Post by Obtuse1 on Sept 5, 2015 12:11:40 GMT -5
I like to take notes when I read something, to help this aging memory along. So, here's a copy of my notes, edited to include a few points of review for you, sharing what I got out of the book:
The Emotional Life of Your Brain: How its unique patterns affect the way you think,feel and live -- and how you can change them.
Richard J.Davidson, PhD, w/Sharon Begley, Plume Press(Penguin)2013
Richard Davidson (he goes by "Richie" these days) is a colleague of John Kabat-Zinn, the originator of MBSR. Davidson is a lifelong meditator and a neuroscientist who has been researching emotions and the brain for over 30 years. This book is a fascinating review of his findings over the years about the emotions and the functions and structure of the brain. Not only does he tell the story of his research in the early days with very primitive technology -- and resistance to the premise of his studies-- but he talks about the most recent developments using the latest technology (fMRI, functional MRI) which can tell us so much about how the brain works in real time.
Here are some of the key points which I got from Dr. Richardsons book:
1. One brain does not fit all – – just as we all have unique fingerprints etc. his research has shown that we humans have different ways of responding to the events in our lives, everything from death to first love to work stress. The same stressor event can break one person, and empower another one, depending on their innate emotional style imprint.
He has found that there are what he calls Emotional Styles which are unique to each individual. Importantly, he says that his concept of Emotional Style is not just a theoretical idea or construct, but that these styles are hardwired into our neural circuitry. He also says that there are things that we can do to change and alter our emotional styles, that the brain has neuroplasticity (it can change and grow at any age, even after traumatic damage to the brain itself) and this is covered near the end of the book.
2. The six dimensions of emotional style according to Richardson are:
Your resilience style
Your outlook style
Your social intuition style
Your self-awareness style
Your sensitivity to context style
Your attention style
He then goes on to elaborate on his findings and thoughts on all these elements of emotional style.
The scientific piece which struck me the most is that there are two areas on the brain, one associated with positive and resilient emotions (the left prefrontal cortex), whereas the other location is where depressed and less effective coping activities take place (right prefrontal cortex)
3. Meditation meets science:
You may have heard of the research done on Tibetan monks and others who have been lifelong contemplative meditators. In the latter part of this book he describes his experience doing this research on meditation. He actually went to Tibet and also brought some lifelong meditators to his university setting where he did research on what their brains did while they were meditating. If you're interested in the details of this you would like this book.
There are numerous examples in this book of how MBSR (mindfulness-based stress reduction) brings about actual changes in the brain. There is substantial validation in this work of the effectiveness of mindful meditation.
I am quoting below his summary of his studies of long-term meditators as well as the effects of a relatively short course of meditation, which have shown(p224):
• Mindfulness-based stress reduction enhances left prefrontal activation; this is a marker of the fast-to-recover end of the resilience continuum and is associated with greater resilience following a stressful challenge.
• A more intensive period of mindfulness meditation improves selective attention and reduces the attentional blink, moving people toward the focused end of the attention continuum. In both cases, mindfulness strengthens prefrontal regulation of brain networks involved in attention, in part by strengthening the connections between the prefrontal cortex and other brain regions that are important for attention.
• Compassion meditation can nudge you toward the positive end of the Outlook dimension; it strengthens connections between the prefrontal cortex and other brain regions important for empathy.
• Compassion meditation also likely facilitates social intuition.
• While you might expect most forms of meditation to nurture self-awareness, at least the kind that makes you more to to bodily sensations such as heartbeat, we found that neither Tibetan forms of mindfulness meditation nor kundalini yoga forms of meditation were associated with better performance on a task that measures awareness of one's heart.
• Finally, we know very little about whether different forms of meditation impact sensitivity to context style; there is no systematic research on how well someone can modulate his emotional responses based on social context.
He closes the book with providing a chapter on exercises to change one's emotional style. A lot of this some of us are already doing but it's a nice presentation.
All in all, even though he covers a great deal of technical stuff, the book is very readable and his style is personable. The book is available on Amazon.com but also in the TIPCAT public library system of Delaware.
The Emotional Life of Your Brain: How its unique patterns affect the way you think,feel and live -- and how you can change them.
Richard J.Davidson, PhD, w/Sharon Begley, Plume Press(Penguin)2013
Richard Davidson (he goes by "Richie" these days) is a colleague of John Kabat-Zinn, the originator of MBSR. Davidson is a lifelong meditator and a neuroscientist who has been researching emotions and the brain for over 30 years. This book is a fascinating review of his findings over the years about the emotions and the functions and structure of the brain. Not only does he tell the story of his research in the early days with very primitive technology -- and resistance to the premise of his studies-- but he talks about the most recent developments using the latest technology (fMRI, functional MRI) which can tell us so much about how the brain works in real time.
Here are some of the key points which I got from Dr. Richardsons book:
1. One brain does not fit all – – just as we all have unique fingerprints etc. his research has shown that we humans have different ways of responding to the events in our lives, everything from death to first love to work stress. The same stressor event can break one person, and empower another one, depending on their innate emotional style imprint.
He has found that there are what he calls Emotional Styles which are unique to each individual. Importantly, he says that his concept of Emotional Style is not just a theoretical idea or construct, but that these styles are hardwired into our neural circuitry. He also says that there are things that we can do to change and alter our emotional styles, that the brain has neuroplasticity (it can change and grow at any age, even after traumatic damage to the brain itself) and this is covered near the end of the book.
2. The six dimensions of emotional style according to Richardson are:
Your resilience style
Your outlook style
Your social intuition style
Your self-awareness style
Your sensitivity to context style
Your attention style
He then goes on to elaborate on his findings and thoughts on all these elements of emotional style.
The scientific piece which struck me the most is that there are two areas on the brain, one associated with positive and resilient emotions (the left prefrontal cortex), whereas the other location is where depressed and less effective coping activities take place (right prefrontal cortex)
3. Meditation meets science:
You may have heard of the research done on Tibetan monks and others who have been lifelong contemplative meditators. In the latter part of this book he describes his experience doing this research on meditation. He actually went to Tibet and also brought some lifelong meditators to his university setting where he did research on what their brains did while they were meditating. If you're interested in the details of this you would like this book.
There are numerous examples in this book of how MBSR (mindfulness-based stress reduction) brings about actual changes in the brain. There is substantial validation in this work of the effectiveness of mindful meditation.
I am quoting below his summary of his studies of long-term meditators as well as the effects of a relatively short course of meditation, which have shown(p224):
• Mindfulness-based stress reduction enhances left prefrontal activation; this is a marker of the fast-to-recover end of the resilience continuum and is associated with greater resilience following a stressful challenge.
• A more intensive period of mindfulness meditation improves selective attention and reduces the attentional blink, moving people toward the focused end of the attention continuum. In both cases, mindfulness strengthens prefrontal regulation of brain networks involved in attention, in part by strengthening the connections between the prefrontal cortex and other brain regions that are important for attention.
• Compassion meditation can nudge you toward the positive end of the Outlook dimension; it strengthens connections between the prefrontal cortex and other brain regions important for empathy.
• Compassion meditation also likely facilitates social intuition.
• While you might expect most forms of meditation to nurture self-awareness, at least the kind that makes you more to to bodily sensations such as heartbeat, we found that neither Tibetan forms of mindfulness meditation nor kundalini yoga forms of meditation were associated with better performance on a task that measures awareness of one's heart.
• Finally, we know very little about whether different forms of meditation impact sensitivity to context style; there is no systematic research on how well someone can modulate his emotional responses based on social context.
He closes the book with providing a chapter on exercises to change one's emotional style. A lot of this some of us are already doing but it's a nice presentation.
All in all, even though he covers a great deal of technical stuff, the book is very readable and his style is personable. The book is available on Amazon.com but also in the TIPCAT public library system of Delaware.