Investigating the Mind

Click on the links above for detailed information about each session.

Conference Sessions

1. Meditation-Based Clinical Interventions: Science, Practice, and Implementation

SESSION ONE, TUESDAY MORNING
	SPEAKERS	PANELISTS
	Ajahn Amaro, B.Sc.	The Dalai Lama
	Richard J. Davidson, Ph.D.	Ajahn Amaro, B.Sc.
	Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D.	Richard J. Davidson, Ph.D.
		Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D.
		Father Thomas Keating, OCSO
		Sharon Salzberg, R.N.
	MODERATOR	INTERPRETERS
	Matthieu Ricard, Ph.D.	Thupten Jinpa, Ph.D.
		B. Alan Wallace, Ph.D.

Click on the links above for the biography of each session participant.

General Description of Session One:
This introductory session sets the stage for the rest of the meeting. It will establish a vocabulary and epistemology of meditative awareness stemming primarily from the teachings of the Buddha, in particular, the Four Noble Truths, and introduce well-established clinical and research programs that are exploring the interfaces between medicine and meditation for patients with chronic health conditions, and between neuro-scientific approaches to mind and brain and meditative approaches stemming from the systematic cultivation of attention and awareness.

Father Keating will offer a Christian contemplative perspective to expand the conversation beyond a Buddhist meditative framework, pointing out commonalities and differences that may be of value in developing new models for meditative interventions and investigations. Matthieu Ricard and Sharon Salzberg will offer their own unique perspectives on the interface between meditation and science and the challenges of living a full and healthy/wholesome life in these times.

Speakers, 30 Minutes Each:

Ajahn Amaro: How Buddhist meditative practices can inform our understanding of pain and suffering, the potential for healing, the relief of suffering, and the underlying nature of the human mind — and body.
Distinctions between pain and suffering are critical and relevant within the context of Buddhist thought and practice. This talk will map out a Buddhist perspective on suffering, its ultimate causes, the possibility of liberation from suffering, and a systematic path for its realization. It will touch on what Buddhist's refer to as universal qualities of the human mind that are directly accessible through the cultivation of awareness through meditation.

Jon Kabat-Zinn: Some clinical applications of mindfulness meditation in medicine and psychiatry: The case of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR).
MBSR has been widely accepted, used, and studied within mainstream medicine and psychiatry for the past twenty five years. This talk will describe MBSR's approach to making mindfulness, "the foundational core of Buddhist meditation," accessible to Western medical patients in a secular form while preserving the universal dharma dimension at its heart. Results from two clinical trials will be presented, one on rates of skin clearing in psoriasis, the other on emotional processing in cortical regions of the brain, and accompanying effects of immune function. Directions in current and future research programs will be pointed out.

Richard Davidson: Mind-brain-body interaction and meditation
Many peripheral biological systems exist within a network of neural and humoral connections that mediate the influence of the brain on peripheral biological function. Afferent connections to the brain are reciprocated in most of these systems. This anatomical and functional arrangement permits the mind to influence the body and vice versa. Meditation is a form of mental training that involves the voluntary alteration of patterns of neural activity that can produce consequences for peripheral biology through these mechanisms. Examples from recent and ongoing studies of the neural, immune and endocrine changes produced by meditation will be presented to illustrate possible mechanisms via which meditation can promote increased mental and physical health.

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2. Possible Biological Substrates of Meditation

SESSION TWO, TUESDAY AFTERNOON
	SPEAKERS	PANELISTS
	Robert M. Sapolsky, Ph.D.	The Dalai Lama
	Wolf Singer, M.D., Ph.D.	Robert M. Sapolsky, Ph.D.
		Wolf Singer, M.D., Ph.D.
		Matthieu Ricard, Ph.D.
		Esther M. Sternberg, M.D.
		B. Alan Wallace, Ph.D.
	MODERATOR	INTERPRETERS
	Richard Davidson, Ph.D.	Thupten Jinpa, Ph.D.
		B. Alan Wallace, Ph.D.

Click on the links above for the biography of each session participant.

General Description of Session Two:

Modern scientific knowledge of how stress affects the brain and body and how the brain can become re-organized to produce states of focused attention that promote learning and change has burgeoned over the past decade. This session will showcase some of the latest scientific research on these topics to provide a foundation for the likely substrates upon which meditation might operate. In addition, a detailed understanding of the biological substrates of stress and plasticity will provide a framework for the design of new research that is based upon this recent understanding.

Speakers, 30 Minutes Each:

Robert Sapolsky: The neurobiology of the adaptive and the deleterious features of stress
Few of us will succumb to cholera, smallpox or scarlet fever. Instead, we die from diseases of Westernized lifestyle, which are often diseases worsened by stress. When the stress-response is mobilized by the body because of a typical mammalian stressor (e.g., a sprint from a predator), it is highly adaptive. However, when activated in the classic manner of Westernized humans (i.e., chronic psychosocial stress), it is pathogenic. The presentation will consider this dichotomy, as well as new directions of research needed for understanding the neurobiology of stress and stress management.

Wolf Singer: Synchronization of brain rhythms as a possible mechanism for the unification of distributed mental processes
The brain is organized in a highly distributed way and lacks a convergence center for the coherent interpretation of the numerous parallel processes that occur simultaneously within functionally specialized regions. This raises the question how subsystems are integrated so that their computational results can give rise to unified percepts. It is proposed that this integration is achieved at least in part by the synchronization of oscillatory activity in the beta- and gamma frequency range. This interpretation is in accordance with neuronal activation patterns recorded during states of focused attention and meditation, since attentional processes serve binding functions, heighten awareness, and lead to the unification of distributed processes.

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3. Clinical Research I: Meditation and Mental Health

SESSION THREE, WEDNESDAY MORNING
	SPEAKERS	PANELISTS
	Helen S. Mayberg, M.D.	The Dalai Lama
	Zindel V. Segal, Ph.D.	Jan Chozen Bays, M.D.
		Jack Kornfield, Ph.D.
		Helen S. Mayberg, M.D.
		Zindel V. Segal, Ph.D.
		John D. Teasdale, Ph.D.
	MODERATOR	INTERPRETERS
	Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D.	Thupten Jinpa, Ph.D.
		B. Alan Wallace, Ph.D.

Click on the links above for the biography of each session participant.

General Description of Session Three:
With the advent of MBSR and more recently, MBCT (mindfulness-based cognitive therapy), meditative practices have shown promise in the treatment of anxiety and depression. This session will review the experimental evidence for the effectiveness of MBCT in reducing relapse rates for chronic depression, and how mindfulness might it be functioning in the brain to regulate depressive cognitions, affect, and behaviors.

The different elements comprising the meditation practices and approaches will be examined from the contemplative perspective, and cross-cultural issues discussed regarding content and context and how they may serve to synergistically optimize meditation-based interventions in Western and Asian settings.

Speakers, 30 Minutes Each:

Zindel Segal: Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy and the Prevention of Relapse in Recurrent Depression
The advent of effective treatments for mood disorders has provided relief for many depressed patients, yet staying well and preventing relapse are enduring challenges. The clinical application of mindfulness in this group acquaints patients with the modes of mind that often characterize mood disorders while simultaneously inviting them to develop a new relationship to these modes. Thoughts come to be seen as events in the mind, independent of their content and emotional charge. They need not be disputed, fixed or changed but can be held in a more spacious awareness. The growing empirical base for this approach suggests a 50% increase in relapse prophylaxis for previously depressed patients.

Helen Mayberg: Paths to Recovery — Neural substrates of Cognitive and mindfulness-based interventions for the treatment of depression
Functional neuroimaging has established that both non-pharmacological and pharmacological treatments for depression both change the brain, though they change the brain in different ways. This presentation will present findings from positron emission tomography and functional magnetic resonance imaging studies of functional brain changes mediating depression remission using cognitive behavioral therapy. Differences between cognitive and pharmacological interventions will be discussed in the context of limbic-cortical network model of depression. Implications of this work for understanding the impact of mindfulness meditation as an intervention in the treatment of depression will be considered.

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4. Clinical Research II: Meditation and Physical Health

SESSION FOUR, WEDNESDAY AFTERNOON
	SPEAKERS	PANELISTS
	David S. Sheps, M.D.	The Dalai Lama
	John F. Sheridan, Ph.D.	Jan Chozen Bays, M.D.
		Joan Halifax, Ph.D.
		Margaret E. Kemeny, Ph.D.
		David S. Sheps, M.D.
		John F. Sheridan, Ph.D.
	MODERATOR	INTERPRETERS
	Esther M. Sternberg, M.D.	Thupten Jinpa, Ph.D.
		B. Alan Wallace, Ph.D.

Click on the links above for the biography of each session participant.

General Description of Session Four:
As scientific research establishes that many "physical diseases" are modulated by psychological processes such as stressful life events and emotions, the mechanisms underlying these interactions have been targets for scientific research. As the mechanisms become more well-understood, the rationale for using meditation as an intervention for certain types of physical illnesses becomes more compelling and more solidly grounded in modern scientific research. This session will showcase modern research on the application of meditation-based interventions to cardiovascular disease and to diseases that include a primary immune component.

Speakers, 30 Minutes Each:

David Sheps: Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and Cardiovascular Disease
Psychological stress can markedly decrease blood flow to the heart, dramatically elevating the risk of dying. This talk will describe the protocol of an ongoing NIH funded study of the impact of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction on blood flow responses to mental stress in cardiac patients using cardiac imaging, and on their quality of life. Preliminary data will be presented.

John Sheridan: Neural-immune interaction
Various forms of stress affect specific brain systems and through alterations in these circuits, profound changes in immune function can arise. This talk will present an overview of modern research on the impact of different kinds of stress on specific immune processes. The mechanisms through which these effects are produced will be described. This corpus of research can then be used to consider the mechanisms by which meditation may operate to influence diseases of the immune system.

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5. Integration & Final Reflections

SESSION FIVE, THURSDAY MORNING
	SPEAKERS	PANELISTS
	Daniel Kahneman, Ph.D.	The Dalai Lama
	Ralph Snyderman, M.D.	Richard J. Davidson, Ph.D.
		Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D.
		Daniel Kahneman, Ph.D.
		Father Thomas Keating, OCSO
		Matthieu Ricard, Ph.D.
		Sharon Salzberg, R.N.
		Ralph Snyderman, M.D.
	MODERATOR	INTERPRETERS
	Bennett M. Shapiro, M.D.	Thupten Jinpa, Ph.D.
		B. Alan Wallace, Ph.D.

Click on the links above for the biography of each session participant.

General Description of Session Five:
In this session, Drs. Kahneman and Snyderman will reflect on the major themes elucidated during the various presentations and dialogues.

Speakers, 30 Minutes Each:

Daniel Kahneman:
Much research over the past two decades has revealed the nature of cognitive biases that are prevalent in our interpretation of momentary experience. Our well-being appears to reflect the aggregation of these experiential moments. This set of reflections will consider the import of meditation training on our awareness of momentary experience and well-being.

Ralph Snyderman:
Medicine is moving inexorably toward a more integrative perspective on many fronts, as emerging technologies and expanded epistemologies are incorporated into how medicine is practiced. This set of reflections will consider the ways in which what has been presented from both the clinical and basic science perspectives might contribute to this on-going development in medical care, medical education, and medical research, and its potential for giving rise to more rational institutional approaches to health and well-being, as well as elucidating a larger role for engaged participation on the part of individuals in furthering their own health.