This project explores the role of meditation and contemplative practice as gateways to transformative experience. The research project is a longitudinal study of how an intensive meditation training retreat over three months affects development of positive human qualities, especially those qualities associated with love and compassion, and the psychological and physiological pathways involved. Meditation and contemplative practices, which are found in all the great religions and wisdom traditions, may be catalysts of transformation. To advance our understanding of human transformation, the Fetzer Institute is supporting scientific research on the transformative potential of meditative practice to increase our human capacity to experience and express compassion and loving-kindness.

Many Eastern cultures have recognized the need for inner development and the training that is required. While these traditional techniques are not the only way to cultivate a capacity for love and compassion, they may offer some unique scientific opportunities to study human inner development that enhances our ability to love and forgive. Shamatha, a Buddhist meditation technique for developing extraordinary levels of attention and focus, has been practiced for more than two millennia. Buddhist teachings provide detailed protocols for learning and attaining shamatha. Attaining shamatha has traditionally been considered a prerequisite for learning to regulate emotions and for developing qualities of compassion and loving-kindness.

Examining traditional meditative techniques is one way of studying the development of inner capacities that enhance our ability to express love and compassion. The approaches used in this study include meditation training that fosters attentional vividness and stability, as well as compassion, loving-kindness, empathetic joy, and equanimity. The expected benefits include greater attentional control and increased ability to regulate emotions and apply pro-social values. The Shamatha Project explores whether well-developed attention is useful in controlling the thought processes that evoke “afflictive” emotions and are antithetical to expressing love and compassion. Buddhists refer to the benefits of attentional development in cultivating “the four immeasurables” or “qualities of the heart”:

• Loving-kindness: to arouse a heartfelt yearning that one’s self and others may experience genuine happiness and its causes, thereby replacing resentment and hatred with a spirit of forgiveness
• Compassion: to arouse a heartfelt yearning that one’s self and others may be free of suffering and its causes, which acts as an antidote for apathy and aloof indifference
• Empathetic joy: to arouse heartfelt delight in one’s own and others’ successes, joys, and virtues, thereby overcoming any inclination to envy
• Equanimity: to arouse an impartial sense of caring for all beings, regardless of their closeness to or distance from one’s own life.

• Investigate how shamatha training influences attentional performance and socioemotional skills
• Identify the neural correlates of training-related changes in attentional and socioemotional abilities
• Characterize and quantify the relationship between improvements in attention, emotion regulation, and prosocial attitudes and decisions such as love and compassion

Research Hypothesis

The research hypothesis was that three months of shamatha training, combined with cultivation of the four "qualities of the heart," would result in improved attentional performance (vigilance, selectivity, and metacognitive control), as well as greater compassion, security, and ability to diminish the impact and duration of negative emotions. The large amount of data generated from this study is currently being analyzed.

The Shamatha Project followed trainees in two three-month, full-time meditation retreats conducted at the Shambhala Mountain Center in Colorado. During the first retreat, the research team studied the trainees and a matched, randomized wait-list control group, which then become full-time participants in the second retreat. This allowed them to ascertain the effects of meditation training on attention, emotion regulation, stress-related hormones, and immune system factors. The trainees and controls were assessed throughout the first retreat with field laboratory studies of attentional vigilance, stability, and freedom from distraction, as well as tests of emotional reactions and voluntary control of emotions. Trainees kept systematic daily diaries of moods and personal insights and experiences, which were then studied in tandem with data from the quantitative, objective measurements. Trainees' brain activity was examined using 96-channel surface electroencephalography, and changes in autonomic nervous system activity were assessed with measures of heart rate, skin conductance, and respiration. Trainees' emotions were assessed with self-report measures, performance on emotion-regulation tasks, and monitoring of physiological and behavioral variables. Attitudes and social reasoning tendencies were explored with tests of community problem solving.

Leading authorities in social, emotional, and cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and meditative practice are assessing the trainees.

B. Alan Wallace, PhD
Contemplative Director-Shamatha Project

Dr. Wallace, president of the Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies, combines an extensive background in contemplative practice with equally rigorous academic and scientific training. From 1971 to 1984 he immersed himself in Tibetan Buddhist studies, first in Dharamsala, India, and then in Switzerland under the tutelage of the eminent scholar Geshe Rabten. He then received a BA in physics and the philosophy of science at Amherst College, followed by a PhD in religious studies at Stanford University.

From 1997 to 2001 Dr. Wallace taught in the Department of Religious Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, where his classes focused on Tibetan Buddhist studies and the interface between science and religion. He is the author of many books, including The Attention Revolution: Unlocking the Power of the Focused Mind, as well as numerous scholarly articles.

Dr. Saron is currently an assistant research scientist at the Center for Mind and Brain at the University of California, Davis. He received his PhD in neuroscience from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1999. In the early 1990s he was centrally involved in a field research project investigating Tibetan Buddhist mind training in collaboration with Jose Cabezón, Richard Davidson, Francisco Varela, Alan Wallace, and others under the auspices of the Private Office of H.H. the Dalai Lama and the Mind and Life Institute (Houshmand et al., 2001). Another current research focus concerns elucidating multisensory processing deficits in children on the autistic spectrum using behavioral and electrophysiological techniques. As principal investigator of the Shamatha Project, Dr. Saron serves as the overall scientific and technical manager. He is primarily responsible for overseeing the electrophysiological data analyses, supervises the project research staff (including on-site supervision during data collection), and coordinates all aspects of the project.

Jennifer Beer, PhD (University of California, Davis)
Cameron Carter, MD (University of California, Davis)
Emilio Ferrer, PhD (University of California, Davis)
Barry Giesbrecht, PhD (University of California, Santa Barbara)
Ron Mangun, PhD (University of California, Davis)
Clifford Saron, PhD (University of California, Davis)
Phil Shaver, PhD (University of California, Davis)
B. Alan Wallace, PhD (Santa Barbara Institute for Consciousness Studies)
Ewa Wojciulik, PhD (University of California, Davis)

Consulting Scientists

Beth Adelson, PhD (Rutgers)
Ruth Baer, PhD (University of Kentucky)
Richard Davidson, PhD (University of Wisconsin, Madison)
Mingzhou Ding, PhD (University of Florida, Gainesville)
Paul Ekman, PhD (University of California, San Francisco)
Elissa Epel, PhD (University of California, San Francisco)
Paul Grossman, PhD (University of Basel Hospital)
Amishi Jha, PhD (University of Pennsylvania)
Allen Kanner, PhD (Clinical Psychologist)
Margaret Kemeny, PhD (University of California, San Francisco)
Antoine Lutz, PhD (University of Wisconsin, Madison)
Matthieu Ricard, PhD (Sechen Monastery, Nepal)
Erika Rosenberg, PhD (University of California, Davis; Nyingma Institute)
Ewa Wojciulik, PhD (University of California, Davis)
Owen Wolkowitz, MD (University of California, San Francisco)

Research Associates

Stephen Aichele (research assistant)
David Bridwell (research assistant)
Tonya Jacobs, PhD (attention post-doc)
Allen Kanner, PhD
Shiri Lavy, PhD
Katherine MacLean (graduate student)
Baljinder Sahdra, PhD
Clifford Saron, PhD (principal investigator)
Gina Sutin, PhD
Tony Zenesco (undergraduate research assistant)

Other Investigators at University of California, Davis

Emilio Ferrer, PhD (Psychology)
G. Ron Mangun, PhD (Psychology, Neurology)
Erika Rosenberg, PhD (Center for Mind and Brain)
Phil Shaver, PhD (Psychology)
Karen Bales, PhD (Psychology)

Staff Researchers at University of California, Davis, Center for Mind and Brain

Stephen Aichele, BA (2006-2008)
David Bridwell, BA (2006-2007)
Brandon King, BA
Tony Zanesco, BA

Trainees at University of California, Davis

Stephen Aichele, BA (Graduate Student in Psychology)
Tonya Jacobs, PhD (Post-doctoral Fellow, Center for Mind and Brain)
Shiri Lavy, PhD (Post-doctoral Fellow, Center for Mind and Brain 2007)
Katherine Maclean, MA (Graduate Student in Psychology)
Baljinder Sahdra, PhD (Post-doctoral Fellow, Center for Mind and Brain)

Other Trainees

Manish Saggar, MA (Graduate Student in Computer Science, University of Texas, Austin)
Jocelyn Sy, MA (Graduate Student in Psychology, University of California, Santa Barbara)

Other Investigators and Consulting Scientists (since project inception)

Beth Adelson, PhD (Rutgers University)
Ruth Baer, PhD (University of Kentucky)
Susan Bauer-Wu, PhD (Emory University)
Liz Blackburn, PhD (University of California, San Francisco)
Richard Davidson, PhD (University of Wisconsin, Madison)
Mingzhou Ding, PhD (University of Florida, Gainesville)
Firdaus Dhabhar, PhD (Stanford University)
Paul Ekman, PhD (University of California, San Francisco)
Elissa Epel, (University of California, San Francisco)
Paul Grossman, PhD (University Basel Hospital, Switzerland)
Barry Giesbrecht, PhD (University of California, Santa Barbara)
Amishi Jha, PhD (University of Pennsylvania)
Jue Lin, PhD (University of California, San Francisco)
Margaret Kemeny, PhD (University of California, San Francisco)
Antoine Lutz, PhD (University of Wisconsin, Madison)
Gregory Miller, PhD (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign)
Charles Raison, PhD (Emory University)
Matthieu Ricard, PhD (Sechen Monastery, Nepal)
Jonathan Schooler, PhD (University of California, Santa Barbara)
Jonathan Smallwood, PhD (University of California, Santa Barbara)
Akaysha Tang, PhD (University of New Mexico)
Ewa Wojciulik, PhD (formerly University of California, Davis)
Owen Wolkowitz, MD (University of California, San Francisco)

Brief Summaries of Shamatha Project

Preliminary Results
Provided by Dr. Cliff Saron, University of California Davis

Self-reported Psychological Variables

To assess whether meditation changed participants' self-reported adaptive functioning, we employed several well-validated measures from the disciplines of personality, social, and clinical psychology. Retreat and control participants completed identical questionnaire packets at the beginning and end of the retreat periods. (We studied two 3-month retreats.) The questionnaires measured the following adaptive traits or qualities: mindfulness, ego resiliency, empathy, agreeableness, openness to experience, conscientiousness, and psychological well-being. They also measured the following maladaptive traits or qualities: attachment-related avoidance and anxiety, depression, general anxiety, neuroticism, and difficulties in emotional regulation. We hypothesized that the retreat participants would improve by increasing their scores on the measure of adaptation and decreasing their scores on the measures of maladaptation; over the same time period, we expected the control participants not to change.

Participants' scores on the measures tended to be correlated both before and after the retreat period, indicating that the measures were capturing a common latent contruct that we call "adaptive functioning." Appropriate statistical analyses confirmed that we could represent this latent construct well with a weighted combination of the primary measures. When this construct was tested for differential change over time in the retreat and control groups, we found that retreat participants who were not different from the control participants did not. This resulted in the retreat group reporting better adaptive functioning than the control group at the end of the retreat period. In a second 3-month study, the former control group entered their own retreat, and they then improved in adaptive functioning in a way similar to the previous retreat group.

These results indicate that intensive meditation training enhanced participants' mindfulness, ego resiliency, empathy, agreeableness, openness to experience, conscientiousness, and psychological well-being while reducing their attachment-related avoidance, general anxiety and neuroticism, and their difficulties in regulating emotions. Further data analyses will determine whether these self-reported improvements covary with objective indicators of attention and health-related physiology.

To assess whether meditation training led to fairly general improvements in attentional skills, we examined behavioral performance on computer-based tests of visual perception and concentration. Before, during, and after three months of meditation training, participants completed two related tasks designed to measure sustained attention and attentional control over long periods of time: (1) a traditional sustained attention task that required button responses to rare events (a short "target" line appearing 10% of the time in a sequence of long "non-target" lines), and (2) a response inhibition task that required button responses to all long lines but the withholding of button responses to rare short lines. In both tasks, we equated task difficulty across individuals by setting a particular length of the target line for each individual at each testing point such that they could only detect differences between long and short lines about 75% of the time. This was done with a visual threshold procedure that measured how well participants could detect small differences in the lengths of lines.

Previous research has shown that untrained adults are unable to perform sustained attention tasks for long periods of time, and performance gets worse with increasing time on task. On traditional sustained attention tasks, observers miss more targets over time, and on response inhibition tasks, observers make more accidental responses over time. We hypothesized that retreat participants would improve by detecting more short lines during the course of the sustained attention task, and make fewer accidental errors in the response inhibition task. We also hypothesized that better target detection would be related to how well retreat participants performed on the visual threshold task.

After three months of training, the first group of retreat participants showed improvement in visual threshold as compared to control participants, and the control participants did not improve. The improvement in visual threshold was maintained up to 5 months after the end of formal training, as tested in a follow-up assessment. However, we did not observe any changes in sustained attention or response inhibition in the first group. We hypothesized that changes in visual threshold masked changes in sustained attention performance, because retreat participants were performing a more difficult task by the end of training. To test this, we fixed the length of the target line at the beginning of testing in the second retreat.

Participants in the second retreat (the wait-list control participants from the first retreat) demonstrated the same improvement in visual threshold as the first retreat group, replicating our findings from the first retreat. In addition, participants with the most improvement in visual threshold showed the most improvement in target detection accuracy during the 30-minute sustained attention task. Participants also improved in response inhibition, with younger people benefiting the most from training. Further data analyses will determine the neurophysiological correlates of improvements in threshold, target detection accuracy, and response inhibition, and will reveal whether changes in these measures relate to improvements in self-reported adaptive function and other cognitive measure such as mind wandering during reading.

Anecdotally speaking, meditators report that intensive training in meditation enhances the ability to notice the contents of consciousness, including the nature of one's thoughts, the impulse to act, and one's emotions as they unfold in real time. For the scientist, the challenge is to capture such effects of meditation, should they occur.

We developed an experimental paradigm of the film viewing taskoto detect subtle changes in sensitivity to one's own emotional experience. We showed the participants brief film segments, culled from documentaries, depicting graphic scenes of human suffering. After viewing each film, participants viewed a storyboard of individual frames from the film, arranged sequentially. They used these pictures to help them remember when in the films they experienced changes in emotion; and for any from that represented a place in the film that elicited emotion, participants completed ratings on several different emotions, each represented by an emotion word. From these ratings we obtained profiles of momentary emotional experiences over the course of the film.

We are currently analyzing these data. We predict that meditators (the people in the retreat group) will be more accurate in knowing what emotions they experienced than control participants. We will evaluate accuracy in terms of congruence between the ratings of experience and the time-synched dynamic changes in objectively measured facial expressions of emotion. Specifically, we are predicting that the retreat group by virtue of the intensive training in monitoring their own experiencesowill achieve greater congruence between their self-reports and the more objective measures of facial expressions than the congruence demonstrated in the control group. We are engaged now in the time-intensive process of coding the facial expressions using FACS (the Facial Action Coding System), to allow a detailed frame-by-frame video analysis of observable changes in facial musculature. To our knowledge, no other study of short- or long-term meditation training has examined changes in spontaneous emotional experience.

We also expect training in compassion to reduce the intensity of emotions that cause people to pull back from others who are either suffering or doing things that are unappealing. Consistent with this prediction, preliminary analyses show that after viewing scenes of the Iraq war (in which American soldiers bragged about getting psyched up to shoot Iraqis by listening to heavy metal music), followed by images of suffering Iraqis (including children), the retreat group reported significantly less contempt than the control group.