Speaker 1: Welcome to the Psychology Podcast, where we give you insights
Speaker 1: into the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity. I'm doctor Scott
Speaker 1: Barry Kaufman, and in each episode I have a conversation
Speaker 1: with a guest who will stimulate your mind and give
Speaker 1: you a greater understanding of yourself, others, and the world
Speaker 1: to live in. Hopefully we'll also provide a glimpse into
Speaker 1: human possibility. Thanks for listening and enjoy the podcast. Hey everyone,
Speaker 1: before we start this episode today, I just wanted to
Speaker 1: make a quick announcement that this is going to be
Speaker 1: the last episode of the season. I've been doing this
Speaker 1: podcast for the past five years and haven't had any breaks,
Speaker 1: so I'm really looking forward to actually taking a step
Speaker 1: back for a couple of months and think about how
Speaker 1: it can make this podcast even better and more eye
Speaker 1: opening for you all. So stay tuned for next season,
Speaker 1: and until then I will be releasing reruns, so enjoy
Speaker 1: the reruns until we come back and season better than ever. Today,
Speaker 1: it's a delight to have David Vogo on the podcast.
Speaker 1: Doctor Vago is Research director of the Ocher Center for
Speaker 1: Integrative Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center. He also maintains
Speaker 1: an appointment as a research associate in the Functional Neuroimaging
Speaker 1: Laboratory at Harvard Medical School. David aims to clarify adaptive
Speaker 1: mind brain body interactions and their therapeutic relevance and healthcare settings.
Speaker 1: In this context, David has been specifically focusing on the
Speaker 1: study of mindfulness based interventions and clinical settings, and the
Speaker 1: basic cognitive and neuroscientific mechanisms by which mindfulness based practice function. David,
Speaker 1: so great to chat with you today. Really glad to
Speaker 1: hear Scott. Really a wonderful to the party community. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, the Psychologic podcast has represented the topic of
Speaker 1: mindfulness before and in other ways. We've had Sharon Salzburg
Speaker 1: on the podcast. We've had our and Sofer on the
Speaker 1: podcast talking about a nonviolent approach to peace, to our
Speaker 1: world betterman, and he draws a lot on mindfulness, you know.
Speaker 1: So there's just a couple of examples, but I'm really
Speaker 1: excited to dive deep into the latest science of this
Speaker 1: field because there's a lot of claims and it's also
Speaker 1: a very popular topic if you go to a bookstore.
Speaker 1: I mean, I feel like it's a really big part
Speaker 1: of the bookstores. So i'd like to just talk to
Speaker 1: you a lot about this, And let me first start
Speaker 1: by asking what is contemplative science? Because is that like
Speaker 1: did you coin that? Is that like a new way
Speaker 1: of just repackaging mindfulness? Go, yeah, so that's a really
Speaker 1: good question. In fact, I'd have to unpack that a
Speaker 1: bit and back up a bit, probably all the way
Speaker 1: to the Old Testament to answer that question, and then
Speaker 1: you know, to fill that in all details. I'll end
Speaker 1: up by saying the take home answer to your question,
Speaker 1: where did contemplative science come from? It was really just
Speaker 1: a dialogue of scientists and scholars sitting together in probably
Speaker 1: two thousand and oh i would say, probably seven part
Speaker 1: of the Mind and Life Institute, which is a non
Speaker 1: for profit organization in which the Dilama and the fourteenth
Speaker 1: dia Lama is the honorary chairman, and it was started
Speaker 1: by a neuroscientist and a businessman from Harvard really with
Speaker 1: the goal of fostering dialogue on the mind. And so
Speaker 1: being part of that organization at one point being their
Speaker 1: research director, we were talking about, you know, how to
Speaker 1: brand essentially this whole field and what would it be
Speaker 1: called if we're going to develop a curriculum, which we
Speaker 1: decided not to, but we did throw around the idea
Speaker 1: of this word contemplative science as a way to capture
Speaker 1: the essence of studying meditative practices our wisdom based traditions. Now,
Speaker 1: if we go back to the Old Testament, so I'm
Speaker 1: going to just go back in time here we have
Speaker 1: to think about the word meditation and contemplation and their relationship.
Speaker 1: So haga or maleete, meditacio, these are all different words
Speaker 1: from Greek or Latin that were in the Old Testament
Speaker 1: and that was associated with not only thought, reflections, study,
Speaker 1: but also contemplation. So contemplation really is a word that
Speaker 1: you see often used along with meditation across all wisdom
Speaker 1: based traditions and religions, and in the classical period between
Speaker 1: the fifth and eighth century and the Common Era, it
Speaker 1: was referred to both meditation and contemplation referred to as
Speaker 1: a general technique of focusing attention and sustained fashion with
Speaker 1: the aim of deepening states and concentration, tranquility, and insight.
Speaker 1: From the Christian theological tradition that insight was with the
Speaker 1: nature of God, and in the Greco Roman philosophical traditions,
Speaker 1: insight was obtained to reveal the nature of mine, if
Speaker 1: you go back to that classical period. So people like Aristole,
Speaker 1: for example, recognize the practice of contemplation as the highest,
Speaker 1: most virtuous aspect of human life associated with the pursuit
Speaker 1: of wisdom. And so there are many styles of meditation,
Speaker 1: but in essence, meditation and contemplation together refer to any
Speaker 1: practice that involves self regulation of attention. Can be used
Speaker 1: for spiritual purposes like the Christian theological tradition that did,
Speaker 1: or it can be used for philosophical understanding of the
Speaker 1: mind from more of the reco Roman philosophical tradition. So
Speaker 1: contemplative science or contemplative neuroscience really refers to the study
Speaker 1: of the underlying neural biology and psychology and the phenomenology
Speaker 1: of that contemplative experience. Yes, thank you for that explanation.
Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense. And trying to think
Speaker 1: of the word contemplative, it connotes to me something that's
Speaker 1: very conscious, a consciousness like enhance consciousness in some way,
Speaker 1: or or awareness or even like deliberate conscious thought. Isn't
Speaker 1: it important to like tap into our intuition as well
Speaker 1: in our like emotional experience, even in a spontaneous way,
Speaker 1: even if it's like not deliberately contemplated. Absolutely, So to
Speaker 1: broaden the word contemplation a little bit, please do I
Speaker 1: could maybe add another concept well. Meditation also was used
Speaker 1: from the Indo Tibetan traditions. Meditation is a word that
Speaker 1: became the translation for the Sanskrit and Tibetan words dahayana
Speaker 1: or bavana. So those are are gone, which is the
Speaker 1: Tibetan equivalent. These are from sixth century BCE, So now
Speaker 1: we're talking a thousand years before it was used in
Speaker 1: the classical period. Right, So we said there's a lot
Speaker 1: of use of the word meditation in fift to eighth
Speaker 1: century CE, but from the Indo Tibetan traditions, meditation specifically
Speaker 1: from the context of systematic forms of mental training with
Speaker 1: the goal of achieving alignment. That those words really refer
Speaker 1: to developing familiarity with one's own mind. Now, if we
Speaker 1: get out of our sort of immediate reactions to what
Speaker 1: mind is and think a little bit more broadly than
Speaker 1: mind could encompass everything from what's happening as a result
Speaker 1: of brain activity and body activity and in relation to
Speaker 1: others and the world around us. Mind is much more
Speaker 1: broad broadly conceptualized. And therefore, if you want to include
Speaker 1: intuition into the insight that you achieve, like what is
Speaker 1: it that I'm intuiting? That would be appropriate to put
Speaker 1: under the umbrella of contemplative practice too. Not only are
Speaker 1: you becoming aware of what's happening in your immediate environment externally,
Speaker 1: but you become much more aware also of what's happening internally.
Speaker 1: Not only you know in your body you know just
Speaker 1: for example, where your pains are, where your emotions sort
Speaker 1: of manifest, but also that intuitive feelings that you get
Speaker 1: maybe from your gut. So that is part of the
Speaker 1: umbrella of contemplative practice. The question is is there science
Speaker 1: to show that your awareness of intuitions is any better
Speaker 1: by sitting on a meditation cushion and closing your eyes.
Speaker 1: We don't know that answer, but we don't. Do you
Speaker 1: have any evidence at all one way or the other?
Speaker 1: Or were you about fifty to fifty on this one? Well,
Speaker 1: for intuition, the problem with intuition is that it comes
Speaker 1: from somewhere that we don't know where. We often attribute
Speaker 1: it to gut, but similar to how we feel love,
Speaker 1: you know, love sometimes is often associated with a heart
Speaker 1: and it's not like we have a measure for love
Speaker 1: or how much love you expressed by looking at you know,
Speaker 1: heart rate or heart activity dynamics. Similarly, it's hard to
Speaker 1: understand intuition if we were to say, focus our instruments
Speaker 1: on the abdomen area and say, okay, let's see what
Speaker 1: kind of activity we see as you think about whether
Speaker 1: or not a ball is going to hit a target.
Speaker 1: Sort of intuition about that or that could be just
Speaker 1: a simple experiment, but even more complex would be just
Speaker 1: your your general than intuitions of somebody who may be
Speaker 1: a bad person or a good person that you want
Speaker 1: to be with. I will say one thing that we're
Speaker 1: doing in our laboratory to get at some of these
Speaker 1: things that are sort of ephemeral or just difficult to measure,
Speaker 1: really is we want to understand human connection. Because in essence,
Speaker 1: when I talk about what the goal of meditation is,
Speaker 1: I often also try to get people out of their
Speaker 1: everyday sort of thoughts about meditation that it's not just
Speaker 1: about sitting with your eyes closed on the top of
Speaker 1: the mountain and achieving bliss. It's more about establishing human
Speaker 1: connection from at least the traditions that most of my
Speaker 1: research is rooted in, so from the Tibetan Buddhist traditions,
Speaker 1: the aim of the practice really is to dissolve the
Speaker 1: boundaries between self and other, not to just decrease stress
Speaker 1: or improve our attention. Those are sort of side effects.
Speaker 1: So when we talk about doing these types of practices,
Speaker 1: we also talk about how you can increase social connection
Speaker 1: or increase empathy, and those are also very difficult constructs,
Speaker 1: similar to intuition. And one of the things that we're
Speaker 1: doing is we're putting people into multiple people in a
Speaker 1: having to meditate with each other. They could be people
Speaker 1: that know each other well in which you resonate with,
Speaker 1: or people who are strangers so you may not know
Speaker 1: if you resonate with them or not. And actually look
Speaker 1: at the intrack cortical dynamics between the brains and say,
Speaker 1: is there a synchrony between the brains suggesting that you
Speaker 1: do resonate with this person? And if not, by practicing
Speaker 1: say mindfulness or compassion based practices, can you enhance that connection,
Speaker 1: that social connectivity, that human connection, and dissolve some of
Speaker 1: those boundaries that we create between self and other. So
Speaker 1: These are novel ways of getting at some of the
Speaker 1: abstract or complex phenomenological experiences that people have through contemplative practice.
Speaker 1: But we're still in the early days for this type
Speaker 1: of research. There's really a lot of research to be
Speaker 1: done in this area. Well, David, you know when I
Speaker 1: talk to you, I get a night and day versus
Speaker 1: talking to like a pop writer who wrote a book
Speaker 1: on mindfulness. I mean, like, if I talk to anyone
Speaker 1: you know who wrote one of these best selling books,
Speaker 1: you know, a mindfulness, they sound like a completely different
Speaker 1: type of human being than what's the words that are
Speaker 1: coming out of your mouth. You're basically saying like you
Speaker 1: don't even know if the science suggests that being mindful
Speaker 1: or meditating will increase your connection to other humans. Like
Speaker 1: you're like, the jury's out on that. That's right, That's incredible. Yeah, Well,
Speaker 1: because people talk about it in terms of the Buddha dharma,
Speaker 1: you know, they talk about it from from a Buddhist
Speaker 1: point of view of what the Buddhist spiritual path said.
Speaker 1: So you know, when when a Buddhist teacher or contemporary
Speaker 1: mindfulness teacher talks about the benefits, they're talking about it
Speaker 1: from their own experiences or from how the dharma explains it.
Speaker 1: So the dharma are really the rules in which someone
Speaker 1: it's the guidelines by which you should practice training your
Speaker 1: mind and relating to others to achieve enlightenment. And the
Speaker 1: drama is a good instructive path. It provides what we
Speaker 1: call the preliminary practices, so you can achieve enlightenment. But
Speaker 1: from a contemporary point of view and from a Western
Speaker 1: science point of view, we don't have a lot of
Speaker 1: data on these practices. So I'll just give you a
Speaker 1: sense of where we are. Yeah, what do we know
Speaker 1: after like twenty five years of mindfulness research. Well, that's
Speaker 1: a good point, you said, twenty five years, you know,
Speaker 1: think about you know, cardiovascar disease is a construct that
Speaker 1: we've known about for at least twice that or at
Speaker 1: least fifty years where we've been doing ongoing research. And
Speaker 1: the number of studies that have come out on cardiovaster
Speaker 1: disease is almost one hundred oh greater than one hundred
Speaker 1: and twenty thousand publications. For mindfulness, there's only been nine
Speaker 1: that was in publications, and that's either mindless or meditation.
Speaker 1: It's less if you just use mindfulness and all of
Speaker 1: them except for nine happened after the year two thousands,
Speaker 1: So it really has been less than twenty years of research.
Speaker 1: And that should give you a sense of where we are.
Speaker 1: We're really at early days. So what do we know.
Speaker 1: I can give you some summary for you and your
Speaker 1: listeners about what we know. What does it mean when
Speaker 1: we sit with our eyes closed on a cushion? What
Speaker 1: does it do for us? What does it do for
Speaker 1: the people around us? And what are the mechanisms? Does
Speaker 1: that to be a cushion? I like to lay on
Speaker 1: a bed of nails? Ah, I'm serious, it's a you know,
Speaker 1: a chiropatric Have you heard of those matts? Chiropractric mats.
Speaker 1: They are painful in the beginning, but immediately then terms
Speaker 1: of like a state of transcendence if you stick with
Speaker 1: it eventually, Yeah, it's cool. Yeah, yeah, I would imagine.
Speaker 1: So most of the data I can go straight to
Speaker 1: pain for example. Yeah, and so go to research specifically
Speaker 1: on pain. You know, again, we're this is a great
Speaker 1: area because most people are interested in how mindfuls and
Speaker 1: meditation can benefit pain. We have you know, over close
Speaker 1: to one hundred and twenty million of the US population
Speaker 1: has chronic pain, and it costs over six hundred billion
Speaker 1: dollars in medical expenses and work productivity loss. So there
Speaker 1: is a challenge. There is an epidemic not only in
Speaker 1: chronic pain, but in opiate use. So there's good reason
Speaker 1: to believe or good reason to search for non pharmacological
Speaker 1: alternatives that can benefit people in chronic pain. What about
Speaker 1: pharmological that are healthy, like CBD oil. Well, so we
Speaker 1: know nothing about CBD. We know even less about CBD
Speaker 1: than we do. You know less about CD CBD. There's
Speaker 1: so many, so many variables that we just don't know
Speaker 1: right now. Everything we know about CBD is anecdotal. So
Speaker 1: if you go, if you see so there's the very
Speaker 1: big differences between dosages. So if you get recreational CBD,
Speaker 1: it's typically going to be such a small dose that
Speaker 1: you probably even if there was an effect physiologically, you
Speaker 1: probably won't feel it except for maybe some of the placebo.
Speaker 1: At the medicinal level. There are one hundred milligram doses
Speaker 1: of CBD, which often has been shown to have a
Speaker 1: more of a physiological effect, but the data has not
Speaker 1: been adequately collected. There has there're just not enough data
Speaker 1: there's proportions of some of the cannabinoid receptors are actually
Speaker 1: activated more than others. So you'll see often a ratio
Speaker 1: between THHD and CBD. And we don't know yet whether
Speaker 1: one to one or three to one or zero one.
Speaker 1: Whatever the ratio is from thhc to CBD is going
Speaker 1: to have certain effects on anxiety or pain, for example.
Speaker 1: But mindfulness, you know, has been shown at least if
Speaker 1: you have seen some of the pictures, for example, of
Speaker 1: these monks who can you know well some of that.
Speaker 1: You've heard of these stories where yogis can stick these
Speaker 1: probes through their skin, through their mouth, through their skin
Speaker 1: without showing any pain. There was a great example in
Speaker 1: nineteen sixty three, Ti Kwang Duk of Vietnamese Buddhist monk
Speaker 1: from the pure Land traditions, sat in the middle of
Speaker 1: a circle in a I think it was South Vietnam,
Speaker 1: who was protesting the corrupt government by President Nigo Diingiem.
Speaker 1: He just sat there. He poured a five gallon can
Speaker 1: of gasoline over his head and self immolation. He sat
Speaker 1: there while and meditated while he burned. And there's been
Speaker 1: a lot of examples of self emolation since then. This
Speaker 1: is the question that comes up naturally is how can
Speaker 1: this human being sit on fire and show no emotion
Speaker 1: expression like he's not experiencing the pain, and we go
Speaker 1: we can go straight to the Buddha dharma and the
Speaker 1: all the different sutas the descriptions for how this may happen.
Speaker 1: And there's one called the Vedana Samasuta, which is really
Speaker 1: about the emotional and the sensory experience, and they have
Speaker 1: there's a salad Salatata otherwise known as the dark, and
Speaker 1: they say, when an instructed run of the mill person's
Speaker 1: touched by a painful, bodily feeling like fire, he worries, grieves, laments, weeps,
Speaker 1: and it's distraw It's as if the men were pierced
Speaker 1: by two darts, a physical dark and a mental dark.
Speaker 1: And what seems to be happening is in the case
Speaker 1: of the well taught disciple, when he's touched by a
Speaker 1: painful feeling, he will not be distraught. It's the kind
Speaker 1: of feeling he experiences, a bodily one, but not a
Speaker 1: mental one. If he's pierced by that first dart, but
Speaker 1: not the second dark. So there's an ability to distance
Speaker 1: yourself from your own experience. So not only are your
Speaker 1: thoughts and emotions just now mental events, they're no longer
Speaker 1: facts about you or the world, but the experiences that
Speaker 1: you're having in your body can also be You can
Speaker 1: also almost have a dissociative experience where those sensory experiences
Speaker 1: are no longer painful, but just again sensory experiences, so
Speaker 1: you actually see people. That's in a very advanced monastic
Speaker 1: how about you or me? Now, there's been data now
Speaker 1: specifically to show and this is where a lot of
Speaker 1: advancement has been made for mindfulness for pain, is to
Speaker 1: show that even four twenty minute sessions of just focusing
Speaker 1: on mindfully focusing on your breath can help you improve
Speaker 1: your thresholds for experiencing pain and also decrease the unpleasantness
Speaker 1: in which you experience pain. So both intensity of the
Speaker 1: pain and the unpleasantness will decrease, But the mechanism seems
Speaker 1: to be how you perceive the pain changes. It's no
Speaker 1: longer something that you may be down regulating. You're not
Speaker 1: avoiding it, but you are somehow accepting it. You're aware
Speaker 1: of it, but you have enough distance meta awareness, or
Speaker 1: just distance between that experience that you don't suffer the
Speaker 1: emotional reactivity associated with it wowsers. So that sounds good. Okay,
Speaker 1: So pain we covered pain go down the list of
Speaker 1: what we know what's on solid ground. So solid ground
Speaker 1: pain is a pretty good because I think we have
Speaker 1: a pretty good idea that mindfulness is improving how we
Speaker 1: cope with pain. It doesn't get rid of pain, it
Speaker 1: helps how we cope with it. And just like I said,
Speaker 1: an emotional reactivity is to do with pain decreases. And
Speaker 1: just to be clear, what we know about pain is
Speaker 1: that if you're experiencing that emotional side of pain. Often
Speaker 1: if you're experiencing pain, say because you had a traumatic
Speaker 1: car accident, you may have shoulder pain that lasts a
Speaker 1: long time or neck pain that lasts a long time.
Speaker 1: But the reactivity that you have, the emotional reactivity and
Speaker 1: the stress associated with that pain leads to what we
Speaker 1: call centralization of your pain, meaning that a lot of
Speaker 1: the receptors in your brain stem that are gating whether
Speaker 1: or not to send a pain signal to the rest
Speaker 1: of your body is becoming hyper sensitive due to your emotion.
Speaker 1: If you have lots of emotional reactivity and unpleasantness associated
Speaker 1: with pain, that's going to lead to chronic levels of
Speaker 1: pain and fatigue. And so what's on good footing right
Speaker 1: now in terms of the research is that across all
Speaker 1: the studies, the nine thousand studies that are out there,
Speaker 1: pain is a pretty good outcome for mindfulness. It's a
Speaker 1: good target. Now. The other two areas where there's very
Speaker 1: solid I think data suggesting that mindfulance is going to
Speaker 1: be good is for anxiety. There seems to be good
Speaker 1: data suggesting that the fear or anticipation of something negative
Speaker 1: can be diminished through these practices. And symptoms of depression
Speaker 1: as well. So extended experiences of malaise or sadness accompanied
Speaker 1: by interference with your ongoing every day demands, so relationships
Speaker 1: or work is somehow compromised, and mindfulance seems to improve
Speaker 1: our ability to cope and keep the relapse of depressive
Speaker 1: symptoms at bay. Depression, anxiety, and pain are probably the
Speaker 1: three top clinical outcomes in which mindfulance is showing positive benefits.
Speaker 1: But if you look at the data associated now I'm
Speaker 1: talking like global meta analyzes or systematic reviews of the literatures,
Speaker 1: that this takes all the data that we have, puts
Speaker 1: it all together looks at what standard way has mindful
Speaker 1: has been delivered and has it been controlled in a
Speaker 1: clinical trial, and compares all those clinical trials together. And
Speaker 1: now there's a lot of problem with that too, because
Speaker 1: we're limited in the number of studies out there. I'm
Speaker 1: going to give you a sense of where the limitations
Speaker 1: are because when you do these systematic reviews, there are
Speaker 1: close to ten thousand papers, for example, associated with mindfulness,
Speaker 1: nine to ten thousand papers a thousand, give or take, yeah,
Speaker 1: nine or ten thousand, And of these studies, many of
Speaker 1: them don't meet the criteria for rigorous, for the rigor
Speaker 1: that we can make any definitive generalizations about. Uh oh,
Speaker 1: there's a lot of shit studies out there. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of shittuf you said, oh boy. So, for example,
Speaker 1: we did a systematic review of mindfulness based interventions. There
Speaker 1: are about we looked at I think nine thousand, close
Speaker 1: to nine thousand studies, and we looked at relevant outcomes.
Speaker 1: We focused on all the different outcomes, emotion outcomes, cognitive outcomes,
Speaker 1: ner imaging outcomes, mindfulens assays meaning like just self reported
Speaker 1: measures of mindfulness and self related processing. So how much rumination,
Speaker 1: maybe are you doing and there's only about sixteen hundred studies.
Speaker 1: When you just look at those outcomes, it was the
Speaker 1: most common. So of those sixteen hundred studies, we were
Speaker 1: able to narrow it down to about one hundred and
Speaker 1: forty that to have some randomized control not even randomized,
Speaker 1: just some control group, meaning you take a course in
Speaker 1: which there's twelve to twenty five students who are who
Speaker 1: are learning mindless once a week for eight weeks, who
Speaker 1: are forced to not out of their own volition. Is
Speaker 1: that right? That's what randomized means. Well, they wouldn't be forced,
Speaker 1: they'd be volunteering, but they wouldn't know they'll be volunteering
Speaker 1: to be random they wouldn't be selected the mindfulness. They
Speaker 1: would be getting either mindless or something else. Gotcha, gotcha.
Speaker 1: But you see, My point is it's not a selective
Speaker 1: sample in the sense that these are people who have
Speaker 1: like they can't wait to do mindfulness, they're so excited
Speaker 1: about it, and they signed up for a mindfulness course. Yes,
Speaker 1: so we tried so the best studies avoid that. We
Speaker 1: called that self selective bias. That's right. Yeah, So we
Speaker 1: try to be as rigorous as possible in our review
Speaker 1: of these studies great, and like I said, we came
Speaker 1: down to one hundred and forty studies that were well controlled,
Speaker 1: and if we now look at across the different outcomes,
Speaker 1: we only found using the most rigorous standards, we only
Speaker 1: found eight studies that looked at the mindfulness based intervention
Speaker 1: in a standard delivery format eight weeks with a qualified
Speaker 1: teacher with the core practices which are concentration, meditation, insight meditation,
Speaker 1: body scan, and some yoga. If you have all those,
Speaker 1: it's a mindfluess based intervention, and in eight weeks you
Speaker 1: only got eight studies. So that was now there are
Speaker 1: a lot of studies out there that have modified that curriculum,
Speaker 1: and that's fine because you know, if you modify and
Speaker 1: it's still functional functions to help people, then great. So,
Speaker 1: like I said, we found that even for twenty minute
Speaker 1: sessions can influence have an effect on pain. Turns out
Speaker 1: that those same amount of time for twenty minute sessions
Speaker 1: can influence cognition. So we wanted to include more studies
Speaker 1: that showed that mindfuls practice can improve cognition for example,
Speaker 1: but didn't use the standard delivery format just eight weeks,
Speaker 1: and so then we were able to get twenty eight studies.
Speaker 1: Of the twenty eight studies, we can then look at
Speaker 1: the number of assays that people use. Assays refers to
Speaker 1: the task that is used to measure cognition. So it
Speaker 1: could be an attention task that focuses on reaction time,
Speaker 1: or it can be a memory task that focuses on
Speaker 1: retention of words, and so each one of those is
Speaker 1: considered another assay. So out of the twenty eight studies,
Speaker 1: we found one hundred and sixty total assays of cognition,
Speaker 1: and the majority of observations that we found, over sixty
Speaker 1: percent demonstrate what we refer to was non inferiority to
Speaker 1: the control, and that's pretty good. That means the control
Speaker 1: may be some gold standard like cognitive behavioral therapy. And
Speaker 1: this is across all outcomes. Some of these studies, the
Speaker 1: twenty eight studies are not specifically targeting cognition. That might
Speaker 1: be a secondary outcome. They might be interested in pain
Speaker 1: and they look at pain. But you know, we're just
Speaker 1: going to throw in a cognitive measure too, just to
Speaker 1: make sure that cognition is improving. And that is that's
Speaker 1: also not the best way to assess whether mindplus is
Speaker 1: affecting cognition, because what we want to do is you
Speaker 1: want to assess all the studies that focus on just
Speaker 1: cognition as a primary outcome, not as a secondary, and
Speaker 1: we don't have that data. We're still, like I said,
Speaker 1: there's one hundred and twenty thousand studies of cardiovascar disease
Speaker 1: and only nine for mindful US. So we just need
Speaker 1: to do more of the research. But we do know,
Speaker 1: like I said, sixty two percent of these twenty eight
Speaker 1: studies and of all those assays are non inferior to
Speaker 1: the control and in fact, twenty percent of them outperform
Speaker 1: the control. So that's pretty good. How many percent twenty percent?
Speaker 1: Only twenty percent are better than control. Yeah, so it's
Speaker 1: not a lot. That's not a lot, dude. No, no,
Speaker 1: it's not. And you're my CBD, I get it instantly.
Speaker 1: But you keep in mind, this is against an active control.
Speaker 1: So if there was no control condition, but the control
Speaker 1: condition is not actually mindfulness, that's right. It could be CBD, CBDE,
Speaker 1: it could be cognitive behavioral TBT. CBD is is certainly
Speaker 1: an outcome or an intervention that we want to test
Speaker 1: it against mindfulness too, because a lot of people claim
Speaker 1: that CBD is helping their anxiety, but we don't know.
Speaker 1: There's no research to show that it's any better than
Speaker 1: CBT or mindfulness, So we don't know those answers. But
Speaker 1: I can say that although the evidence is still growing
Speaker 1: that what we do know for sure, I think, are
Speaker 1: that these practices are having a profound impact on people,
Speaker 1: and we want to know exactly how, and we just
Speaker 1: need to do the more rigorous studies to make sure
Speaker 1: that indeed there are very slight populations that are going
Speaker 1: to benefit from these practices. There may be some practices
Speaker 1: that are better than others for certain scenarios, like we
Speaker 1: now know that in trauma patients, sitting meditation for open awareness,
Speaker 1: where you're just aware of anything that arises, is challenging,
Speaker 1: more challenging than a concentration practice, and that's because their
Speaker 1: trauma will invade their consciousness quite often when they just
Speaker 1: freely open up and let it wander. Sure, so there's
Speaker 1: definitely increasing evidence supporting its benefits, and the question is
Speaker 1: exactly how it's going to benefit a diverse group of
Speaker 1: patient populations. Yeah, I want to circle back to this
Speaker 1: idea of the potential disadvantages of meditating, like if you
Speaker 1: have trauma and things of that, what do we know
Speaker 1: about the science of when mindfulness goes horribly wrong? So
Speaker 1: I would say there has been a an effort to
Speaker 1: quantify the adverse effects of these practices and what the
Speaker 1: research finds, and this is done mostly by Willeby Britain
Speaker 1: at Brown and what she's found is that indeed, long
Speaker 1: term practitioners will often report having negative experiences terror, fear, dissociation,
Speaker 1: the feeling of isolating. Just these have been These sort
Speaker 1: of negative experiences have been described at length in many
Speaker 1: of the Buddhist texts, as from the Thera Voltriction. They
Speaker 1: described it as the dark night, meaning that there are
Speaker 1: certain stages of practice that you are described to go
Speaker 1: through that are terrifying, where your self dissolves and you're
Speaker 1: just starting to learn about the nature of your mind. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and realizing that there is no permanent self. So that
Speaker 1: could be scary. There is there's no permanent self. Well,
Speaker 1: your body has always changed. Yeah, there's no permanent self.
Speaker 1: Where is the self? Freaking out? You just said that.
Speaker 1: I didn't know that. Apparently, if you learn that you
Speaker 1: are connected to all things before you learn that you
Speaker 1: have no self. There may be an advantage to the
Speaker 1: order in which you learn those two different experiences or
Speaker 1: different relationships to the world, And in fact that somebody
Speaker 1: who loses their sense of self but is rooted in
Speaker 1: this experience of being connected to all things may not
Speaker 1: necessarily freakap right idea that yourself is going to dissolve
Speaker 1: into pieces and float away, well, you know, that could
Speaker 1: be kind of scary. But again, this rarely happens in
Speaker 1: contemporary secular medical settings, very rare. It's now being quantified.
Speaker 1: Is now different ways to there's safety methodologies in place
Speaker 1: to provide resources to people who are having negative experiences,
Speaker 1: and most teachers are qualified to deal with those negative experiences,
Speaker 1: but they typically happen to people who are on advanced
Speaker 1: retreat settings. Whether it's a five day or ten day,
Speaker 1: or three month or three year retreats, it doesn't matter.
Speaker 1: People have these varied experiences and deal with it in
Speaker 1: different ways. So you have to keep in mind that
Speaker 1: even cognitive behavioral therapy gold standard for psychotherapy, there are
Speaker 1: when you have a psychological history of trauma, sitting with
Speaker 1: those thoughts and memories of the past can be very upsetting,
Speaker 1: and so the exposure and reconsolidation of adaptive ways of
Speaker 1: thinking about these experiences are part of the therapeutic process,
Speaker 1: and so that's accepted. So yeah, so people may experience
Speaker 1: adverse effects, but nothing that's going to leave a scar
Speaker 1: for most people. There are instances in which people do
Speaker 1: experience adverse events and have trouble reintegrating, but that is,
Speaker 1: like I said, it's more rare than common. Okay, cool,
Speaker 1: So let's talk about mindfulness and its effect on cognition.
Speaker 1: You wrote an interesting paper talking about some of the
Speaker 1: confounding factors and methodological limitations of measuring cognitive outcomes and
Speaker 1: mindfulness based intervention research. Can you talk about some of
Speaker 1: those factors and limitations. Uh, yeah, yeah, exactly. So, first
Speaker 1: of all, this is the paper. It's in a special
Speaker 1: issue of Current Opinions and Psychology, and it's just coming
Speaker 1: out now. We've curated. I'm editing this with two other
Speaker 1: colleagues me Bernstein and Tors and Barnhoffer, And in this
Speaker 1: special issue is a great, really rich reflection on the field.
Speaker 1: Is over fifty five articles contributing, including a commentary by
Speaker 1: John Capotsan. Richie Davidson also contributes. So it's a really
Speaker 1: good reflection of what where the field is and one
Speaker 1: of the did you read the whole thing? What did
Speaker 1: you actually read the whole thing? You read all fifty
Speaker 1: five I had to read all the things as the editor. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was I didn't think I was going to when
Speaker 1: we started the whole It was a lot, but it
Speaker 1: was worth it because the issue is just so rich
Speaker 1: full of commentary. Its I highly suggest your readers check
Speaker 1: it out for some opinions. But in there we do
Speaker 1: talk specifically about the systematic review that I was referring
Speaker 1: to earlier, which was looking at, you know, those sixteen
Speaker 1: hundred papers that are out there, what did we find right?
Speaker 1: And so, like I said, the limitations are, there's plenty
Speaker 1: of them. Because of the sixteen hundred studies, we only
Speaker 1: got eight that affect cognition. So there's a problem in
Speaker 1: standardization and rigor in methods out there currently to make
Speaker 1: any sort of broad generalizations about cognition. And that's okay
Speaker 1: because we're in the beginning stages of a field. It's
Speaker 1: not like mindfluss doesn't work for cognition. It's just of
Speaker 1: all those sixteen hundred studies you know that were not included,
Speaker 1: they were basically pilot studies to show that this intervention
Speaker 1: is effective, it can help, it can work. And so
Speaker 1: now we have our work cutout for us because we
Speaker 1: say we have to identify what are the main outcomes
Speaker 1: or cognitive outcomes that are impacted by mindfulness. And we
Speaker 1: have some inkling now that of those assays that we
Speaker 1: looked at, fifty percent of them show that mindfulness outperforms
Speaker 1: the control when they've focused on attention or a construct
Speaker 1: called inhibition. Right, So inhibition is important because it's an
Speaker 1: executive function that allows you to override impulses that maybe
Speaker 1: otherwise automatically elicited, like eating a whole piece of chocolate
Speaker 1: cake when in your mind you said you didn't want
Speaker 1: to eat a lot of sugar, and there you are,
Speaker 1: there's a piece of chocolate in front of you and
Speaker 1: ate it all and you're like, ah, man, I didn't
Speaker 1: mean to do that. So that inhibition or impulse control
Speaker 1: is one of the areas where you see mindfulness really
Speaker 1: having an effect, same as attention. So now we can
Speaker 1: focus on those two areas, do the very rigorous studies
Speaker 1: that are necessary and come up with more novel assays.
Speaker 1: So one of the limitations in the field and in
Speaker 1: the field of science cognitive science in general, is our
Speaker 1: limitations by the assays that we have to measure cognition.
Speaker 1: So if you go to if you're a scientist, a
Speaker 1: cognitive scientist, and you want to study sustained attention, what
Speaker 1: do you do? You go to the internet. You look
Speaker 1: for research that's been done on sustained attention and you
Speaker 1: see what measures or assays they other people have used
Speaker 1: and have validated to essentially say, this is a good
Speaker 1: measure for attention. If you want to know if attention
Speaker 1: is affected, use this measure. So one measure that we
Speaker 1: that seems to be effective is, for example, one that
Speaker 1: was developed by Mike Posner, who's a very big attention researcher.
Speaker 1: He developed a model in which we can study attention
Speaker 1: by breaking it down into components of alerting, so being
Speaker 1: alert orienting to an object in space, and engagement and
Speaker 1: disengagement processinges, meaning how do you engage on an object
Speaker 1: and then disengage so you can then move on to
Speaker 1: the next object. And there's a task called a flanker
Speaker 1: task or the attention network task test tests and attention
Speaker 1: network test that uses these components alerting, orienting and monitoring,
Speaker 1: and engagement and disengagement. So these aspects of how you
Speaker 1: experience attention, and it can differentiate between those processes. Mindflas
Speaker 1: has been tested on this task a few times and
Speaker 1: the data looks like it's effective at some level. But
Speaker 1: if you don't have an attention deficit to begin with,
Speaker 1: it's unlikely that you're going to just improve attention. If
Speaker 1: you're healthy and have normal cognition to begin with. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so what we do see, it's not that it's going
Speaker 1: to make you a super smart or super it's going
Speaker 1: to enhance your super or cognitive capacity to your your
Speaker 1: having supercapacity. We are limited in what mindfulness can really do.
Speaker 1: But what it can do is it can prevent the
Speaker 1: degradation of your cognitive capacity and that's been shown, and
Speaker 1: it can improve your capacity if you're already at a
Speaker 1: deficit due to something like anxiety or other something else. Right,
Speaker 1: So the limitations are that we are limited by the
Speaker 1: measures of the assays used to assess cognitive functioning and
Speaker 1: we don't have a lot of new ones. So sustained
Speaker 1: attention can be measured by this anti task, or there's
Speaker 1: maybe two or three tasks that you can really choose
Speaker 1: from off the shelf to study cognition and attention specifically.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that we're calling for in
Speaker 1: a lot of these reviews the mindful literature is to
Speaker 1: improve the assays. We need better measures, So attention is
Speaker 1: one we're doing things like right now, for example, we're
Speaker 1: interested in how well you can sustain attention, and we
Speaker 1: can look at your brain networks of activity while you're
Speaker 1: paying attention and determine whether your brain is activating networks
Speaker 1: associated with sustained attention or whether it's dropping into a
Speaker 1: state of mind wandering and distraction, and we can quantify
Speaker 1: how much of that you're doing. That is something very
Speaker 1: novel that we're working on, so hopefully we have some
Speaker 1: data about that soon, I hope. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: of people, even without add that have a tremendous difficulty
Speaker 1: focusing on their tasks exactly. And this is one of
Speaker 1: the areas where I think mindfuls and meditation can excel
Speaker 1: because these are people who have deficits right and cognition.
Speaker 1: So let's see if we can improve their deficits by
Speaker 1: focusing their attention in a very systematic way. So ADHD
Speaker 1: is a great example of where we do see benefit.
Speaker 1: Depression is another area where we do see benefit as well,
Speaker 1: and we can look at these benefits through objective means.
Speaker 1: So we can look at I focus a lot of
Speaker 1: my research on EEG and fMRI as methods for assessing
Speaker 1: objective objectively aspects of cognition or emotion, So we can
Speaker 1: actually look at how the brain's bonds to say, you know,
Speaker 1: different emotional stimuli, and you can look at even early
Speaker 1: stages of processing which happened before you even have awareness.
Speaker 1: You know, you show you know, I don't know. I
Speaker 1: can show your picture of this mug. You see a
Speaker 1: mug in front of you, and you know before you
Speaker 1: even aware that this is a mug or you know,
Speaker 1: if it's something that you can even use for drinking
Speaker 1: out of your Your brain is responding. It's alert, it's
Speaker 1: oriented towards the object, it's engaging on the object, and
Speaker 1: it's disengaging from maybe the thoughts that you had about
Speaker 1: the next question or whatnot. So you are are using
Speaker 1: your resources to allocate to an object and then you
Speaker 1: have to disengage from this object and move on to
Speaker 1: the next object, which maybe in this case of all
Speaker 1: you know, so how quickly you can do that is
Speaker 1: can be measured, and that's something that we're interested in doing,
Speaker 1: but there's not a lot of data on that yet.
Speaker 1: There's some data suggesting that meditators don't allocate as many
Speaker 1: resources to each object as they arise in time and space,
Speaker 1: so that when two objects come close to each other
Speaker 1: in time, that you can pay attention to both of
Speaker 1: them with an equal amount of resources. And in many
Speaker 1: people with anxiety or AHD, if the two objects come
Speaker 1: too quickly in time, too quickly, you may not even
Speaker 1: see the second object because you're stuck on the first one, right,
Speaker 1: So all your resources are dedicated to that, and that's
Speaker 1: one of the benefits we see in mindfulness is that
Speaker 1: your resources are allocated efficiently, that when you're paying attention
Speaker 1: in the present moment, there is less resources allocated to
Speaker 1: any other processes. So we're just learning how to better
Speaker 1: target those processes and measure those as outcomes right now.
Speaker 1: I think that's where many of the limitations are is
Speaker 1: just being creative about the assays that we have to
Speaker 1: measure these outcomes and identifying what are the mechanisms by
Speaker 1: which these practicism are practices are actually showing benefit. Right.
Speaker 1: So I've mentioned a few stability of attention, inhibition and
Speaker 1: control of attention, regulation of attention or emotion. Right, these
Speaker 1: are really important aspects of human cognition that we think
Speaker 1: mindfuluance can benefit. So benefit for what like creativity seems
Speaker 1: to involve, because I've studied the science of creativity and
Speaker 1: we find it's the exact opposite of what you just mentioned.
Speaker 1: It's actually lowering your prefont to cortex gates. That is
Speaker 1: a really important points, especially because one of the take
Speaker 1: home messages you find often in the literature is that
Speaker 1: mindflus is good for decreasing mind wandering. I love mind
Speaker 1: to wandering, I love daydreaming. There, this is great. You're
Speaker 1: a good, good person to talk to about this, because indeed,
Speaker 1: mind wandering is important for a creative incubation of ideas, right,
Speaker 1: for setting goals, for just you know, reminiscing. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of really beautiful things about mind wandering. In fact,
Speaker 1: our mind is made to wander, it's made to evaluate
Speaker 1: the world. But where it gets us into trouble is
Speaker 1: when we have ongoing task demands to do something else.
Speaker 1: And so the way that we deal with This conflict
Speaker 1: is what's referred to. Jonathan Smallwood and Jessica Anders Hannah
Speaker 1: are two researchers that focus a lot on their Yeah
Speaker 1: they're great, and they coin this theory called the context
Speaker 1: regulation hypothesis. Essentially, what are the costs and benefit of
Speaker 1: self generated thought or mind monitoring? The costs and benefits
Speaker 1: are context dependent. So if you're doing mind wandering under
Speaker 1: conditions that demand continuous attention, like you know, you're trying
Speaker 1: to do your emails or write a paper, but you
Speaker 1: keep getting you keep distracted by your Twitter feed, that's
Speaker 1: unproductive because it's a source of error, or you're not
Speaker 1: doing what you intend to do. If you are doing
Speaker 1: it under non demanding situations like laying your bed, sitting
Speaker 1: on a cushion at a stop light, in your car,
Speaker 1: in line at the grocery store, whatever it is, it
Speaker 1: could be beneficial because it's associated with this creativity or control,
Speaker 1: so on and so forth. So you can what we see,
Speaker 1: and this is where I think if you look at
Speaker 1: the granularity of the of the data, you'll notice the
Speaker 1: mindfulness doesn't increase your ability to or decrease your ability
Speaker 1: to mind wander, or decrease your frequency of mind wandering,
Speaker 1: which you may actually do that, but what it's really
Speaker 1: good at doing is allowing you to flexibly switch between
Speaker 1: the mind wandering state and what's happening around you externally
Speaker 1: or internally. Flexible attention, yeah, flexible attention, and rapid toggling
Speaker 1: between what's happening in the world what's relevant, and what's
Speaker 1: going on inside you and what's relevant, So really switching
Speaker 1: having access to all different aspects of your cognition, that
Speaker 1: ongoing cognition. So like, yeah, I agree that, I agree
Speaker 1: that that's important, and I like that framing. But when
Speaker 1: I read some writings on this topic, like cabit Zen's
Speaker 1: book Trully Catastrophic Living or whatever it's called, something like that, fully, yeah,
Speaker 1: something like that. When I read that book, he kind
Speaker 1: of full catastrophe living, right, He kind of makes it
Speaker 1: sound the height of mindfulness is like when your default
Speaker 1: mode network is silent. And that seems like a different
Speaker 1: narrative than the narrative you're telling me, which the one
Speaker 1: you're telling me now is like more integrative with my
Speaker 1: own research on creativity, and it makes a lot of sense.
Speaker 1: But I see another narrative of mindfulness out there, and
Speaker 1: even of like LSD like when Paulin wrote his book,
Speaker 1: he has a whole chapter on how like the height
Speaker 1: of his existence was when his default mode network was
Speaker 1: not existent anymore. And I'm like, no, that's a problem,
Speaker 1: because i love the default mode network. Thank you, yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you. This is a very problematic narrative. You agree,
Speaker 1: it's problematic. Yes, good. In fact, I'm my pet peece
Speaker 1: so it is a pet peep of mind as well,
Speaker 1: and it makes me excited because this is the most
Speaker 1: some of the most interesting areas for you know, getting
Speaker 1: into the gri annularity of what mindfulness is doing. What
Speaker 1: is it when you sit with your eyes closed in
Speaker 1: silence happens in your mind? And you have to then
Speaker 1: go back between the Buddhist model and the contemporary model,
Speaker 1: because the Buddhist model provides a lot of insight into
Speaker 1: not only what you're supposed to be doing, but what
Speaker 1: you may notice may change or transform as a result
Speaker 1: of practice. And what you have to keep in mind
Speaker 1: is that although John Cavit's in he says that he
Speaker 1: describes mindfulness as paying attention in the present moment, non judgmentally.
Speaker 1: When he says non judgmenttally, he really refers to this
Speaker 1: sort of being stuck in the mind wandering evaluative self
Speaker 1: state where you are continually reflective of self processing, ruminative,
Speaker 1: so on and so forth. These are not necessarily negative,
Speaker 1: and they can be positive too, but they're more often
Speaker 1: negatively oriented and they're tent of thoughts. So what we
Speaker 1: really want to know in the meditative mind is, like
Speaker 1: I said before, how much of the time is spent
Speaker 1: in default mode or mind monitoring state versus focused attention.
Speaker 1: And even from the Buddhist model, the evaluative aspects of
Speaker 1: cognition are emphasized in by describing a process called discernment.
Speaker 1: So you often see meditation teachers talk about a non
Speaker 1: evaluation or non judgment They say, pay attention to the
Speaker 1: present moment, non judgmentally. But then in the same breath
Speaker 1: they'll say, now be discerning of what is happening in
Speaker 1: your body. So I'm supposed to be non judgmental or discerning?
Speaker 1: Which one is it? Because discerning implies the valuation. So
Speaker 1: this is just semantic problem and we are I think
Speaker 1: the Crossroads of John Capisen calls an inflection point for
Speaker 1: the human species. That's how he describes it. But I
Speaker 1: see it as a moment in time where the neurosciences
Speaker 1: of mind are being informed by this whole mindfulness movement.
Speaker 1: We're learning about what it means to just have a
Speaker 1: resting mind, what does a resting mind look like? And
Speaker 1: indeed there are benefits of mind wanting for creative incubation
Speaker 1: of ideas, But then there are negative outcomes. If your
Speaker 1: thoughts are all negative about yourself and your worldview, if
Speaker 1: there's tons of fear or anxiety, that's not good. So
Speaker 1: we have to properly contextualize it and realize that judgment
Speaker 1: and valuation is helpful for creative incubation, for a goal setting,
Speaker 1: also for determining appropriate behaviors. Right, what is the appropriate
Speaker 1: decision to make in this context? And that has to
Speaker 1: happen rapidly. So we think, at least theoretically, that mindfulness
Speaker 1: is allowing us to develop well what's sometimes described as wisdom. Right,
Speaker 1: So what is wisdom? It's the ability to choose the
Speaker 1: appropriate thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that are going to be
Speaker 1: adaptive and help you flourish as a human being. So
Speaker 1: that's where we're at, and I think we're learning really
Speaker 1: beautiful things about mind in general, as it sits in
Speaker 1: contemplation and in silence, whether you're a novice practitioner or
Speaker 1: an advanced practitioner. We are doing the research right now
Speaker 1: that will illuminate what is happening in the mind of
Speaker 1: a meditator as they advance from a novice to an
Speaker 1: advanced practitioner. Well, I can't wait to hear what you find. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: what are some of the main challenges for investigating mindfulness
Speaker 1: through neuroscience or the field can templative neuroscience? You know,
Speaker 1: looking at pretty pictures of brain scans that are just
Speaker 1: averages over many, many people. Is that really elucidating? You know,
Speaker 1: I like playing Devil's advocate. By the way, I hope
Speaker 1: you realize that. Yeah, it's great. In fact, if you
Speaker 1: want to play Devil's advocate, you can talk about people
Speaker 1: who in the field who are pushing back against mindfulness
Speaker 1: and saying, you know, what is this really good for?
Speaker 1: Is it good for anything? You know? There are certainly limitations,
Speaker 1: and you mentioned one. You know. Construct validity is an
Speaker 1: important thing in psychological research. If you are studying a construct,
Speaker 1: whether it's cardiovaster disease, awareness or mindfulness, you need to
Speaker 1: have an operational definition that's consistent and can be not
Speaker 1: only defined but measured, So operationalizing these constructs are a
Speaker 1: challenge from any level of analysis, whether it's psychological in nature,
Speaker 1: which usually is self report measures, or it is or
Speaker 1: it's defined by the objective means by which we observe
Speaker 1: the phenomenon. So we can observe mindfulness as a state
Speaker 1: paying attention to the present moment and what that looks
Speaker 1: like using neuroimaging tools, and like you said, you know,
Speaker 1: seeing blobs on a screen on a picture of a
Speaker 1: beautiful brain may look pretty, but for a neuroscientist we
Speaker 1: realize that it's a bit of a black box. A
Speaker 1: lot of its reverse inference, meaning we're using a reverse
Speaker 1: logic to understand function by looking at changes in chemodynamic
Speaker 1: magnetic properties of the blood really mean for brain activity
Speaker 1: and function, because all brain activity, of course is electrical
Speaker 1: and chemical, and we're measuring changes in magnetic properties of
Speaker 1: blood up as our way to create these blobs of
Speaker 1: fMRI analysis. And just you know, no, two signals of
Speaker 1: form uri are often the same. Do the same task,
Speaker 1: same person in the same day in different MRI scanners,
Speaker 1: and you may get totally different activation patterns depending on
Speaker 1: what they're actually doing. But paying attention mindfully is a
Speaker 1: very complicated construct, So there are it takes a lot
Speaker 1: of iterations, a lot of trials to figure out exactly
Speaker 1: what brain areas are going to be consistently activated for
Speaker 1: particular styles of practice. And like you're alluding to, neuroscience
Speaker 1: is lumping. Just like everything or all the other modalities
Speaker 1: of science. We lump. We take all data, we put
Speaker 1: them into one group, and we look at mean averages, right,
Speaker 1: so we know that there is outliers, we know that
Speaker 1: there are individual differences, and until we start improving our
Speaker 1: methods to focus on individual differences, we're going to have
Speaker 1: a problem and scalability, Like how do we better understand
Speaker 1: what's happening in each individual's brain if we're just always
Speaker 1: regressing to the mean, And that's not going to be
Speaker 1: very informative. So there's definitely a lot of improvement in
Speaker 1: methodology from neuroscience point of view, and in MINDFULSS research
Speaker 1: that I look forward to just seeing emerge. I love that.
Speaker 1: And mindfulness is not the be all and end all
Speaker 1: of everything, right, so it's also not the only source
Speaker 1: of wisdom. You know what I mean, just trial and error,
Speaker 1: like brute trial and error, Like, yeah, the whole toolbox
Speaker 1: of wisdom doesn't just start an end with mindfulness, right, Well,
Speaker 1: I mean I would say that that mindfulness is one
Speaker 1: tool in the toolbox, right, thank you. There are other
Speaker 1: tools you can use constructively to better understand one's mind
Speaker 1: and to draw wisdom. Right. So, and I do think
Speaker 1: you know, like arist all, the contemplation is a strong skill,
Speaker 1: a strong tool to use to not only achieve wisdom,
Speaker 1: which we can debate what wisdom is, but also to,
Speaker 1: like we said in the beginning, get a better insight
Speaker 1: into the nature of mind. What is your mind? Where
Speaker 1: does it go? And having that awareness is liberative in
Speaker 1: its own sense. Right, You're you're liberating your own self
Speaker 1: because you're you're no longer just an automaton. You're doing
Speaker 1: you're not just doing things. You're actually aware of your
Speaker 1: own thoughts and emotions and behaviors. And and we say
Speaker 1: always awareness is it is half the battle? Right g I, Joe,
Speaker 1: did you just say that I think the knowings half
Speaker 1: the battle? Right? I love that. Okay, I'm gonna ask
Speaker 1: you one last question. Yeah, sure, So let's say that
Speaker 1: like someone who's listening to this who's been meditating for
Speaker 1: many years and it's had enormous benefits for them in
Speaker 1: their personal life. Listening to this podcast, they're like, you
Speaker 1: know what, I don't really care about the science, Like
Speaker 1: what do I care about the science? You know? Do
Speaker 1: I have to wait another twenty five years to see
Speaker 1: what a study comes out whether or not I should
Speaker 1: keep meditating? You know? What do you kind of say
Speaker 1: to that kind of thing, like how do you defend
Speaker 1: doing the research you do? I mean, well, I mean
Speaker 1: I tell people, if you're not achieving benefit, if you're
Speaker 1: not feeling any benefits, then don't do it. It's that simple.
Speaker 1: You know, you want to feel that you're getting better,
Speaker 1: and sometimes you know, it's a matter of effort rather
Speaker 1: than effort and patience because the effects are accumulative or cumulative,
Speaker 1: so they may take time, but you have to practice.
Speaker 1: And that's often, you know, not in the repertoire of
Speaker 1: American cultures to practice anything. They just want quick fix,
Speaker 1: give me, Oh, I want transcendence. So to those people,
Speaker 1: I'll say, there are technologies that are being developed to
Speaker 1: stimulate your rain, not invasively, so you can maybe achieve
Speaker 1: some of the benefits without having to practice, So that
Speaker 1: may happen, and there may be some pharmacological influences cebety
Speaker 1: oil exactly. There you go. You know we're learning. I
Speaker 1: think you know whether even indogenous cannabinoids may be involved
Speaker 1: and say, for example, moderating pain. So mindfluss may actually
Speaker 1: be activating through or functioning through a mediator, meaning it's
Speaker 1: moving through a secondary factor, which could be CBD or endocannabinoids.
Speaker 1: So you have naturally occurring cannabinoids in your brain without
Speaker 1: ever having smoke pot in your lifetime, right, so those
Speaker 1: cannabinoids are definitely involved in anxiety and modulation of pain.
Speaker 1: We don't know its relationship to mindfulness. There are some
Speaker 1: preliminary studies suggesting there's a relationship between mindflus and canabinoids.
Speaker 1: So it wouldn't surprise me if you know, in six
Speaker 1: months we see the next paper that says, you know,
Speaker 1: add your CBD to your mindfless practice and your you
Speaker 1: know pain will go down further. So do you think
Speaker 1: the science is important then? To help point us in
Speaker 1: the direction I'm trying to answer the question for you,
Speaker 1: I'm saying, what is the points here? So I do
Speaker 1: think that we are early days, right, and the science
Speaker 1: for our culture. You know, science produces evidence based medicine.
Speaker 1: If you're a Buddhist practitioner, you don't need science. Do
Speaker 1: your Buddhism, do your spiritual path. Devotion in your Guru
Speaker 1: is enough. But for those people who go to your
Speaker 1: doctor and say, I'm distracted, I have stress, I have
Speaker 1: pain and anxiety, what do I do? The research is
Speaker 1: helping to identify which practices are going to function best
Speaker 1: for which type of individual. We're going to optimize the
Speaker 1: delivery of those practices. So you now get your mindfleness
Speaker 1: in a group an eight week class. You can get
Speaker 1: it in an app, so a mobile app like insight
Speaker 1: time or ten percent Happier Calm. You know, all these
Speaker 1: different apps are out there. We don't know if they're
Speaker 1: as effective as the eight week course group course one
Speaker 1: on one mindfulness. We don't know. We're doing a study
Speaker 1: right now looking at how one on one mindfulness for
Speaker 1: chronic low back pain may be effective or not versus
Speaker 1: spinal manipulation therapy, which is another Yeah that sounds painful, right,
Speaker 1: but for some people that may be better, and we
Speaker 1: don't know that, So we want to figure that out.
Speaker 1: So I think what we're size is good for is
Speaker 1: eminis based medicine. We're learning how to identify the mechanism
Speaker 1: by which these practices function, improve the rigor in which
Speaker 1: we understand how mindfless works, may it it more individualized
Speaker 1: in the approach, and to optimize how it's delivered to
Speaker 1: treat very select populations. Beautiful. Thank you so much, David
Speaker 1: for taking such a messy field and making it more coherent,
Speaker 1: and also taking all of the hype and helping us
Speaker 1: mind the miightenfulness hype a bit more so. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much. It's my pleasure to talk to you today, Scott,
Speaker 1: and I hope if anyone has any questions, it could
Speaker 1: always reach me at Contemplative Neurosciences dot com. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of resources there. Thank you, David. That's great. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening to the Psychology Podcast. I hope you enjoyed
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