem that they can become conventional social actors; they view themselves as criminals and that’s just how it’s going to be. If we can build up their self-esteem when in school, it may prevent them from beginning their deviant behavior. It also enables them to stand up to any peer pressure to buck societal norms and regulations. Moreover, it may give them the confidence to build relationships with “conventional social actors” without fear of judgment.
Moreover, cultivation of positive emotions, as found to be done by meditative practices in schools, increases learning, which is the main goal of education. When tied with greater self-esteem, this makes for much greater well-being. As I have said before, well-being should be the ultimate goal for all our fellow humans. In addition to increased learning, increased positive emotions decrease negative emotions. At first blush, that seems rather explanatory, but I mean that even in situations that would ordinarily cause negative emotions, those individuals tend towards positive emotions.
Which essentially leads to emotional regulation. While controlling negative tendencies is only an aspect of emotional regulation, it is an important aspect. This is especially true when regarding adolescents, who have already have an inclination towards anger and depression and other negative emotions. However, emotional regulation, particularly for those adolescents, can also include things like impulse control. With diminished impulse control, several of the problems teens get themselves into will be greatly reduced, especially with the added bonus of an increased self-esteem and more positive emotions.
After all of this, I think it is pretty safe to say that incorporating meditation into our school system, as well as other forms of interventions, should be an end goal. With benefits with such huge potential, it is imperative we take advantage of them.
Terms: Emotional regulation, emotional coping, self-esteem, concentration meditation, transcendental meditation, relaxation technique, mindful meditation.
http://eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/detail?vid=2&sid=d2fc1d4f-01dc-497a-8886-b93327714767%40sessionmgr4001&hid=4111&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmU%3d#db=eric&AN=EJ892993
For this week’s exploration blog I researched emotions and found an interesting article that examined emotions, happiness, ego-resilience, life satisfaction and the broaden-and-build theory. According to Cohn et al., 2009, happiness predicts desirable life outcomes in many domains. The broaden-and-build theory suggested that this is because positive emotions help people build lasting resources. Cohn and his colleagues (2009) measured emotions daily for one month in a sample of students (N=86) and assessed life satisfaction and trait resilience at the beginning and end of the month. Positive emotions increased in both resilience and life satisfaction. Negative emotions had weak or null effects, and did not interfere with the benefits of positive emotions. This research, along with previous research, shows that people who are happier achieve better life outcomes, including financial success, supportive relationships, mental health, effective coping, and even physical health and longevity.
Cohn and his colleagues (2009) correlated day-to-day positive emotions to improvements in life outcomes, via growth in resilience. The broaden-and-build theory of positive emotions proposes that positive emotions are evolved adaptations that function to build lasting resources. Unlike negative emotions, which narrow attention, cognition, and physiology toward coping with an immediate threat or problem, positive emotions produce novel and broad-ranging thought and actions that are usually not critical to one’s immediate safety, well-being, or survival. Over time, however, these novel experiences aggregate into consequential resources that can change people’s lives. For example, curiosity can become expert knowledge, or affection and shared amusement can become a lifelong supportive relationship. Positive emotions forecast valued outcomes like health, wealth, and longevity because they help build resources to get there.
Cohn and his colleagues (2009) also examined the relationship between positive emotions and change in ego-resilience. Ego-resilience is a fairly stable personality trait that reflects an individual’s ability to adapt to changing environments. These adaptive responses may include identifying opportunities, adapting to constraints, and bouncing back from misfortune. Ego-resilience is related to a range of important life outcomes such as fewer behavioral problems in early childhood, better interpersonal and intrapersonal adjustment across the lifespan, faster cardiovascular recovery following a laboratory stressor, and less depression and more thriving following a real-world tragedy. Positive emotions lead to higher levels of ego-resilience in the future. Ego-resilience also achieves its effects partly by generating positive emotions. When faced with a stressor, people high on ego-resilience experience more positive emotions than their less resilient peers, even though they experience negative emotions at comparable levels. Although positive emotions and ego-resilience are interrelated in multiple ways, ego resilience provides benefits in negative as well as positive situations.
These are the measures that this experiment used to test emotions, ego-resilience and life satisfaction. Participants used the modified Differential Emotions Scale to assess emotions. Participants rated their strongest experiences of 18 emotions in the past day on a 5-point scale (0-not at all, 4-extremely). The Positive Emotions subscale consists of amusement, awe, compassion, contentment, gratitude, hope, interest, joy, love and pride. The Negative Emotions subscale consists of anger, contempt, disgust, embarrassment, fear, guilt, sadness and shame. Ego-resilience was measured using the ER89, which taps the ability to flexibly respond to challenging and shifting circumstances. Participants responded on a four-point Likert scale to 14 items, including “I quickly get over and recover from being startled,” and “I enjoy dealing with new and unusual situations.” Life satisfaction was measured using the Satisfaction with Life Scale, a widely-used index that is associated with many positive life outcomes. Participants responded to 5 items including “So far I have gotten the important things I want in life” using a seven point Likert scale.
All in all, this study strengthened the evidence that positive emotions actively help people create desirable outcomes. As the broaden-and-build theory predicts, participants who experienced frequent positive emotions became more satisfied not simply because they were enjoying themselves, but because they built resources that help deal with a range of life’s challenges. Daily positive emotions predicted growth in ego-resilience, a psychological resource that had proved useful in dealing with both mild and severe stressors. Growth in ego-resilience then accounted for the relation between daily positive emotions and increases in global life satisfaction.
Terms: emotions, happiness, ego-resilience, life satisfaction and the broaden-and-build theory
Cohn, M. A., Fredrickson, B. L., Brown, S. L., Mikels, J. A., & Conway, A. M. (2009). Happiness unpacked: positive emotions increase life satisfaction by building resilience. Emotion, 9, 361-368.
For this week, I found an article about the effects of meditation on emotion. This study finds that a meditation training program can significantly effect how the brain functions when the participants is not actually meditating along with finding a difference in the type of meditation are practiced. The different responses we find in the brain are in the amygdala. The amygdala is where we know to be important for emotions. The study was designed to test that meditation training could also produce a generalized reduction in amygdala response to emotional stimuli, measured by an fMRI.
For this study, participants were divide into two different types of meditation groups. One group was mindful attention meditation – the most commonly studied form that focuses on developing attention and awareness of breathing, thoughts and emotions compared to compassion meditation which is a less-studied form that includes methods designed to develop loving kindness and compassion for oneself and for others.
They found that the two forms of meditations effect the mind differently according to images from the fMRI. They found that compassion meditation is enhances compassionate feelings. This makes sense that it could increase amygdala response to seeing people suffer. Increased amygdala activation was also correlated with decreased depression scores in the compassion meditation group, which suggests that having more compassion towards others may also be beneficial for oneself.
The study concludes that meditation may result in enduring, beneficial changes in brain function, especially in the area of emotional processing. Not only are there changes in the brain happening when the person is meditating but there are also changes when the participant is not actively meditating. There was reduced activity in the amygdala after the 8 weeks of meditation train classes.
Terms: amygdala, meditation training, mindfulness, brain function, fMRI, mindful attention meditation, compassion meditation
http://www.massgeneral.org/about/pressrelease.aspx?id=1520
For this blog I decided research more in depth into the idea of maintaining equanimity and how meditations works with that. I took a different route this time when looking for an article and found a site that is about Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. Dialectical Behavioral Therapy combines cognitive and behavioral therapy, incorporating methodologies from various practices including Eastern mindfulness techniques. They had a section on their website where they went into detail on explaining what equanimity is and how it works.
Their definition is similar to the one found in our text. Equanimity is characterized by steadiness of mind under stress. Mindfulness meditation is a way to learn to get closer to equanimity. In order to avoid becoming overwhelmed by a thought or a negative feeling, a person should practice increasing their ability to observe and de-center from your thoughts and negative feelings. This can be learned from the practice of mindfulness meditation. The better one becomes with the skill of equanimity the better the ability to detach from emotions and thoughts. This is extremely helpful for those that seem to be at war with themselves and overreact to certain situations.
I also explored other areas of the website and found it very useful for those looking for guidance. They have contact boards, blogging areas from people with similar experience, even different games like mindfulness flashcards. It very interesting and one can easily get distracted on this site, but it is create for a good cause and does well with helping other find resources.
http://www.dbtselfhelp.com/html/equanimity___mindfulness.html