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Home > Archive > Recovery aa > November 2005 > Love and Compassion are Skills??
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Love and Compassion are Skills??
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| Inside the minds of monks and moms
It may seem far fetched as you're schlepping groceries or dragging your
screaming 4-year-old to the time-out chair, but dedicated moms, you may
have something important in common with meditating Buddhist monks.
It's the neurology of love and compassion — a little-understood aspect
of parenting. Brain-scanning studies led by university of Wisconsin
neuroscientist Richard J. Davidson find that mothers gazing at pictures
of their babies and Tibetan monks contemplating compassion both show
marked activity in the left prefrontal cortex, an area apparently tied
to happiness.
Davidson's research on meditating monks (more extensive than his work on
moms) suggests their brains also produce very strong gamma waves, which
have been linked to concentration and memory. The findings were
published in November in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The basic theory uniting nerve-wracked U.S. suburbs with Himalayan
mountain monasteries is that love, compassion and equanimity can be
thought of as "skills" that can be improved with practice and are
capable of changing neural circuitry.
It's surely a heartening notion. But if you're skeptical, you've got
company. Plans for the Dalai Lama, Tibet's revered spiritual leader, to
speak about the meditation research at next month's meeting of the
Society for Neuroscience in Washington, D.C., have sparked a fierce debate.
Some critics imply that Davidson, a longtime student of meditation, is
too close to the Dalai Lama (who is a co-founder of the nonprofit Mind
and Life Institute that helped fund Davidson's studies). Others,
charging research design flaws, say Davidson has failed to prove that
meditation promotes compassion. The debate has even had political
overtones because some of the opponents are of Chinese origin and may
hope to squelch public attention to Chinese government repression in Tibet.
But the talk is still expected to take place, which is good news not
just for science but for moms. (It's good for dads too, although a
recent U.S. Department of Labor report shows moms still spend twice as
much time on family work.) Easily lost in our daily grind of haggling
with soccer coaches and worrying about whether our kids should be taking
Ritalin is one of the sweetest aspects of parenting: that when we put
our minds to it, caring for children often boils down to basic training
in positive emotions.
Let's face it: Parents have extraordinary motivation and endless
opportunities to hone "skills" such as kindness. In Davidson's study on
monks, the subjects concentrated on unconditional compassion, a pillar
of the Dalai Lama's teaching and described as the "unrestricted
readiness and availability to help living beings." What loving parent
hasn't noted some improvement in this capacity?
The hope that such changes may be concrete and lasting has to do with
what's known as brain plasticity. The 1990s' "Decade of the Brain"
revealed that human brains change and grow throughout our lifetime and
that experience can rewire them. A violinist's brain is demonstrably
different from someone who doesn't practice. A London taxicab driver,
who must memorize that huge city's maze, has on average a larger
hippocampus — the brain's seat of memory — than workers in other
occupations.
Davidson suggests that sustained positive emotions can also have a
concrete impact on the brain.
"Love as well as other positive emotions are not static but can be
learned as skills," he told a Canadian TV interviewer recently. "They're
skills that are not dissimilar from the skills that you might learn
riding a bicycle…. If you train them, they will increase in strength and
frequency."
Davidson was talking about the normally joyful bond between a mother and
infant, which he has called the "paradigmatic case of human love."
Obviously, even the most devoted moms and monks differ in several
glaring ways. Few moms of young children have much time to finish a
thought, let alone meditate. Furthermore, no scientist to date has
offered evidence that the repeated experience of a positive emotion,
such as love, changes the brain permanently, although stress certainly can.
Davidson's work with both monks and moms is on the frontier of a
scientific trend still in its infancy, in our compassion challenged age,
this research deserves a chance to grow.
KATHERINE ELLISON is the author of "The Mommy Brain: How Motherhood
Makes Us Smarter"
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"F.H." <connectu2@verizon.net> wrote> It may seem far fetched as you're
schlepping groceries or dragging your
> screaming 4-year-old to the time-out chair, but dedicated moms, you may
> have something important in common with meditating Buddhist monks.
>
> It's the neurology of love and compassion — a little-understood aspect of
> parenting. Brain-scanning studies led by university of Wisconsin
> neuroscientist Richard J. Davidson find that mothers gazing at pictures of
> their babies and Tibetan monks contemplating compassion both show marked
> activity in the left prefrontal cortex, an area apparently tied to
> happiness.
> Davidson's work with both monks and moms is on the frontier of a
> scientific trend still in its infancy, in our compassion challenged age,
> this research deserves a chance to grow.
>
> KATHERINE ELLISON is the author of "The Mommy Brain: How Motherhood Makes
> Us Smarter"
Sexist to the extremes, Frank..
How come it isn't about nuns and daddies.
Equal rights and all that PC ness.
Do people in your experience actually go out and pay for this stuff.
Anyone remember Our Boys, they used to pay you 10 shillings if you got
something published in it. A cartoonist makes less nowadays, but you at
least get a smile from cartoons @-))
Hatemail and junk mail is free, so why should idiots who can read and write
get paid for stiff and stuff and fluff.
Anyone hear from Roger or Ernie lately
Cheers
Tommy
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| Tommy wrote:
> Sexist to the extremes, Frank..
>
> How come it isn't about nuns and daddies.
>
> Equal rights and all that PC ness.
>
> Do people in your experience actually go out and pay for this stuff.
>
> Anyone remember Our Boys, they used to pay you 10 shillings if you got
> something published in it. A cartoonist makes less nowadays, but you at
> least get a smile from cartoons @-))
>
> Hatemail and junk mail is free, so why should idiots who can read and write
> get paid for stiff and stuff and fluff.
You've become *so* jaded. Perhaps meditation would help.
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| Virtualoso 2005-11-23, 12:50 am |
| In article <GkKgf.6$SE2.3@trnddc04>, F.H. <connectu2@verizon.net> wrote:
> Inside the minds of monks and moms
>
> It may... you may... an area apparently ...
> have been linked ... The findings were
> published in November in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
>
> The basic theory ...
>
> Others,
> charging research design flaws, say Davidson has failed to prove ...
>
> Davidson suggests ...
Whoa. ANOTHER inconclusive scientific announcement. And published. When
did science become so dodgy?
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| Virtualoso wrote:
> In article <GkKgf.6$SE2.3@trnddc04>, F.H. <connectu2@verizon.net> wrote:
>
>
>
>
> Whoa. ANOTHER inconclusive scientific announcement. And published. When
> did science become so dodgy?
"if you're skeptical, you've got company." Meditation (prayer) and
love, one must be cautious of dodgy side effects. ;)
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| Craig S. 2005-11-23, 12:51 am |
| "Virtualoso" <no@dot.com> wrote in message
news:221120051823047352%no@dot.com...
> When did science become so dodgy?
About 4000 years ago when alchemy gained interest.
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| Virtualoso 2005-11-23, 12:51 am |
| In article <NsRgf.45$Gw3.18@fe03.lga>, Craig S.
<cspurlocktakethisout@takethisoutcharter.net> wrote:
> "Virtualoso" <no@dot.com> wrote in message
> news:221120051823047352%no@dot.com...
>
>
> About 4000 years ago when alchemy gained interest.
I've always liked alchemy, even if it was only veiled, highly
symbolized religion. But if we're willing to consider some other things
as science, then it may trace back 12,000 years or more. According to
today's scientists, that is. If we can trust what they tell us. '-)
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| Craig S. 2005-11-24, 12:50 am |
| "Virtualoso" <no@dot.com> wrote in message
news:221120052101424784%no@dot.com...
> In article <NsRgf.45$Gw3.18@fe03.lga>, Craig S.
> <cspurlocktakethisout@takethisoutcharter.net> wrote:
>
>
> I've always liked alchemy, even if it was only veiled, highly
> symbolized religion. But if we're willing to consider some other things
> as science, then it may trace back 12,000 years or more. According to
> today's scientists, that is. If we can trust what they tell us. '-)
Now that's a dodgy proposition.
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