CNMB Lab, Nashville, TN
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Brigham and Women's Hospital

2009 Mind and Life Summer Research Institute

Applications are now being accepted for the 2009 Mind and Life Summer Research Institute (MLSRI) to be held at the Garrison Institute (www.garrisoninstitute.org) in New York from June 7 (mid-aft. to the morning of June 13, 2009, The application period will close on Sunday, February 8, 2009. To apply now, please go to: http://www.mindandlife.org/sri09.ml.summer.apply.html. This…
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Happiness and the Brain

What makes us happy? Are there correlates in the brain? Can positive emotions like happiness find a place in rigorous scientific research? These were some of the questions addressed in the recent TV program, The Agenda with Steve Paikin. See description HERE. You can see the video stream HERE. Happiness and the Brain with Steve…
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Scientists’ Meditation Retreat at Spirit Rock

Spirit Rock is offering a Scientists’ Meditation Retreat in early 2009 from Sunday, January 11 – Sunday, January 18. This retreat is designed to introduce neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, psychologists, mental health practitioners and others who study the mind to ways in which mindfulness practice can inform their research. The faculty includes vipassana teachers Sylvia Boorstein,…
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What it’s like to be both a meditator and a meditation researcher.

My Colleague and friend, Emma was recently writing an article for Tricycle Magazine about what it’s like to be both a meditator and a meditation researcher. She asked me if I had some thoughts on this topic. I thought it would be appropriate to share below: The simple answer for me is that being a…
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Compassion Meditation May Improve Physical and Emotional Responses to Psychological Stress

Data from a new study suggests that individuals who engage in compassion meditation may benefit by reductions in inflammatory and behavioral responses to stress that have been linked to depression and a number of medical illnesses. The study’s findings are published online at www.sciencedirect.com and in the medical journal Psychoneuroendocrinology. “While much attention has been…
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Values and Empathy across Social Barriers: A Neurocognitive Approach to Fairness

There will be conference on neuroscientific approaches to fairness and empathy in Barcelona Nov 21, 2008 – Nov 22, 2008 • 8:00 AM – 6:00 PM CosmoCaixa Barcelona, Spain Click HERE for information For the agenda please click here. For the registration form, please click here.

The Polish Mindfulness Association conference on Practical Application of Buddhism in Western Psychology

A Conference on Mindfulness and its practical applications will be held in Warsaw, Poland November 26-28th, 2008. The Conference is meant to be the platform of inspiration for scientific research, workshops, and training programmes on mindfulness and other Buddhist techniques. That is why the term practical application has been used instead of theoretical and philosophical…
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When Worlds Collide: The Study of Religion in an Age of Science Buddhism and Science: Tibetan and Zen Buddhist Perspectives (April 2007)

George Dreyfus, Professor of Religion at Williams College and first westerner to be given the title of geshe, and Eshin Nishimura, former president of Hanazono University, Kyoto, Japan, each spoke, with a Q&A moderated by Donald K. Swearer following the two talks. This event was sponsored by Harvard Divinity School (with a special grant from…
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The Science of Buddhist Meditation

The University of Liverpool is sponsoring an event concerning the science of Buddhist Meditation November 09, 2008. The Link is HERE. The abstract follows: Increasingly scientific investigations suggest that Buddhist meditators are happier, have improved cognitive abilities and that meditation practice leads to measurable changes in brain activity. Four experts from psychology, psychotherapy, neuroscience and…
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Zen Meditators Show faster return to resting state

Giuseppe Pagnoni, a Neuroscientist in the dept. of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Emory University just recently published a study on Zen Meditators and fMRI. Using fMRI and a simplified meditative condition interspersed with a lexical decision task, they investigated the neural correlates of conceptual processing during meditation in regular Zen practitioners and matched control…
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