Psychologist looks to monks for keys to happiness

Evolution has given the human brain a vast prefrontal cortex, a ball of neural tissue that enables us to engage in abstract reasoning, reflect on the past, and make predictions about the future.

It also allows us to wander a mental landscape filled with emotional minefields, says Richard Davidson, a professor of psychology at the University of Wisconsin.

"It allows us to screw up our emotions far more than other animals," he said during a visit to the University of Utah this week. "It allows us to persist in emotional responses beyond which they are still useful."

The answer to that disordered brain function may lie in mental training perfected by Buddhist monks over the centuries in Tibet, Davidson told a crowd of at least 600 who overflowed the Utah Museum of Fine Arts auditorium Wednesday for the Tanner Lecture on Human Values.

Davidson has become famous for using high-tech imaging to document the startling control the monks demonstrate over their emotional states. His resulting ideas about "neuroplasticity" -- the notion that we can enhance brain function through purposeful mental training -- threaten to upend conventional psychotherapy, which has little scientific basis.

"We were all taught that the brain is different from other organs in the way it changes over time. We thought the process was one of irrevocable death," Davidson said. "We now know that view is definitively wrong. The brain is capable of generating 7,000

to 9,000 cells a day."

Magnetic resonance imaging, or MRI, allows researchers like Davidson to observe brain function with unprecedented precision, bringing new scientific rigor to social science, experts said Thursday morning at a follow-up panel discussion. Davidson's findings hold potential for developing mental training techniques to improve people's health and quality of life, said psychiatrist Daniel Siegel.

"These are not just weird ideas. These are research-based interventions that can be applied in the real world," said Siegel, an expert in the field of interpersonal neurobiology at the University of California, Los Angeles. "When you teach these reflective skills to kids, they not only do better emotionally and socially, they also do better academically."

Davidson's work with monks was triggered by a visit with the Dalai Lama. The exiled leader of Tibetan Buddhism recruited masters of the faith, monks who had spent an average of 34,000 hours in intense meditation, for Davidson's studies.

Using scans that track brain function, the psychologist recorded high levels of activity in the parts of the monks' brains associated with emotional well-being. In further studies on other people, Davidson documented measurable changes in brain activity after two-week periods of mental training.

"The brain is the only organ designed to change in response to experience. Musical training changes the structure of the brain and when it begins earlier in life the greater the influence," he said.