News - Its Got To Be Love

by Life Positive

Richard Davidson (left) tests a monk A new research project at UW-Madison offers the opportunity to apply hard science to these seemingly ethereal questions. UW-Madison psychology professor Richard Davidson, director of the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior, has received a $2.5 million grant from the Michigan-based Fetzer Institute to create a new research initiative on the neuroscience of compassion, love and forgiveness, investigating how these virtues manifest themselves in the human mind and whether we have the ability to nurture and expand them through practice. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (FMRI) techniques, Davidson has been able to demonstrate that significant positive changes in brain behavior can be activated through meditation and other “contemplative practices.” The research has been very influential in providing evidence of “neuroplasticity,” the idea that brain function changes throughout life in response to experience and purposeful training.

“This is totally uncharted territory,” says Davidson of the Fetzer project. “This grant is really meant to launch a new field where the wisdom of the contemplative traditions can intersect with hard-nosed mainstream science to understand how the brain can be transformed, through certain exercises, to strengthen these kinds of positive qualities.”