In Dharma Lab’s first guided practice hour, Dr. Cortland Dahl and Dr. Richard Davidson took us from talking about wellbeing to actually practicing it. Drawing on the Healthy Minds framework of awareness, connection, insight, and purpose, shaped through years of research and practice connected with the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and Humin (formerly Healthy Minds Innovations), they led participants through four short practices designed to make each capacity directly experiential. The session explored a central idea running through their work: meditation is less about fixing ourselves than learning to recognize and cultivate qualities of wellbeing that are already present.

Keep Practicing — Upcoming Events

If you’d like to continue exploring these practices, the free Healthy Minds Program App offers guided practices and learning across awareness, connection, insight, and purpose, with Cortland Dahl, Richard Davidson, and other teachers.

Our next “Ask Me Anything”with Richie and Cort is live on Tuesday, August 25th, 8pm ET. Please send us questions in advance by replying to this email or dropping a comment.

We have an exciting lineup of guest speakers for a free online summit in November to explore the restless mind. More details to come, but check out initial info at the bottom of this email and registration details here. Please share widely!

Thank you for your support and we hope to see you at these future events.

—The Dharma Lab Team

November Online Free Summit

Watch on YouTube; Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

If these conversations are useful, please consider subscribing to our YouTube channel.

Reminder: We have a FREE 1-hour live practice session on Wed Aug 19th, 7pm CT with Richie and Cort discussing how different meditation practices map to the four pillars of well-being (Awareness, Connection, Insight, and Purpose). More details and register here!

Companion Flashcards

In This Episode:

00:00 Taking Back Control of Attention

01:21 Why Focus Feels So Hard

02:51 Are We More Distracted Than 50 Years Ago?

05:15 Why the Brain Is Wired for Distraction

09:03 How Our Attention Gets Hijacked

13:20 Why Surprise Captures the Brain

16:35 The Reinforcement Loop Behind Endless Scrolling

17:44 How Emotion Disrupts Self-Control

21:24 Rebuilding Control Over Attention

25:53 Attention as a Practice of Intention

29:46 Digital Hygiene: Designing Your Environment for Focus

Written transcript for those who prefer to read:

00:00 — Taking Back Control of Attention

Richie: Now we have basically ceded control to the forces around us, and it has led to a kind of impairment, a collective impairment in prefrontal function that we’re all suffering from. There are data to suggest that we are indeed more distracted today than we were 50 years ago. It’s not just a kind of subjective impression.

Cort: I would say if there’s one word that captures the heart of this as a practice, I would say intention. And simply being intentional about what’s going on with my attention. Just choose. Before your mind gets pulled somewhere, I just got an alert. I’m going to choose to do that. And I noticed the pull, but I’m going to actually ask myself, do I want to check this message right now? Or I just heard a sound. I’m going to actually choose. Do I want to keep my attention with what I’m doing? Or do I want to You know, turn and look to see what was happening over there, like actually just making a choice. Like you were saying, the reps, you can do a thousand of those a day easily.

01:21 — Why Focus Feels So Hard

Cort: Welcome everyone to another episode of Dharma Lab. I am Cortland Dahl, one of the co-hosts here, and of course I’m here with Dr. Richard Davidson. Richie, to all of us who know him well, one of the preeminent neuroscientists on the planet. And today we’re gonna discuss one of the most common problems that probably every human faces, which is how incredibly hard it is just to stay focused. Now, I must admit, maybe this is an embarrassing admission, given that I’m supposedly one of the experts who’s talking about this stuff. But there’s a lot of days where I’m sitting, getting stuff done, answering emails or focused on some project. And it’s just really hard to not get pulled in to other things. You know, I’m answering emails and suddenly I’m shopping online or I’m working on a report and then I’m checking my emails. It’s just it feels like There are so many things in our life that are just pulling us in a million different directions. And I thought today we could just answer two very simple questions. One, why is it so incredibly hard to stay focused? And two, what can we do about it given this chaotic world we’re living in? So maybe we can just I can just turn this over to you, Richie, and you can kick this off however you want to. But I’d love to hear specifically from a neuroscientific point of view at some point. But yeah, what does this spark for you?

Richie: Yeah, well, first it sparks familiarity.

02:51 — Are We More Distracted Than 50 Years Ago?

Richie: So, you know, I think that it’s true. I often say we’re all participants in a grand experiment for which none of us have provided our informed consent. And that’s, of course, referring to the exposure that we all have to this extraordinary amount of information through Our online activities through social media, all of that. And that’s a huge source of distraction. And so, you know, I think that one, I certainly think that it’s inevitably true that one major reason why people experience more distraction perhaps today than they did And there are data to suggest that we are indeed more distracted today than we were 50 years ago. It’s not just a kind of subjective impression, but inevitably I think it’s at least in part true that it’s because of our exposure to this information that is so readily available. So we’re clearly not going to change that. We don’t have the power To influence the tech companies to do the kind of regulation that might be needed. So, you know, we’re left, I think, with the inevitable conclusion that really the only thing we can change is our own minds. And so that, I think, is an important opportunity. And so here’s another case where the kind of, quote, And us being so distracted can also be the opening for real change and transformation. And in the language that you and I have used, Cort, in our book, Born to Flourish, and at other times in Dharma Lab, we can think of distraction itself as an affordance, distraction itself as a moment of awakening, if you will, because the moment we recognize we’re distracted, That’s a moment of awakening and can really be helpful in the process of changing your mind.

05:15 — Why the Brain Is Wired for Distraction

Cort: I’m curious about the neural mechanisms for why we are so easily distracted. I think the experience is, it’s like our attention is like a restless puppy that just gets excited and is rushing off after any bright, shiny object. It sees a squirrel on a tree outside and it’s banging itself against the window and then hears something in the kitchen and goes racing off. And it feels like that sometimes. I mean, it feels like that, you know, even for me having 35 years of meditation under my belt and done all these long retreats where I’m very specifically training my attention. And I feel like in some respects have, you know, have developed A strong attentional skill set, so to speak. And yet I still feel that when I’m in a meeting like this, I could be talking to you and then I see a notification on my computer or something happens in my environment. It seems like the mind and brain are just... Really wired actually for that to happen. I mean, it clearly, you know, happened spontaneously and effortlessly countless times every single hour. So what’s going on in the brain? I mean, is it as it seems that this is sort of how we’re wired? I imagine there’s evolutionary reasons why this is this is likely to be the case.

Richie: I think it is in part how we’re wired. We are wired to detect surprise, to detect discrepancies, to detect rare events, because those often are events that have more salience. For example, our Sensitivity to danger and to cues that may signal danger. Those are the kinds of things that are relatively rare, but they’re super important. So we want to be primed, if you will, to notice those. And the problem is that that machinery that evolution has provided us with can be harnessed or hijacked by all these other things around us. But I think I can pretty much guarantee based on everything we know that if you receive the identical information, say something surprised you that drew your attention, if that thing were repeated 10 times, by the 10th time, you’re no longer going to pay attention to it. And that process habituation is something we know very well. And so the masters of technology have very much figured out how to capture our attention. By providing us with, in many cases, more and more extreme examples of things that are of interest to us. And the increased extremity has all kinds of, I think, really unfortunate consequences. But one of them is that it will capture our attention. But it can also serve to further reinforce and reify certain kinds of extreme beliefs that we might have, which can of course be a key driver of divisiveness.

09:03 — How Our Attention Gets Hijacked

Cort: I wonder if we translate this into a very practical tool. I could see this understanding of the way the brain works, and especially the things that tend to capture our attention, the things that can be easily hijacked, as you said, for people who want to... If the objective is to keep people in your app as long as possible, if you imagine a lot of social media platforms these days, that’s what they want. The product is actually not what we’re doing. Actually, we are the product. It’s our attention that’s being sold. And so in a way, what they want, you know, they’re harvesting our attention in a way is what’s going on. And so they’re designing for that. And it’s an interesting question, you know, in the, you know, the way you’re framing it, because it’s sort of the question is, What loopholes in our brains are they exploiting so they can get more of our attention? And for me, having studied this and explored this myself, I can see understanding that actually is very empowering because now I know the game. I can see what they’re doing. You know, for example, if I’m on social media, I can actually see the way the algorithms work like, oh, if I watch that video a little longer, and I swipe past this other one, I know in a few in a moment or two, two or three videos later, I’m going to see something So maybe we could just zero in on that for a moment because it is, as I said, quite empowering. What are some of the things that are exploited? If you could give a little mini class, what would you look for so you can be conscious of it versus unconsciously, unwittingly pulled in by it? What would you look for, like the things that are going to capture your attention?

Richie: Yeah, so you’re asking what would we look for in the brain itself? Yeah,

Cort: what are the brain mechanisms that are being hijacked and how might we be conscious of what’s happening versus it just happening to us and we’re unconscious of it?

Richie: Yeah, that’s super important. So the hijacking of attention can happen in a number of different ways. One of the most fundamental ways in which it happens Is that there’s an interaction between the brainstem and specifically a part of the brainstem that is rich in norepinephrine and it’s called the locus cerulein. And it has projections that are very widespread to many different regions of the cortex. And basically what happens is that when something captures our attention, as opposed to us directing our attention to it voluntarily, but being captured unwillingly, if you will, or unintentionally. It just grabs our attention whether we like it or not. Right. What’s happening is that there is a transient increase in activation the locus coeruleus, which is this site rich in norepinephrine. And then there are these very widespread projections to the entire cortex. And so there’s a transient increase in cortical arousal that’s pretty broad, even if the The event that occurred, the stimulus was, say, just the sound. It would be broader than just the auditory part of the brain, just broader than just the auditory cortex. It would really be all over the brain. And this is the kind of thing that would capture our attention. But if it’s repeated, if the identical event is repeated a few times, It would show what we call habituation, where you would not respond to that. And so, you know, that’s one of the most basic mechanisms for attention capture is this kind of rare or surprising event.

13:20 — Why Surprise Captures the Brain

Cort: And so is sorry, just to to pause for a second there. If I’m uh building some new product and I want to harvest people’s attention and I come to you as one of the world’s leading experts in this area and I just say okay richie I want I want to hijack this exact neural loop that you just talked about like what are the best strategies like what could I design like what could I build into this new app or this new product whatever it is what would be the most effective ways to hijack this system surprise you kind of mentioned one is surprise something that’s Shocking or surprising or unexpected.

Richie: That sounds like that’s one of the... Yeah, and so to create that kind of unexpected burst, if you will, the most effective way of doing it is presenting a set of events which are all repetitive and very similar and then follow it by something totally novel and surprising. It’s the oddball. Yeah. And so there’s a very famous experimental paradigm in neuroscience and psychology called the mismatch negativity, which is a version of this. And basically what a mismatch negativity is, is if I present a series of tones of a certain pitch, and then it’s followed by a tone of a different pitch. So if we do something like this, Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, beep, boop, beep, beep. Your response to the boop would be totally, your brain would just automatically... Um, detect that and it would be, uh, and there’s a very well characterized signal in the brain that displays that. Um, and it’s, it’s very difficult, even I should say in long-term meditators, um, Although we do have some evidence to suggest that there are some alterations, but at least in moderate term meditators, this is so basic, it’s very hard to override. So it doesn’t change.

Cort: We still, no matter how much you’ve meditated, your mind still gets... Yeah, although there are,

Richie: you know, if I did it instead of with simple tones, if I did it with words, for example, where I presented words of a certain category like zebra, tiger, monkey, elephant, flower, rabbit. Where the discrepancy is semantic in that case and not the auditory features themselves, that’s much more likely to be something that can be overridden, if you will.

16:35 — The Reinforcement Loop Behind Endless Scrolling

Cort: So it seems like one of the takeaways, this is super interesting, and actually I can already see this in the endless swiping of social media, that if you’re advising, you would say, okay, what you don’t want to do is have too much repetition. You don’t want For example, if I watch a cat video and I watch the whole thing and the algorithm is like, okay, this guy clearly likes these cute cat videos. You don’t want to just show me 10 cat videos at that point because you’re just going to get habituation. What you want, and I think this is exactly what it does, is you want at random intervals, like maybe you have to swipe through five things to get a cat video and then you don’t see one for 10 videos and then it’s after two. It’s sort of unexpected and you get it, but you never know when you’re going to get it. Is that right? Like if you’re advising like that... I think this is actually how it is. If you pay attention, you’ll actually start seeing these patterns, especially in social media.

Richie: Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. And, you know, in the psychological literature, that’s called the variable interval reinforcement schedule. And, you know, that’s extremely addicting in terms of its attentional capture.

17:44 — How Emotion Disrupts Self-Control

Cort: And what about emotion? I mean, you talked about surprise, obviously. Another very interesting thing, again, I’m sort of fixating on social media here, but I think you could look at other forms of distraction as well. But it’s very interesting to look at What’s pulling attention in relationship to the emotions it provokes and the strength, both the kind of emotion and the valence, whether it feels more uplifting or a fear or more negative. What would you say about that? Again, if you’re our key neuroscientific wizard architecting how to distract us.

Richie: Yeah, I mean, certainly emotion and different kinds of emotion are going to be absolutely key in producing distraction. We know that emotion can disrupt the prefrontal cortex. And so the prefrontal cortex is the part of the brain that is a key zone for the central executive network, for the network that is guiding behavior.

Cort: So it’s the opposite of the hijacked. It’s the part that’s saying, here’s where I want to go and I’m going there.

Richie: Right, self-control. And emotions will disrupt the prefrontal cortex. And so there’s a continuous dance between the emotional centers of the brain and the prefrontal cortex. And there’s bi-directional communication. So there is communication about emotion from subcortical regions up to the prefrontal cortex. There’s also... Top-down influences from the prefrontal cortex to these subcortical emotional regions that can help regulate them. But this is actually the role of the prefrontal cortex and all this is super important because, and this is speculative, but in our evolutionary past where we had many fewer Episodic, phasic influences on our behavior like we do today. The prefrontal cortex can put into operation a plan which then gets executed over some long period of time. Where there were many fewer at least external distractors. And I think that it’s, and here’s the speculative part. I think that the conditions of modern life today are such that we’re starting from a much lower baseline in terms of our prefrontal skills. In our evolutionary past with many fewer distractors Sort of external stimuli that were bombarding us. We relied on the prefrontal cortex more to guide our behavior. Now we have basically ceded control to the forces around us. And it has led to a kind of impairment, a collective impairment in prefrontal function that we’re all suffering from.

21:24 — Rebuilding Control Over Attention

Cort: That’s a good segue. Maybe we could have our concluding part of this discussion to put our actual hats on. I guess we’ve been playing a role that we would never normally play because, of course, we want to do the opposite of hijacking attention. We want to do what you’re talking about now, which is how can we re-energize and build up the skill set with the prefrontal cortex. And our ability to manage and consciously be in the driver’s seat with our attention versus it being hijacked. So let’s kind of shift gears and now share some of the strategies that put us back in the driver’s seat. So what would you say there? We certainly can talk about our Experiences meditators, but from a brain and from a neuroscientific point of view, anything that you think is some key insights about the brain that would guide how we should view this and how we can do it in daily life?

Richie: Yeah, I mean, I think that some of this is both from knowledge of the brain, but also from kind of practical everyday experience. And that is that I think that just as we do physical exercise and benefit from reps, so to speak, we can benefit from reps with our mental health. And neural capacities. And so, you know, one way to do this is, and we’ve talked about this at various points in the past in different ways on Dharma Lab, but every time you feel an urge to take out your phone, instead of immediately taking out your phone and looking at it, simply be aware of the urge. And make a decision about whether this is actually a time when you need the phone and you should take it out, or whether it’s a time to simply acknowledge the urge and let it rise and fall away like the clouds in the sky. And so there actually is a choice that we can make at that point. But we need to be aware to begin with. That really is a necessary condition for this. If you’re not aware of the urge in the first place, it will immediately hijack your behavior and you’ll just automatically pull out your phone. That’s what we do most of the time. And the invitation in this path that we are talking about and promoting here on Dharma Lab is that there is another way to operate in the world And it’s a way that is infused with this gift of awareness that we all have. And so this is really a way to strengthen the capacity of the prefrontal cortex to self-regulate. Really simple. And we know from some really fantastic longitudinal research that learning to self-regulate early in life is a huge predictor of later adult life outcomes that are beneficial. And kids who have a hard time with self-control early on end up, if there’s no intervention, end up worse off than kids who are better at self-control.

Cort: And there’s, you know, that particular research is super interesting. And it’s also, there’s a whole body of research, which of course, Richie, you’re well aware, just to paint out kind of the other side of the picture, which is that if you’re the kind of person who—I would have been a kid for sure, you know, if we had had the marshmallow test, which is one of these classical tests, like, you know, you imagine putting a marshmallow in front of a kid and say, don’t eat it. For me, I would have, you know, two seconds, that marshmallow would have been down the hatch. I would have for sure been one of those kids. And yet, you know, I’ve spent a lot of my time developing that skill. And so there’s a lot of hope, even if even if we’re the kind of person who might be starting out more on the deficit side of things.

25:53 — Attention as a Practice of Intention

Cort: So I wonder if maybe we could talk about some of the practical things, because I when I think about my life and things I do, I would say if there’s one word that captures the heart of this as a practice, I would say intention. And simply being intentional about what’s going on with my attention. And it was funny because actually, as you were explaining this, I had a practical example of this. I’m, I’m actually sitting in the boundary waters of Northern Minnesota in an Incredibly remote location and there’s a lake very within, you know, basically I could throw a rock into the lake from where I am right now, but it’s very remote and there’s very few boats. There’s not many people. And a boat went by actually as we were, as you were speaking, Richie, and as I was listening to you and you were actively talking about, you know, like how attention gets pulled away and noticing that. And it was, that was like literally happening to me there. I could feel the pull to look at the boat. And it’s a rare occurrence and, you know, and there’s not many people, so I might know those people. But and then I was consciously aware of that, just like you were talking about the cell phone, like you’re aware of it before you follow the impulse. And so I could actually feel the impulse literally as you were talking about this and just choose exercise the intention muscle and just say, I’m going to resist that impulse or just stay with my focus here on what Richie is saying. Noticing the pull of distraction and releasing attention. We could have a whole episode just on releasing attention. That’s kind of its own thing. But just the directing of attention. Just choose. Before your mind gets pulled somewhere, I’m going to choose to bring my attention to my email inbox or I just got an alert. I’m going to choose to do that. And I notice the pull, but I’m going to actually ask myself, do I want to check this message right now? Or I just heard a sound. I’m going to actually choose. Do I want to keep my attention with what I’m doing? Or do I want to, you know, turn and look to see what was happening over there? Like actually just making a choice. Just that intentionality to me is kind of the heart of the practice. And you can just do that, like you were saying, the reps. You can do a thousand of those a day easily.

Richie: Yeah, I think that’s so important. And, you know, to our viewers, this is something that would be, I think, interesting and fun to tinker with in your own life. And one of the things that I often do is I have an Apple Watch. And so when I get certain kinds of messages, it will give me a haptic signal. And I’m very aware that in certain kinds of meetings, like if it happened right now, I would notice the haptic signal and I would not look at my watch. I would be focused on our conversation here. And there are many times in meetings where I will do the same thing. I feel the haptic signal, but I’m making a conscious choice to Keep my attention focused on the meeting. There are other times if I’m in something that’s not in a meeting or something really casual where it would be okay if I looked at it for some reason, if I was expecting something, I might look at it. But there is the distinct opportunity to see it as an opportunity to make a choice.

29:46 — Digital Hygiene: Designing Your Environment for Focus

Cort: And that, and to me, it seems like the intention, intentional aspect, and these are great example of the kinds of things that pull our attention away so many times. One of the areas I would say, which is just a very rich area to practice because it’s happening all the time is like what happens when the distractor is happening, like the haptic signal happens or the sound happens, or in my case, you see something unexpected, it’s happening. And then there’s kind of what you do in that space and being intentional. In some cases, you can choose to go with it. Or in many cases, it’s just noticing that your mind is pulled elsewhere and you just choose to stay with whatever you’re doing, which I think is in most cases that kind of the healthier thing to do. But I think there’s another realm of intentionality, which is actually preemptive. And you can be intentional about what’s going on in your environment so less of those things are happening. I mean, to some degree you can’t control these things, but sometimes you can. I mean, we all have phones, or almost everybody does. I, for example, have just deleted apps from my phone. There’s certain apps that I just felt like these are just not I don’t ever feel good coming away from using this app. And I just remove the app. In some cases, I actually change the settings. So I have no notifications like my phone. As much as it annoys all my family members and anybody tries to contact me, my phone is always muted. My phone is almost never on. And so I check my messages and I have the notifications off on almost every single app. So I go check the things when I want to check them, not because it grabbed my attention. So in that case, it’s almost preemptive. Like I know the things that can and have in the past pulled my attention. And I’m almost architecting my life. So I’m just not going to be, you know, as exposed to those. So it seems like we could almost we can both when it happens, what do we do, but also preemptively, you know, build your life to the degree that you can so that you’re not just constantly exposed to these things, which which just simply can be overwhelming at times.

Richie: Yeah, absolutely. And I think that that all fits in a category that I would call digital hygiene. And I’ve been an advocate for creating a curriculum for digital hygiene that would include contemplative practices to help us actually regulate our attention and have that curriculum start with kids. I think it’s really important.

Cort: Yeah, I 100% agree. Well, this has been a great conversation, Richie. I think we would love to hear, for those of you watching this in the comments, we’d love to hear what you do. What are the things that you find distracting? What are the strategies and the methods you found that help you find a little more balance? And maybe we can have a little dialogue offline as you reflect on your own life. But in any case, thank you, Richie, for sharing your insights as always and for you for listening. We hope to see you soon for another episode of Dharma Lab. Take care.

Richie: Thank you so much.

In our 11th AMA, Kim read your questions while Cort made his way back from a retreat with Mingyur Rinpoche. Richie spoke to a study where strangers could tell who the meditators were, from a photo alone.

What’s inside

• Full recording and transcript for paid members

• The photo study: what strangers saw in the faces of long-term meditators

• You are not your beliefs: a simple two-step practice to see them clearly

• A 2-minute guided practice (free, led by Dr. Richie Davidson)

• The full hour mapped below, plus the flashcards and the recording

Strangers could tell who the meditators were

This came up during a question about moods. Richie’s point was that one consequence of long-term practice is that people generally end up in a more positive mood. To show it, he described a study his lab published.

Whenever they studied long-term meditators, they routinely took a picture of everyone, both the meditators and age- and gender-matched controls, without telling them what it was for. Then they gave all the pictures to random people who had no idea where they came from, and asked them to rate each face: how friendly the person is, how much you trust them, how happy they are.

The long-term meditators were judged, in Richie’s words, “whoppingly more positively” than the controls. The raters had no idea where the pictures came from. He called it a powerful, unobtrusive measure that there is something about an enduring mood that gets expressed on the face and that people pick up on.

The study: Goldberg, Hirshberg, Tello, Weng, Flook, Davidson (2019), “Still facial photographs of long-term meditators are perceived by naïve observers as less neurotic, more conscientious and more mindful.”

You are not your beliefs

Another listener asked about the difference between a belief and an ordinary thought. Cort put it this way: thoughts are the words and images moving through the mind, the inner commentary, and they are an expression of deeper beliefs about the world that are often not conscious.

Richie added the distinction he and Cort work with: when we hold beliefs, especially about ourselves, we misconstrue them as a description of who we actually are. He calls it experiential fusion. Most of the time we are not even aware we hold the belief; it just feels like the narrative of our self. Meta-awareness, or metacognition, is having an awareness that we have these beliefs, which lets us recognize we are not necessarily the same as them.

Cort framed the aim in the Tibetan approach he practices: we are not trying to fix ourselves, but to get in touch with the parts that were never broken. Then he gave a two-step practice. First, simply observe your thoughts, like watching a wild animal in its natural habitat, from behind a tree, just watching what it does. Then pause and ask what assumptions, beliefs, and expectations underlie the thought. The point is not to change anything, just to bring the unconscious up to the conscious level.

“We’re not trying to fix ourselves. We’re really trying to get in touch with the parts that were never broken.” — Cortland Dahl

Try this 2-minute practice from the AMA (free, led by Richie)

Prefer to read it? Bring awareness into your body. Then bring to mind one person who first introduced you to practice, who opened this door and shined a light where you had not looked before. Hold them in your heart and let appreciation, gratitude, even love bubble up. Carry that glow into whatever comes next.

The full hour AMA, mapped

Read the gist, then drop into the recording.

04:39 — Is it only meditation that slows brain aging? Compared to athletes or chess players, we don’t yet know. But Richie’s informed conjecture: an altruistic motivation may add a biological benefit over and above the activity itself.

09:12 — What childhood trauma does to the brain. The well-replicated finding of reduced hippocampal volume, and the honest unknown of how far practice can reverse it. Cort on memory reconsolidation.

13:55 — Can practice move your brain’s asymmetry? Functional asymmetry can shift (the first randomized trial of MBSR, 2003), but temperament tends to persist. The masters keep their color; they are not emotional zombies.

20:27 — Belief vs. thought, and how to loosen a harmful one. Experiential fusion vs. meta-awareness, Mingyur Rinpoche’s burnt-rope image, and the two-step practice of watching thoughts and inquiring into the belief beneath.

30:59 — Moods, and the photo study. Why moods differ from emotions, why long-term practitioners carry a positive baseline, and the study where strangers read it off their faces.

38:33 — A stroke, and the beauty in the pauses. For a listener living with brain injury and stroke: being over doing, the sky that stays when the clouds go, and Ram Dass, whose long word-finding pauses Richie found beautiful.

47:28 — After an awakening, why the crash? The four families of retreat experience (body and energy, emotional upheaval, perception, sensing energy), and why to treat them all as passing clouds, not permanent, not the point.

56:16 — What happens in the brain at death. The flatline, why biology is analog and not digital, and the early reports of gamma oscillations near death, the same signature seen in long-term meditators. Plus how the traditions prepare.

Upcoming Events

Save the date: a free practice and meditation hour with Richie and Cort on August 19th at 7pm Central. Register free.

events.dharmalab.co

Episode Companion Flashcards:

Read more

As the science has evolved, researchers have shifted their focus. What changes in the brain? Which changes matter most? And why might some structural changes grow, then recede, as expertise develops?

In this conversation, Richie and Cort explore what decades of neuroscience have taught us, what scientists have gotten right, what they’ve gotten wrong, and where the research is heading.

Enjoy!

Watch on YouTube; Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

If these conversations are useful, please consider subscribing to our YouTube channel.

Reminder: We have a FREE 1-hour live practice session on Aug 19th, 7pm CT with Richie and Cort discussing how different meditation practices map to the four pillars of well-being (Awareness, Connection, Insight, and Purpose). More details and register here!

Episode Companion Flashcards!

In This Episode:

00:00 Does Meditation Really Change the Brain?

03:16 Brain Function vs. Brain Structure

05:41 The Gray Matter Studies That Started It All

11:45 Why the Gray Matter Evidence Changed

15:20 White Matter and Brain Connectivity

18:01 What the Research Actually Means

21:40 Brain Health, Neuroplasticity, and Human Potential

Transcript for those who prefer to read:

Richie Davidson:

There’s no question that meditation changes the brain.

We’re talking here about both the function and the structure of the brain. There’s no question that meditation changes the brain, and there is overwhelming evidence for that.

Structural changes, like increases in gray matter in specific regions of the brain after short amounts of meditation, however, are a different story. The evidence for those findings has really not held up.

Even more interesting, some of the effects that have been reported are actually the opposite of what we might expect.

Cortland Dahl:

Hello everyone. Welcome to another episode of Dharma Lab. I’m Cortland Dahl, and I’m here with Richie Davidson, one of the pioneering neuroscientists who has helped us understand the relationship between the mind, the brain, emotions, and how we can train ourselves to flourish.

Today we’re diving into one of the biggest scientific questions in meditation research: does meditation actually change the brain?

When I think about my own life, I can point to experiences that feel like a clear before and after.

When I started meditating more than thirty years ago, I had a genuine phobia of public speaking. It wasn’t just that I got nervous. I had a severe fear of speaking in front of people.

Years later, not only do I no longer get anxious, I actually enjoy it.

I’ve even measured my physiology with devices like my Oura Ring. My heart rate and other biometrics actually shift into a deeply relaxed state when I’m speaking in front of a crowd, something that would have been unimaginable twenty or thirty years ago.

Whether or not my brain changed, it seems difficult to imagine that such a profound transformation could happen without the brain changing in some way.

At the same time, we often see confusing headlines.

One day the headline says, “Meditation changes your brain.”

The next day another study appears suggesting the opposite.

Even the phrase “changes your brain” can mean different things. Are we talking about how the brain functions? Are we talking about the physical wiring of the brain? Are we talking about changes in structure?

Richie, you’ve done some of the most important work in this area, and I think this is one of those topics where the headlines often miss the nuance.

How should we think about it?

Richie Davidson:

You set this up beautifully by distinguishing between functional changes in the brain and structural changes.

Functional changes refer to differences in how the brain is operating. We can measure those by looking at patterns of activity in different brain regions.

Structural changes are different. They refer to the physical characteristics of the brain itself.

That includes gray matter, which consists of the cell bodies of neurons, and white matter, which consists of the axons that connect one region of the brain to another.

It’s entirely possible for the brain to change functionally without changing structurally.

If structural changes occur, they almost always imply changes in function as well.

One of the reasons this field became so exciting was that, about twenty years ago, several early studies suggested that people who completed an eight-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course showed increases in gray matter in regions such as the prefrontal cortex.

Those findings generated enormous excitement and headlines claiming that meditation could literally grow your prefrontal cortex.

Cortland Dahl:

Before we go further, why would someone even want a larger prefrontal cortex?

Richie Davidson:

The prefrontal cortex is central to what we call the executive network.

It’s involved in planning, goal-directed behavior, regulating attention, forming healthy habits, and inhibiting behaviors we want to change.

If you’re making a grocery list, planning your route to the store, or intentionally directing your attention toward something important, the prefrontal cortex plays a major role.

It also allows us to think about the future and reflect on the past.

That’s incredibly useful, but it’s also one of the reasons humans worry so much.

As Robert Sapolsky famously described in his book Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, zebras don’t spend time worrying about tomorrow. Humans do, largely because we have this remarkable prefrontal cortex.

So it’s an extraordinary gift, but it can also contribute to suffering.

Returning to the research, those early studies suggested that relatively short periods of meditation increased gray matter in regions like the prefrontal cortex.

Many additional studies followed.

Then, in 2023, a meta-analysis concluded that Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction produced structural brain changes.

However, the story didn’t end there.

The journal later retracted that meta-analysis because important data had been omitted. When those missing data were included, the reported effects disappeared.

Around the same time, our own research published in Science Advances found no structural gray matter differences between people who completed Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction and carefully designed control groups.

So when it comes to gray matter increases after relatively short periods of meditation, the evidence has simply not held up.

There’s another finding that’s particularly intriguing.

Some studies have examined whether people with more meditation experience show greater structural changes.

Interestingly, the relationship appears to go in the opposite direction.

The more meditation people have practiced, the smaller the structural differences often become.

When you think about expertise, that actually makes sense.

If gray matter simply kept increasing forever, eventually we’d have bumps sticking out of our heads.

That’s obviously not how biology works.

Instead, expertise in many domains appears to involve temporary structural changes that later become more efficient as skills mature.

There may be a period where gray matter increases, but as expertise develops, those changes may naturally recede.

Cortland Dahl:

So the story is much more nuanced than simply saying meditation makes your brain bigger.

Richie Davidson:

Exactly.

And that’s where white matter becomes especially interesting.

White matter reflects the connections between different regions of the brain.

Across many different kinds of learning, white matter appears to be much more responsive to experience than gray matter.

For example, beginning jugglers can show measurable white matter changes after only about an hour and a half of training.

Those changes are dynamic.

If you stop practicing, they may recede.

We’ve found similar results with meditation.

In the same study where we found no gray matter changes, we did observe white matter changes in pathways related to self-regulation after roughly twenty to thirty hours of meditation practice.

We also have new research, not yet published, suggesting that about five minutes of daily practice for a month is associated with white matter changes.

These findings suggest that changes in brain connectivity may occur very early in meditation training and may be especially important.

Cortland Dahl:

One thing I’m hearing is that we often oversimplify what it means for the brain to change.

We hear phrases like “meditation grows your brain,” but perhaps that’s not even the right way to think about it.

If we compare meditation to physical exercise, we might expect some increase in muscle mass when someone first begins training.

But muscles don’t simply continue getting larger forever.

Nor would we necessarily want them to.

Much of what matters is how efficiently the body functions.

It sounds like the brain may be similar.

The important changes may involve relationships between different brain regions, increased efficiency, and improved coordination rather than simply greater volume.

Richie Davidson:

That’s a very good way of putting it.

There’s another aspect of brain health that’s becoming increasingly important, and that’s inflammation.

We know that many forms of meditation reduce inflammation throughout the body.

Evidence is beginning to suggest that meditation may also reduce inflammation within the brain itself.

That’s especially important because neuroinflammation appears to contribute to neurodegeneration and forms of dementia.

Researchers are only beginning to develop reliable ways to measure neuroinflammation using MRI, so this is likely to become an exciting area of research over the next several years.

Stepping back, though, the most important point remains simple.

There’s no question that meditation changes the brain.

Whether those changes are functional, structural, or both is still being actively explored, but the overall conclusion is remarkably clear.

Many years ago, the Dalai Lama told me that he sometimes reflects during meditation on the fact that his own brain is changing because of his practice.

I think that’s a beautiful reflection.

The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that our brains can change through intentional mental training.

That means we have tremendous potential for transformation.

In fact, humans may have a greater capacity to intentionally reshape the brain than any other species.

That’s an extraordinary gift.

The invitation is to use that gift wisely.

Cortland Dahl:

What a hopeful message.

For many years, people thought the brain was essentially fixed.

Now we understand that change and transformation are built into our biology.

As the science continues to evolve, we’ll undoubtedly return to this topic with new discoveries.

Richie, thank you for another fascinating conversation, and thank you for all the pioneering research you’ve contributed to this field.

And thank you to everyone for joining us. We’ll see you next time on Dharma Lab.

“Get out of your comfort zone.”

It’s one of the most common pieces of advice you’ll hear if you want to grow. We say it about careers, relationships, exercise, and learning new skills. But what if we’ve misunderstood what it really means?

For most people, getting out of your comfort zone means doing something outwardly challenging. Giving a presentation. …

Read more

Sharon reflects on why she often thinks of metta as connection, a way of remembering that our lives are part of a much larger network. She points to the people who help us do our work, the strangers who grow and transport our food, and the “neutral people” we may pass by without really seeing.

At a time when many people feel lonely, cut off, or pulled into habits of criticism and competition, Sharon offers a simple experiment: pause, notice who makes your life possible, and see what happens when appreciation becomes part of daily life.

Sharon Salzberg is a meditation teacher, New York Times bestselling author, and co-founder of the Insight Meditation Society in Barre, Massachusetts. She has written fifteen books, including Lovingkindness and Real Happiness. Her upcoming workbook, Living Lovingkindness, is available for pre-order and will be released in January 2027.

Enjoy!

Watch on YouTube; Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

If these conversations are useful, please consider subscribing to our YouTube channel.

Episode Companion Flashcards

The full conversation is below, lightly edited for readability.

Chapter List

• (00:00) A true icon, and a first story

• (03:33) The Dalai Lama and the crutches

• (09:35) What actually trips people up

• (13:33) Why Sharon prefers the word “connection”

• (18:30) A guided reflection

• (21:26) Vulnerability, and the neutral person

• (28:10) Attention, and what the science shows

• (36:26) The obstacles, and where to start

• (46:46) Little rituals, and eating as practice

• (52:00) Parting thoughts

Try this 2-minute Micro-Practice from Sharon Now

(00:00) A true icon, and a first story

Cort Dahl

Hello, welcome everyone to another episode of Dharma Lab. I’m very honored and excited to be here with our two guests. Of course, I’m here with Richie Davidson, who many of you already know, one of the most well-known neuroscientists on the planet. And we’re here with a true icon of the world’s meditative tradition, Sharon Salzberg, who’s also a dear friend, and truly one of those people who, when the history books are written about the manifestation of these meditative traditions in the modern world, played an incredibly important role.

Just before this started, we were all chatting, and Sharon, you were mentioning that this is the 50th anniversary of the Insight Meditation Society. IMS, as it’s commonly referred to, is certainly one of the first and one of the most important centers for Buddhist practice and meditation in the modern world. Sharon is one of the co-founders of IMS, back in the 1970s. It’s hard to believe it’s been 50 years.

She has written some of the most well-known books in the meditation world. Loving-Kindness — she literally wrote the book on loving-kindness, and has been the main proponent of it as one of the main forms of meditation coming out of the Buddhist tradition, traditionally known as metta. She also has a podcast, Metta Hour, which both Richie and I have been on. And she’s written many other books, including her first children’s book, Kind Carl.

Richie Davidson

I read it to my six-year-old granddaughter, who loved it, absolutely loved it, and wanted more copies to give to all her friends.

Cort Dahl

And many, many other books — Real Life, Real Love, Real Happiness, a whole series. Loving-Kindness, the book I mentioned first, is really a modern classic. It was one of the first books I read back in the nineties when I was starting to meditate. So, Sharon, you’ve been an inspiration to so many of us — through your writing, through co-founding IMS, through your endless teaching all over the world. It’s an honor to have you.

I thought we could start with a story I’ve heard a few times and always found moving: His Holiness the Dalai Lama visiting the United States for the first time, and your interactions with him. Let’s start there, and see where the conversation goes.

(03:33) The Dalai Lama and the crutches

Sharon Salzberg

Sure. And I’m so happy and honored to be with the two of you, truly. We co-founded the retreat center — Jack Kornfield, Joseph Goldstein and I — in 1976. It’s in Barre, Massachusetts, about 40 minutes from Amherst. In 1979 we heard the Dalai Lama was coming to Amherst, so, being young and bold, we wrote a letter to his private office and said, maybe you’d like to visit us too. And to our amazement, we got a letter back saying, yes, he’ll come.

It was an incredibly zooey day. We had sheriffs and people patrolling the roof with guns, the street blockaded. A very intense day. And I’d been in a car accident a few weeks before — I had a broken bone in my foot and was using crutches, which I was not very skilled with. So I was standing way at the back of about a hundred people. His car pulled up, he got out, and he did something I’ve seen him do many times since, but it was the first time. It’s almost like he has a kind of radar for who in a crowd is suffering the most, and that was me. He cut through a hundred people, took my hand, looked me in the eye, and said, what happened?

Standing there in the back, I’d been thinking, I’m so stuck back here, this is terrible — I helped start this place, and here I am at the back. But if I go up front I’ll fall on my face, because I’m so bad with the crutches, so I’d better stay in the back. And he just dissolved that with that one gesture. It sort of redefined compassion for me, because he certainly couldn’t have made the injury not happen, or made me any better with the crutches. But that horrible feeling of being so alone, so unseen, so stuck in the back — it just dissolved.

There’s another story from that visit, and there are many. We had a retreat going, about two weeks in, and the Dalai Lama asked to go into the meditation hall and give a talk. Then he asked for questions. A young man raised his hand and said, I’ve been meditating for about two weeks and I realize it’s not going to work for me. I can’t do it. I don’t have the capacity to grow or learn or get more loving or more mindful. I just can’t do it. And the Dalai Lama looked at him and said, well, you’re wrong. You’re just wrong.

He went on to talk about buddha nature — one’s capacity, which it’s believed is never ever destroyed. A capacity for growth and understanding and change. It may be covered over, it may be hard to find, but it’s never ever destroyed. And the funny thing is, after the talk, all these people came up to me and said, the Dalai Lama shouldn’t have said that. That’s bad pedagogy. You should never tell anyone they’re wrong. But you know who got a huge amount out of it? The young man, for whom it was such an important message. You should have a little more faith in yourself, and in the possibility of change.

Cort Dahl

That’s so beautiful. The image of the Dalai Lama cutting through all those people — at a moment where most of us would be on autopilot, this is what you do in this situation, you shake hands and wave. And he didn’t. He was just utterly human, and could see beyond the dynamics. I’ve always found that story so beautiful.

Richie Davidson

I love that story too. I have this image of our detectors, our antenna, for suffering, that can actually be developed. And the Dalai Lama is such an extraordinary exemplar of that. Wherever suffering is occurring, he makes a beeline for it.

Cort Dahl

And the human element is something I really think about with you as a teacher. I was just having lunch with my wife, Kasumi. We’ve been together thirteen, fourteen years now. When we first met, she was about to go on a retreat with you — you were visiting Madison — one of her first retreats. You’ve been a huge influence in her life. Over lunch I said, I’m going to be talking to Sharon, what would you ask? And she said something that’s so true, something I’ve heard from many people and know from my own experience: you talk so candidly about your own experience, and the human experience, in a way that’s quite uncommon. Just being fully human and sharing your experience. Because it’s so easy to see someone at the front of the room teaching meditation and imagine, wow, they’ve got it all figured out, this perfect life — and here I am, a distracted, anxious mess.

I think that’s one of the reasons your teachings resonate so deeply. With all these decades of working directly with people, hearing from thousands of them, what are the things that either trip us up — the common stumbling blocks early on — or the things that inspire and unlock us when we hear the right thing at the right time?

(09:35) What actually trips people up

Sharon Salzberg

Well, I think we — including myself — bring some of our greatest patterns into the meditative process. Especially a kind of harsh self-criticism, which I’ve seen over and over. Even people in really difficult situations, really hard diagnoses, something hard to bear. Sometimes I listen and think, give yourself a break — this is hard, look what you’re going through. That’s one of the reasons I found loving-kindness practice, and the understanding that we can grow in other ways rather than punishing ourselves for our mistakes. We can move on. We can learn to begin again. There’s resilience there. I’ve found that a huge help for a lot of people.

Somebody asked me the other day whether I wanted to teach Buddhism or better mental health. And I said, mental health is not that high right now. So many people feel broken and lonely and estranged and confused. Of course we always do to some degree, but it feels so exaggerated now, so emphasized. For people to have a sense of not being so alone, and caring about themselves and about one another, having a greater sense of community — that seems to be what we can offer these days.

Cort Dahl

That’s so helpful. Richie, any thoughts from you, having explored the same territory yourself, both personally and in your work?

Richie Davidson

In terms of the situation today, it really is true. I often say we’re all part of a grand experiment for which none of us have provided our informed consent. It’s a challenging time, and a lot of it is simply outside of our control. The one thing we have at least the possibility of exerting a little more control over is our own mind. So that’s a great place to start.

One of the things I love about your work, Sharon, and would love to hear more about, is that — at least I’ve found, being with different kinds of public audiences — giving them a simple taste of very ordinary but really nourishing connection, like a little hit of appreciation. Bring someone into your mind and your heart who’s been helpful to you, and just observe what happens. Being able to taste that little hit is really an elixir for the soul. And it’s very accessible. We don’t have to go to any special place or be in any special posture. We can do it anywhere, anytime — a phrase Mingyur Rinpoche uses for one of his programs. I’ve renamed it, everywhere, all the time, why not. I’d love to hear your reflections.

(13:33) Why Sharon prefers the word “connection”

Sharon Salzberg

There are many layers I want to respond to. One is that I’ve so appreciated your work and your use of the word connection. I’ve been struggling to translate metta, the Pali word for loving-kindness, because loving-kindness is such an odd term. You wouldn’t necessarily be in a coffee shop and hear the people at the next table talking about loving-kindness, except maybe in a hyper-religious context. My concern is that it makes the quality seem somewhat arcane and removed from day-to-day life, precious in the negative sense.

Translators and scholars have said to me, stop being so cutesy, just say love — that’s what you mean. And that of course is a complicated term. What do we mean when we say love? How often is it a medium of exchange, or, I’ll love myself as long as I never make a mistake — something so fragile and breakable. My favorite translation is connection. There’s a classical translation as friendship, but my concern with friendship is that the development of qualities like loving-kindness or compassion doesn’t mandate a certain kind of action. When I think of friendship, I think, let’s go to the movies, let’s spend time together. And it may be that your heart is genuinely full of loving-kindness or compassion for someone, and discernment, wisdom, understanding is saying, don’t go there — it’s not safe, or it’s not appropriate. There’s such a great fear that if I develop more metta, more loving-kindness, I’ll have to say yes, I have to smile, I have to give in. And we don’t have to do anything. So I really prefer the word connection to any other word.

I love the idea of appreciation, just for a moment. It’s part of what I like to teach if I’m going into a company or an organization. There are two reflections. One is, can you express appreciation to somebody, anybody? Because we’re also culturally tuned to feel we’ll feel better about ourselves if we can put other people down — a kind of culture of degradation.

Richie Davidson

And that’s particularly true in the university, by the way.

Sharon Salzberg

That’s scary and sad. People get into that, and there’s a lot of loneliness right there — hyper-competitive, constantly putting other people down. So I see all of Dharma practice as an experiment. Are you willing to step out of those familiar ruts — go into work and express some appreciation for somebody? The other reflection is interconnection. My favorite question in a group of people who work together: how many other people have to do their job well for you to do your job well? Sometimes that doesn’t resonate, so I say, do you commute? Do you ever think about the bus driver, the engineer, the car mechanic? And if you don’t commute, there’s certainly some technology involved. And if that doesn’t resonate — have you eaten today? You don’t grow all your own food. Just think about that: our lives, truly, realistically, are part of a network. We can feel so alone and cut off, but the truth is we’re connected. So let’s make an experiment, do these reflections, and see what happens.

Cort Dahl

I realize I skipped a step that Richie and I do every single time. Usually before we hit record, we do a little practice to set our motivation — to be of benefit, wanting whatever comes of the work to help people. Richie talked about having a little taste. Sharon, would you be willing to lead a little practice, just to give us an experiential taste of what we’re talking about, and then we can keep going?

(18:30) A guided reflection

Sharon Salzberg

Sure. I’ll do a reflection based on what I just said. You can sit comfortably, close your eyes or not, however you feel most at ease. We’re just going to spend a few moments bringing to mind anyone who has somehow had a role in your being here right now. Somebody told you about their meditation practice, or the science, or this podcast. Somebody read you a poem or played you a piece of music. There was some opening somewhere. Maybe you’ve never met these people who come to mind. Maybe you were inspired from afar. Just see who comes up.

Every time I do this reflection, I think about the Board of Regents of the State of New York, which gave me a scholarship, which was how I was able to go to college, which is how I ended up in India as an independent study project, which is a big reason I’m here now.

Sometimes I do this reflection and think about those people whose actions have really hurt me — not the ones I just found annoying, but the times I felt I was at an edge and had to find a different way to live or think. Because they’re part of why I’m here right now too.

Just who comes to mind.

And you can extend a sense of recognition to all of these different beings, because this moment in time is a confluence of connection, relationship, influence, interaction. However alone we sometimes feel or cut off, this is the truth of our experience.

And you can open your eyes, or lift your gaze, and we can end that reflection.

(21:26) Vulnerability, and the neutral person

Cort Dahl

So beautiful. Thank you, Sharon. When I first started these practices, I’d been doing mindfulness for probably seven or eight years. Then I encountered some teachers, and for me the first practice more in this heart-connection space was sending and taking, often referred to as tonglen, very much in the space of loving-kindness and compassion. It was very interesting what it did. One of the first things I noticed was that it brought up an intense feeling of vulnerability. The way it manifested was, I’d be having a conversation with somebody, and out of the blue I’d start blushing. And I come from a long line of Olympic-level blushers — Scandinavian complexion, maybe. It’s very visible, there’s no hiding. This went on for months. Almost every interaction, for no reason at all, I’d feel this naked vulnerability. And it was just connecting with people, actually. I didn’t see it at all until that moment. But when I started these practices, I started to see how guarded I was a lot of the time — a weird protective mechanism I hadn’t even been aware of. That feeling of vulnerability, which weirdly manifested as blushing, was just genuine connection with people, but in a raw way I wasn’t used to. It was actually hard. Not easy for me. Inspiring, and I was seeing things about myself I hadn’t seen before, but challenging territory, and totally unexpected. So I’m wondering if you could talk about vulnerability, and the power of working with it in practice despite the discomfort.

Sharon Salzberg

It’s a really fascinating thing to explore — the components. I don’t know that this was your experience at all, but it’s common for people to feel somehow responsible for fixing a situation if someone else is expressing pain. Not only do we feel it with the kind of sensitivity you’re describing, but it enters us in some strange way, things get distorted, and we get this hyper-sense of responsibility — I’ve got to fix it. We’d call that a real imbalance. Maybe there’s a lot more compassion for someone else than there is for us, or maybe there’s not enough wisdom for correct boundaries or discernment. The combination of the sensitivity with the wisdom, we’d call equanimity. It’s a kind of balance.

We are conditioned, by and large, to look the other way in terms of other people’s situations. And my favorite part of loving-kindness practice, actually, is loving-kindness for a neutral person — someone we don’t especially like or dislike, someone we feel kind of neutral toward. Usually people pick somebody like the checkout person at the grocery store, someone they see but have no real sense of connection to. I love it, because over time, here’s someone we usually objectify, overlook, look through instead of look at — and as we do the practice, offering them attention, may you be happy, may you be peaceful, something actually grows inside us. People come back with incredible stories. Like, I fell in love with my dry cleaner. I said to this woman — well, I didn’t say it, she could see it on my face — I thought they were dating. And she said, no, no, not romantically. He’s my neutral person in my practice. Every day I call him to mind and wish him well. And now I go into the store and it’s like we’re on the same team. So you’re also confronting all that conditioning of, look the other way, they’re not really people, they’re just utilities — not to mention bias or prejudice, which fits in there too, the other who doesn’t count. The more we tune into people and realize they do count, that we’re part of this whole, we’ll have the effect of that. But that effect needs to be balanced.

Richie Davidson

The piece about neutral people is so powerful. One of the greatest teachings for me has been being with the Dalai Lama at major formal events, where there are, quote, lots of important people around. And then he’ll go out through a side entrance, and he’ll stop and greet all the custodians, all the kitchen people, the security people, and he treats them exactly the same as the important people. Absolutely no difference whatsoever. When you see that in practice — when you see him stopping and holding them and asking how they’re doing — it’s such a powerful reminder that this really is accessible, and it can totally change our life. Our everyday life becomes all of these really nourishing moments of connection.

(28:10) Attention, and what the science shows

Sharon Salzberg

You’re reminding me that so many times we can understand connection, or loving-kindness, or compassion, as an emergent property of paying attention. If we’re more present and listening, that’s where the connection is born — which is a nicer way of realizing it, rather than thinking I’ve got to drum up some feeling I don’t really have, and manufacture it.

Cort Dahl

That’s what stands out to me about the story of you on the crutches — it wasn’t as though he’d memorized some rulebook of elevated compassion. He was totally tuned in to what was going on in the moment, and who was in front of him. And conversely, the vulnerability I felt was seeing how many of my interactions are governed by a script — this is what I say or do in this situation — rather than being fully there, authentic and spontaneous. There was something in that Dalai Lama story that felt like that spontaneity of really being there and seeing what’s actually happening. You don’t have to have some feeling or thought or impulse; it’s just a natural response, because you’re fully tuned in. It’s so beautiful. But getting there, from where a lot of us live, is kind of awkward, honestly. We’re relearning how to be human and connected without that rawness where we feel threatened or awkward.

Sharon Salzberg

That’s another reason it’s reassuring to have a sense of community. You’re not the only one making this experiment. And I’m curious — do you still blush, or is that over?

Cort Dahl

Occasionally I do. One of the few times I blush these days is actually when I tell that story. But it was a great practice, because it went on for months and was so inescapable. It was very clear: I could either go lock myself in my room and isolate, which clearly wasn’t healthy, or I was going to have to apply the practice I was learning. It was two things. One was to allow myself to feel what I was feeling, and, as you said, go easy on myself — I’d had a lot of social anxiety and thought I was past it, and then here it was again. So, not beating myself up, and really just feeling it fully. And then staying in that space of connection where the vulnerability was almost a practice of staying in the rawness of it — being human, being my messy self, and not having to fix anything. That was the practice, rather than, I will transcend this and no longer feel it. It was, no, okay, maybe this is the rest of my life, I’m just going to have this. So it was less about whether I blush anymore and more a comfort with the whole cascade — okay, I can let this play out, and it’s fine. But that took practice. The universe gave me a lot of opportunities.

I wonder if we could shift gears a little. You wrote Loving-Kindness and started teaching this back in the nineties, when mindfulness wasn’t even a thing yet — it became the big thing decades later. This was a pretty new practice coming into the more secular meditation world, and even in Buddhist circles it wasn’t nearly as well known as it is now. For a lot of traditions, it feels like there’s a sequence — you start with awareness or mindfulness practices, then move on to these. Richie, maybe you could tee this up, since it’s also a scientific question.

Richie Davidson

Sure, and thank you for teeing it up, Cort. Some of this emerged in the context of the book Danny Goleman and I wrote, Altered Traits, published in 2017. When we wrote it, we reviewed the scientific literature on meditation. There were, and still are, many more studies on mindfulness-type practices than on loving-kindness and compassion practices, but a scientific literature was beginning — and Sharon, I know you yourself have contributed to that, in work you’ve done with various scientists. One of the things we observed was that there was evidence of benefits measured with very short periods of practice. And it seemed then, and I believe it’s still the case, that on a variety of standardized measures — some of which you might think of as objective measures, meaning they don’t depend on a person’s own self-report — benefits emerge with loving-kindness and compassion practices pretty quickly. At least there’s some evidence for that.

In the work Cort and I have been doing, in developing our Healthy Minds Program, which includes practices of awareness as well as connection and others, one of the things we notice is that some people prefer to start with connection. In the standard sequence, as Cort mentioned, we typically invite people to do awareness or mindfulness practices first. And the last piece — then I’ll stop and love to hear your thoughts — is just to acknowledge that one size does not fit all. There are many different paths, and it’s probably a bit of hubris to think there’s a single path that’s best for everyone. So I wonder what your thoughts are, given the range of your teaching experience — if there are essential insights you can share.

(36:26) The obstacles, and where to start

Sharon Salzberg

I often think one of the greatest obstacles to practicing loving-kindness — and I teach it in a pretty classical way, repeating phrases, making that offering to yourself and to others — is even believing it’s not stupid. Having some sense that it’s a powerful way of being, rather than the doormat endlessly smiling at nothing. That’s a particularly Western problem, I’ve found — people think it’s a gift: you’ve either got it or you don’t, and if you don’t, you’re out of luck. Whereas in the East it certainly can be trained, because it’s an emergent property of how we pay attention, and we know attention can be trained. That’s exactly what meditation practice does. If people don’t get stuck on those issues, many find it an easier practice to begin with. It’s meaningful, it’s opening, and it’s often easier to concentrate — the breath can be a bit of a soporific and then you’re asleep, but here you’re making an offering, there’s imagery, something very alive about that sense of connection. People may come from a faith tradition that has the principles, if not the practices, embedded in it, so it feels like coming home to something precious. And they say the Buddha taught it as the antidote to fear. As a remedy for anxiety, it’s the exact parallel for our time, which is a pretty anxious time. So I’ve found many people do find it easier, if they can only trust it.

Cort Dahl

Do you have a sense of the easiest entry point? These days there’s a lot of talk about self-compassion, and it’s even, I wouldn’t say controversial, but in more traditional formulations sometimes it’s not a thing at all. In the Tibetan tradition you go to a loved one, a neutral person, difficult people, all beings — and you sort of bypass the self. And these days so many of us have so much self-hatred or fear toward ourselves. In all your years teaching, what have you found to be the easiest entry point for people just getting going, if this is new territory?

Sharon Salzberg

Funny that you say that about neutral people. I’ve always wondered about the social etiquette of telling somebody after a retreat, you were my neutral person — I found you totally neutral, really kind of indifferent to you. Anyway. Some of it is a sense of — which is hard if you’re teaching via an app, reaching a large number of people — sensing the person, and also receiving feedback. I was once doing a program with Barbara Fredrickson, who had done research into loving-kindness meditation. We were on stage, and she said she felt it was very important for people within a couple of weeks to have some sense of the effect of the practice, or they’d get too discouraged and stop. And she said it’s especially hard because you start with yourself — which, in the Burmese or Theravada tradition, you do; you start with the offering of loving-kindness to yourself, then move on to someone who’s helped you. And she said it’s especially hard because you start with yourself, and that’s so hard for so many people. So I said, why don’t you change the order? Just change the order. And she said she felt at the time — though I know she’s changed her mind since — that she couldn’t, because of scientific research needs for things to be in the same sequence. I realized at that point we had two different goals. I’d change the order in ten seconds if someone was in front of me and it was too much of a struggle. You do start classically with yourself, offering loving-kindness to yourself, but you don’t have to.

I find there are problems all along the way, truly. It takes a sense of investigation and experimentation, and not feeling so alone in your practice. People have said to me, I don’t have any benefactors — that’s the classical term for those who’ve helped us — I don’t have anybody. Somebody said, I had an unprotected childhood, I’ve never had people on my side. And you think, well, that’s a problem too. Even though we say, just move to the benefactor, it’ll be all shiny and you’ll feel there’s love in the universe — not always. So it’s a process of figuring out where that entry point is. As a growth experiment, it takes time and repetition. And the openings, which are genuine and real and liberating, may not be evidenced in your formal meditation practice. They’re shown in your life, which is where it counts — because that’s where we actually need it, but we don’t always think to look there. People think, I still don’t have these great waves of loving feeling. And it really doesn’t matter, because when we’re interacting with a stranger, or we’ve made a mistake and see how we speak to ourselves, we start to see the shadings of difference. That takes great patience too. How do you know if it’s working? It depends on where you look to see the effect.

It’s a practice that isn’t formulaic, even though you’re repeating phrases. It’s very creative. The principle I was taught when I did it intensively in Burma was that it needs to be done in the easiest way possible. And that’s hard. If it’s too hard to offer loving-kindness to yourself, move on to someone else. There’s another category in the sequence, over time — a difficult person. And it’s said to best be a mildly difficult person, not the person at first, not the one who’s harmed us horrifically or behaved so terribly on the world stage — that’s nearly impossible. Start with someone who’s just a little bit of unease, and over time move on. But I’ve found this is often a place — it certainly was in me — where people don’t like it. They say, don’t you think I can do the real thing? Why, do you think I’m a coward? What about this horrible person? That tendency to do something in the hardest way possible doesn’t really fit this approach. So that’s a whole concept of learning as well.

Cort Dahl

I love the playful experimentation. That’s the challenge — you read a book or hear a teaching, it’s presented in some way, and there’s a sense of, I should fit myself into that progression. What you’re saying, which I can see — not necessarily in the way the Tibetan approach is presented, but you can intuit how it evolved — is that they found something that worked for them culturally. In Tibet, the way it’s often presented, they start with a loved one, and specifically your mother. In Tibet, mothers are like deities, revered like no other culture I’ve seen. So it makes perfect sense to start there — there’s a natural sense of gratitude and connection and nurturing. And of course, whatever you want to say about other cultures, certainly here in the US we have some complexity in our experiences with our parents. I think that’s the first thing the Tibetans learned — that people aren’t responding in that intuitive way. But what you’re saying is, you look for the in, the connection point. Where is it easy? Where is it natural? And you nurture that. Where can you get the spark? If it’s not happening, you don’t just keep doing something that’s clearly not working. Once you have the spark, you keep it alive and extend it to something gradually more challenging. Most of us hear a teaching and think, that’s the right way, now I need to do it that way, and if it’s not working, somehow it’s my fault. It’s not easy. Richie, do you remember your early experiences with these practices, and what resonated with you?

(46:46) Little rituals, and eating as practice

Richie Davidson

First, I think this last bit of conversation is so important — this theme of not fighting with your mind, approaching it with curiosity and openness, and exploring what might be the natural opening, the natural door you can go through. It’s not going to be the same for each person, and that’s fine. That’s the nature of being human. We’re different. I really love that, and it resonates deeply with the approach we often take.

For me, when I first discovered these practices of loving-kindness and compassion — I’m just naturally a touchy-feely guy, and I needed this. I needed my heart to be nourished.

Cort Dahl

For the record, that is an understatement. In the best possible way.

Richie Davidson

So it was really important to me. One of the things that’s been such a blessing is developing little rituals I bring to my everyday life, where these practices are so much a part of what I do every day. From making tea in the morning for my wife, to — when we had cats; our kitty recently passed away, so it’s no longer a ritual — but I used to scoop the cat litter every night and do it as a practice. It’s just a little shift of mindset, and what might ordinarily be a yucky chore became something I actually looked forward to. It was beautiful — done as an offering, an appreciation.

You alluded to this earlier, Sharon. One of the things we humans do pretty much every day is eat. And it doesn’t take much reflection to recognize how unbelievably interdependent we are. To get food on our plate requires this extraordinary village. That sense of appreciation for interdependence — we talk about this in our book; there’s a chapter on developing daily habits by piggybacking them onto activities of daily living, like eating. To use a bit of psychological jargon that conveys something important — the term is affordance. Eating is an affordance for the expression of appreciation and the recognition of interdependence. The very moment you’re sitting down to eat, it automatically arises. And being able to do this in your everyday life, a few times a day, every day — it changes you. It’s why we’ve come to the view, and we actually have evidence now to support this, that it’s easier than you think. It doesn’t take much to get these circuits of the mind going, or circuits of the heart, because this is who we are. This is our nature. We’re just recognizing it.

Sharon Salzberg

It’s beautiful. One of my students, to my eternal amusement, coined the phrase micro-dosing loving-kindness — for exactly that. You sit down to a meal and spend a few moments. Or I have a friend who looks at all the little faces in the boxes of a Zoom meeting and thinks, may you be happy. You have to be silent in a lot of those circumstances, but you make that offering, and then you start the meeting.

(52:00) Parting thoughts

Cort Dahl

I can’t believe we’re already at the end of our time. It feels like we could go for a few more hours. Maybe to end — if you have any parting thoughts. To state the obvious, we’re in an era pervaded by a feeling of division and a lack of connection. We might have connection with our close circle, but so much division outside of that. Any parting thoughts, individually or collectively, on how we can bring more of this into our lives, wherever we are on the path?

Sharon Salzberg

I love what Richie was just saying. We can do it, and we don’t have to think of it as this monumental task. It’s just, okay, this meal, this moment. It really makes a difference.

Cort Dahl

On that note, we’ll end with a note of gratitude to you, Sharon, for all the incredible work, the tireless effort to share these practices and ideas with so many people. I know it’s made a huge impact on our lives, even our scientific work, and on so many others. It’s been an honor to have you on for this conversation. I’m truly grateful for everything you’ve done and continue to do.

Sharon Salzberg

Well, thank you so much.

Richie Davidson

Deep bows, deep bows. One of the things we didn’t mention is that Sharon taught the very first meditation retreat for scientists at IMS, sponsored by Mind and Life. That was a pivotal moment for sharing these practices with the scientific community. I’m just so grateful for your dedication, and your indefatigable effort to bring the Dharma to the West. So thank you.

Sharon Salzberg

Thank you. Thank you both.

Cortland Dahl

To be continued. We hope to have you on again sometime. Thank you, Sharon.

Read more

• A placebo changed dopamine levels in a historic study, and Richie’s take

• Why the essence of meditation is simpler than you think

• A 2-minute guided practice (free, also below)

• The full Q&A, flashcards, and recording (members, very bottom)

Read more

That was the premise of the Big Joy Project, a citizen-science experiment led by our dear friend, the brilliant scientist Dr. Elissa Epel and her team at UCSF. Together with colleagues around the world, they invited people to try one tiny act of joy every day for a week. Over 17,000 people, from 169 countries, initially signed up. They weren’t monks on retreat or wellness influencers. They were everyday people, juggling families, jobs, stress, and uncertainty.

The results were striking.

After just seven days of micro-practices such as: writing a gratitude list, celebrating someone else’s joy, or pausing to watch something awe-inspiring; participants reported higher well-being, more positive emotions, greater agency over their happiness, and significantly less stress. They even slept better.

But what really surprised researchers: the people who gained the most were not necessarily those with the greatest social and economic advantages. It was the opposite. Those experiencing greater financial, social, or emotional strain often showed larger improvements.

One of the take-home message of this research is really inspiring: Joy is not only possible when things are going well. It’s within reach for all of us, even when we’re stressed out, overwhelmed, and struggling.

The Science of Small Acts

Most well-being programs are long, complicated, or designed for people who already have resources and time. This study was different. The Big Joy Project asked for only 5–10 minutes a day, for seven days.

The practices were simple, but not superficial:

• Celebrate another’s joy – ask someone to share a proud or happy moment, and celebrate with them.

• Shift your perspective – reflect on a recent challenge and write three unexpected positives that came from it.

• Do something kind – plan a small act of kindness for someone you’ll meet that day.

• Tune in to what matters – choose your core values and reflect on how they show up in your life.

• Make a gratitude list – name up to eight things or people you feel grateful for.

• Dwell in awe – watch a short awe-inspiring video and notice how it affects your body and mood.

• Be a force of good – reflect on how you can contribute to the well-being of others.

None of these require expensive apps or hours of meditation. They are reminders of what makes us most human: connection, perspective, kindness, and meaning.

Micro-Supports: A New Frontier

For us, this project is a powerful example of what we call micro-supports. You can think of them as micro-doses of well-being: short, tiny practices that take just a few minutes, or sometimes no extra time at all, that can have an outsized impact on our well-being.

Micro-supports are exciting because they don’t require us to stop life to feel better. They can be woven into the flow of our daily routines, gently shifting the emotional climate of our lives without feeling like another task on an endless list. The Big Joy Project shows just how potent these micro-doses of joy can be, especially for those carrying the heaviest burdens.

You’ll see in the data below from Dr. Epel’s lab that emotional well-being, positive emotions, happiness agency were up on a post-mean basis, and to a lesser degree self-reported health as well as sleep quality. While perceived stress was reduced.

Study results from the Big Joy Project:

Why This Matters

For decades, science has shown that emotional well-being is not just a nice-to-have. It protects against depression, lowers risk for chronic illness, and even extends lifespan. But many large-scale interventions have failed to reach people outside privileged circles.

This study flips the narrative. It suggests that joy is not a luxury, it is a public health tool. And it shows that micro-practices, or micro-supports, can ripple outward, improving not just moods but lives.

As we often say: well-being is a skill. Skills can be practiced. And even a few minutes a day can make a measurable difference.

An Invitation

If seven minutes could change the emotional baseline of 17,598 people across the world, what might it do for you?

This week, try one act of joy:

• Make a short gratitude list.

• Ask a friend what they’re celebrating and share their joy.

• Take a walk in nature and open up to the beauty of your surroundings.

• OR get creative and come up with your own micro-support.

Here are a few things on my personal gratitude list:

• I’m grateful for my wife Kasumi, who inspires me everyday with her fierce compassion.

• I’m grateful for my son CJ. I smile just thinking about him.

• I’m grateful for the Boundary Waters of Northern Minnesota (my favorite place on earth…where I’m sitting as I write this).

• I’m grateful for you and everyone else who is interested in making the world a better place.

What’s on your list?

When you add brief moments of joy, connection, and awareness to your day, make a mental note of how it affects you. Does it carry forward into whatever you do next? Does it shift how you relate to other people, or yourself? Get curious and explore what happens when you try different things.

And if you do, hit reply or leave a comment. Share what you tried, and what you noticed. We would love to hear from you.

Warmly,
Cort

Sources:
Guevarra DA, et al. Scaling a Brief Digital Well-Being Intervention (the Big Joy Project) and Sociodemographic Moderators: Single-Group Pre-Post Study

J Med Internet Res 2025;27:e72053

In this episode of Dharma Lab, Dr. Richard Davidson and Dr. Cortland Dahl explore how stable differences in brain activity may shape the ways we engage with the world. Richie explains how early research on brain asymmetry revealed distinct styles associated with qualities such as optimism, introversion, social anxiety, and our tendency to approach or withdraw.

They also discuss what meditation can change without erasing the qualities that make us who we are, why one neurological style is not inherently better than another, and how meta-awareness can help us uncover the potential strengths within our natural disposition.

Enjoy!

Watch on YouTube; Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

If these conversations are useful, please consider subscribing to our YouTube channel.

Episode Companion Flashcards!

In this episode

00:00:00 – Finding the hidden superpower in your natural disposition
00:01:04 – Individual differences in brain asymmetry
00:02:07 – Why we compare ourselves to other people
00:05:32 – The early science of brain asymmetry
00:08:37 – What an EEG experiment is actually like
00:12:00 – A surprising discovery in the resting brain
00:13:41 – How stable are our neurological tendencies?
00:15:29 – Approach-oriented and more cautious styles
00:17:12 – Does one brain style lead to greater happiness?
00:18:08 – Seeing our perceived weaknesses as superpowers
00:20:45 – What does Richie’s own brain reveal?
00:22:20 – What meditation changes and what remains
00:24:56 – Richie on anxiety, anger, and transformation
00:27:07 – When neuroscientists were told to try marriage counseling
00:28:12 – Does meditation change your personality?
00:29:43 – “Exactly the same, only more so”
00:33:15 – Are differences in brain asymmetry inherited?
00:35:03 – Heritability does not determine whether we can change
00:35:18 – What handedness reveals about the brain
00:38:26 – Finding the strength in your natural predispositions
00:39:09 – Meta-awareness and experiential fusion
00:40:45 – The skill at the heart of flourishing

Earlier Posts on Brain Asymmetry:

Written transcript for those who prefer to read

00:00:00 – Finding the hidden superpower in your natural disposition

Cortland Dahl:

The fact that I have zero discomfort just locking myself in a room for weeks on end with a pile of books, and I’ll just be a happy camper.

At one point, I thought that was a curse. Now I feel like that actually has been such a blessing in my life.

It seems like one of the lessons here is that, within any of these styles or patterns, or even looking at brain asymmetry and whatever natural predispositions are going on in our brains, it’s about leaning into that and asking: Where is the hidden superpower in this particular configuration that I have?

Rather than saying, “I wish I could be more like that. I could be more optimistic, or less anxious, or more anything,” it’s leaning into these potential superpowers that are just waiting to be tapped into.

00:01:04 – Individual differences in brain asymmetry

Cortland:

Welcome, everyone, to another episode of Dharma Lab. I am Cortland Dahl. I’m here with Richie Davidson, one of the most respected and well-known neuroscientists on the planet.

We’ve been having an amazing series of discussions about Richie’s early work, going back to the late 1970s and proceeding through the ’80s and ’90s, which was really some of the most pioneering work on the neuroscience of emotions.

Specifically, we’ve been talking about what is known as asymmetry and how the different hemispheres of the brain have some really important and fascinating differences.

We’re going to continue that discussion. If you haven’t kept up with the previous discussions, that’s totally fine, but you can go back and catch up on them.

Today, we’re going to discuss a very interesting nuance, which is the individual differences we find when it comes to this topic of asymmetry.

00:02:07 – Why we compare ourselves to other people

Cortland:

To lead into this, Richie, I wanted to share a story because I think it highlights some of the key points we’re going to capture today.

As you know, we started Tergar, which is Mingyur Rinpoche’s meditation community, back in 2009. For those of you who don’t know, Mingyur Rinpoche is a meditation teacher whom both Richie and I have studied with.

I was kind of new to teaching meditation at that time. I had been teaching for a while, but not that much. I started teaching with a group of three other instructors.

One of them was Myoshin Kelly, whom you know well, a really brilliant meditation teacher. I started teaching with her, and I immediately noticed that she was so grounded and warm, just the embodiment of care and empathy.

I felt like I was maybe more conceptual. I had been coming from a very academic training, you might say. I was judging myself against her and feeling like I needed to be more like Myoshin. I needed to be somehow more empathetic and less heady and conceptual.

I was evaluating myself relative to what I saw as her strengths. That was going on in my mind for the first few years.

We talked together more and more, and at one point we had a kind of heart-to-heart. We were very close, almost like family. She told me that she was kind of doing the same thing. She appreciated my clarity and some of the precision I brought to the teachings.

I was shocked by that. I was like, “Why would you want to be more like me? You’re the perfect teacher.”

She was shocked that I was thinking that about her, and something really unlocked in that.

I started to see that it was wonderful that we were different. Rather than feeling like I needed to be more like her, or she needed to be more like me, I started to see that I was bringing something unique to this, and it was helpful.

I don’t need to be everything. She was obviously bringing something utterly unique and helpful. It was more of a complement.

It shifted me out of this mindset where I was constantly critiquing myself against any range of idealized versions that I thought I should be. Instead, I leaned into the natural skill set I had and where my mind, and in this case my teaching ability, naturally went.

I immediately remembered that when we were talking about asymmetry and some of what we’ll capture today.

Maybe I’ll turn it over to you. You can remind us a little bit about some of these key findings with asymmetry.

Then, specifically, we can talk about individual differences and how the default we have, which is usually to be very judgmental about ourselves, can be shifted. We can use these findings to have a very different perspective on our own brains, how they function, and even our own minds.

I’ll turn it over to you, and you can kick this off however you like.

Richie Davidson:

Thank you, Cort. It’s a beautiful story, and it particularly warms my heart because I know both of you very well. I experience each of you as amazing teachers who are very different and totally complementary.

Cortland:

You knew us at that time, too, so you were probably observing this whole thing.

Richie:

Yeah, so it was great.

00:05:32 – The early science of brain asymmetry

Richie:

For those of you who weren’t with us when we first started talking about this early work in brain asymmetry, I want to go back and review a couple of key points.

When we began this work, it was prior to the availability of MRI to probe the human brain noninvasively.

Pretty much the only way we had to probe the human brain noninvasively was with EEG. EEG stands for electroencephalography, and it involves electrodes. They’re little sensors that are temporarily glued to the scalp surface, not with superglue, but with a gel to make contact.

We can pick up electrical signals from the scalp surface that are generated within the brain.

This was really the only technique we had at the time, but it continues to be used, largely because there is generally a trade-off between the spatial and temporal resolution of methods used to interrogate human brain function.

Methods that tend to have really good spatial resolution have poor temporal resolution. Methods that have very good temporal resolution tend to have poor spatial resolution.

EEG has very good temporal resolution, but not such good spatial resolution. That was what we had available at the time, and it was certainly good enough to make inferences about the functioning of different hemispheres of the brain.

We were doing studies where we recorded electrical activity from people’s brains and gave them different emotion tasks that elicited emotion, including perceiving emotional faces.

One of the things we always did with EEG was record a baseline before people started and before we began to present the tasks.

In the early stages of this work, we used the baseline to make sure the instruments were calibrated and the signals looked as they should. If any electrodes needed to be fixed, we monitored that during the baseline period and corrected it.

We didn’t primarily collect this period for any scientific purpose. It was for the strictly methodological purpose of ensuring that the recordings were doing what they were supposed to be doing.

00:08:37 – What an EEG experiment is actually like

Cortland:

Richie, maybe you could share what the experience was actually like. Imagine somebody sitting in the chair.

I remember all the time it took to get the EEG net on the head. There was a whole process around that. Then you would sit there for the resting state and look at emotional faces.

What would the experience of somebody sitting there actually be like?

Richie:

That’s helpful.

We had this giant net with 256 electrodes. Some of you have probably seen pictures. There’s an iconic picture that was taken in our lab and appeared on the cover of National Geographic, showing a monk wearing this 256-channel EEG net.

It looks like something from outer space. Each of the sensors or electrodes has a wire connected to it, so there are 256 wires coming out of this thing. It looks like this mass of spaghetti wire coming off the net on the head.

As you’re alluding to, Cort, it takes a while to put this on.

Cortland:

I remember all this gel being all over my head. It was pretty funky.

Richie:

We would squirt the gel with a blunt syringe. It didn’t hurt. It wasn’t piercing the skin. It was just a way to inject the gel into the electrode sitting on the scalp surface.

Doing that with 256 electrodes takes some time. It was at least 45 minutes of preparation before we were ready to begin recording.

The tasks we used in those days varied, but they included looking at emotional pictures.

In some of the work, particularly work we were using to probe positive and negative emotions, we would present positive pictures, like a parent hugging their child. There was a whole series of iconic pictures of that sort.

Correspondingly, there were negative pictures, which we often described as images of human suffering. For example, a burn victim with clear scars on the face, or an accident victim.

They’re the kinds of images we see in the media all the time. We’ve become a little overexposed and habituated to these images. Nevertheless, in the context of seeing both positive and negative images, they clearly elicited some emotion, and we monitored the changes that occurred in the brain.

In some of our work, we also used video clips. They weren’t just static images. The clips included sound in some of the work.

That was the kind of experimental setup we had.

00:12:00 – A surprising discovery in the resting brain

Richie:

Going back to the setup, we had this period where we were collecting data during the so-called resting baseline, when people were not exposed to any of these images or video clips.

Then we would present the video clips.

After a few years, and it really took us a few years of doing this work for reasons that were initially just methodological, we began looking at what was going on during the baseline.

We saw that some people started out at very different places.

If you look at a measure of asymmetry in the prefrontal region of the brain, which is the region where we found these variations associated with emotion, and you take a large group of participants and compute the asymmetry score, it is essentially the activation difference between the same region in the left prefrontal cortex and the corresponding region in the right prefrontal cortex.

You can express it as a difference score or a ratio.

It turned out that there was a bell-shaped curve. It was normally distributed.

Some people showed extreme right-prefrontal activation. Other people showed extreme left-prefrontal activation. There was a big hump in the middle.

Cortland:

Most people are in the middle, and then you have small groups that are out on these extremes.

Richie:

Exactly.

00:13:41 – How stable are our neurological tendencies?

Richie:

When we first saw that, we decided it was critical to determine whether this was actually a reliable difference, or whether it was associated with how much sleep people got that night, what they ate for breakfast, their mood, or other transient differences.

We began studies where we brought people back after a week and after a month. We tested them again by having them sit and rest without doing any task.

Sure enough, we found, quite remarkably, that this was incredibly stable. It was really more stable than most other physiological signals that people had studied. It was a big surprise to us.

Once we established that this was reliable in a statistical sense, it meant that if you showed strong left-prefrontal activation today and I brought you back a month from now, you would likely show strong left-prefrontal activation a month from now.

We then set out to explore what these variations were associated with.

Were there differences in personality associated with these variations in brain asymmetry?

It turned out that there was indeed a whole constellation of differences associated with these variations in brain asymmetry that were quite interesting.

00:15:29 – Approach-oriented and more cautious styles

Richie:

If I can succinctly summarize it, people with stronger left-prefrontal activation had more of an approach orientation to the world.

By that, we mean these are the kinds of people who are ready to jump out of bed in the morning and take on the world. They’re actively engaged. They’re more likely to be extroverted and optimistic. They have this active, engaged stance.

Others who were more right-prefrontally activated were more shy. They might be a little more socially anxious or introverted.

It’s not that one is better than the other. There are advantages and disadvantages to being extreme on either side.

One thing that’s important to keep in mind, as you mentioned earlier, Cort, is that most people are in the middle. Most people are not at one extreme or the other.

This was an important observation and led us to publish many papers associated with it.

We initially thought that left-prefrontal activation was somehow associated with greater happiness and well-being. But after many years of study, it turned out that this was simply not true.

00:17:12 – Does one brain style lead to greater happiness?

Richie:

It’s more associated with a style of interacting with the world.

Introverted people can be just as happy as extroverted people. Our well-being and flourishing probably have more to do with the match between our style and the environment in which we find ourselves than with the characteristics of the brain itself.

That’s a critical insight.

Each person would benefit from knowing more about their own style and not necessarily trying to change it so much as being aware of it and arranging their circumstances so that they’re most conducive to the kind of style they express.

00:18:08 – Seeing our perceived weaknesses as superpowers

Cortland:

I love this. To me, this feels like the key point.

It runs counter to what naturally happens in many of our minds. It’s similar to what I shared earlier with Myoshin, feeling like, “Why can’t I be more like that?”

We look at somebody else’s superpowers and wish we had them. Then we see whatever is going on in us as deficits rather than seeing those qualities as potential superpowers.

I very much feel like this has been the story of my life.

I’m very introverted and was very much on the shy side. On this spectrum, I don’t know how extreme I would be, but I would probably be somewhere toward one side.

Now I feel like those things have been incredible assets in my life.

My meditation practice, obviously, has benefited. I love solitude, and that has served me so well. I’ve done so much retreat, and it has brought so much to my life, my creative work, writing, and other things.

The fact that I have zero discomfort just locking myself in a room for weeks on end with a pile of books, and I’ll just be a happy camper.

At one point, I thought that was a curse. Now I feel like it has been such a blessing in my life.

It seems like one of the lessons here is that, within any of these styles or patterns, or even looking at brain asymmetry and whatever natural predispositions are going on in our brains, it’s about leaning into that and asking: Where is the hidden superpower in this particular configuration that I have?

Rather than saying, “I wish I could be more like that. I could be more optimistic, or less anxious, or more anything,” it’s leaning into these potential superpowers that are just waiting to be tapped into.

It seems like that might be one of the key points here.

Richie:

I think it very much is.

If we go back to our four key pillars of well-being, awareness, connection, insight, and purpose, the dimension of asymmetry is, to use a technical term, orthogonal, which means independent.

It’s not directly associated with any one of those pillars.

You can have left-sided activation or right-sided activation and still cultivate all four pillars of flourishing. They will look different. They won’t look the same in a person with strong left-prefrontal activation and a person with strong right-prefrontal activation.

Nevertheless, both of those people might be truly flourishing.

00:20:45 – What does Richie’s own brain reveal?

Cortland:

I have a whole laundry list of questions here.

First, I might put you on the spot a little bit. Did you measure your own brain? Did you ever look?

Anybody who knows you might think it’s not hard to guess where you are on the spectrum, but I’m curious whether you did that.

Richie:

I’ve done it a few times. I’m left-sided, but not extremely left-sided. I’m in a place on the curve where there are a lot of people, so I’m not at the far extreme.

Cortland:

You’re clearly comfortable with solitude. You’re obviously very social by nature, but you’re also comfortable with solitude.

Richie:

I actually regard myself primarily as an introvert.

Compared to my wife, I’m much more introverted than she is. I’m quite comfortable with that.

I can be extroverted in certain circumstances, but I’m aware of activating that part of myself in a way that is not my default disposition.

00:22:20 – What meditation changes and what remains

Cortland:

One interesting thing we can both talk about at a personal level is what has changed over the course of our lives and what hasn’t.

If I think about my own life, anxiety was a huge theme in my early life, back in my 20s and the early 1990s, when I was in college and starting to meditate.

The thing that has changed dramatically for me is the discomfort in certain situations.

There were times in life when being at a party, even with people I really liked and knew well, was not only challenging but actually uncomfortable.

I would have this feeling that I immediately wanted to leave the moment I entered the situation. I had this impulse that I would rather be somewhere else. It was just not fun for me.

Things like public speaking were complete nightmares. There was a whole gradation of social experiences, some mildly unpleasant and some almost unbearable. I would have done anything to avoid them at that time.

If I look at what has changed, that discomfort element has almost disappeared.

There are very few social situations that make me uncomfortable. Even public speaking, which was among the most uncomfortable, causes almost zero discomfort now. In some cases, I actually enjoy it.

But the thing that has not changed is what I might think of as energizing and depleting.

I can be at a party with people I love and thoroughly enjoy being around, but I find it tiring. I find being on my own energizing and nourishing.

It’s like being in a video game where you can see the energy meter going up and down. My energy meter goes up when I’m alone. Even if I’m doing something I love with people I enjoy being with, it goes down in social settings.

It isn’t necessarily uncomfortable. I don’t dislike it, and I certainly don’t try to avoid it. But that part hasn’t changed at all.

Maybe it’s less intense because the emotional side of it can be extremely depleting. Then it’s like your energy meter enters the death zone very quickly. Perhaps the speed at which it goes down is different.

But it’s interesting that this hasn’t changed at all, while the discomfort has changed dramatically.

I’d be curious what your experience has been with this.

00:24:56 – Richie on anxiety, anger, and transformation

Richie:

I would say there are two dimensions that have noticeably changed for me.

One is also anxiety. I used to experience a lot of public-speaking anxiety, and that has completely dissipated. I don’t experience that anymore.

The other is a kind of volatility.

I used to get angry much more than I do now at work. If someone did something wrong, incompletely, or not as well as I thought it should be done, I had very high standards.

I still have high standards, but I recognize that we’re all human, and sometimes they’re not always going to be met.

I used to have a much stronger reaction to that than I do now.

People around me who have known me for decades would notice and comment on those two elements.

The things that haven’t changed are my vibrant commitment, energy, enthusiasm, and passion for what I do. Those have been consistent.

The way they are expressed is a little different now because they don’t have the same kind of volatility.

Cortland:

That’s so helpful.

I remember when you first told me you used to fly off the handle and get upset at times in a workplace setting. That was inconceivable to me.

I moved here in 2012. We knew each other for a few years before that, but we started working together very closely then.

It’s hard for me to imagine. It’s so night and day from how you are now that it’s almost hard to believe. Of course, I believe it, but it just shows that transformation.

00:27:07 – When neuroscientists were told to try marriage counseling

Richie:

One of the people I worked closely with in the early days was Cliff Saron. Some of you may know him.

He’s one of the neuroscientists who started the Shamatha Project with Alan Wallace. He’s done some important meditation research and is a Dharma brother.

I’ve known Cliff for more than 50 years, so we go back a very long way.

We used to scream at each other. Just scream at each other.

Cortland:

Wasn’t he your lab assistant? It’s amazing. He’s one of the most eminent researchers in the field now.

Richie:

A couple of people suggested that we go for marriage counseling just to work together.

Fortunately, we’re still very close friends, and we’ve been through a lot together. That was just this crazy style that we evolved.

Cortland:

It sounds like you were both pretty fiery at that time.

Richie:

Yes, we were both really fiery.

00:28:12 – Does meditation change your personality?

Cortland:

Another example of this, which we were discussing before we started recording, is the far extreme of people who are exemplars of the meditative traditions.

His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Mingyur Rinpoche, Khandro Kunga Bhuma, and Khandro Tseringma are examples.

We were both just in Nepal a month ago with a female teacher who is like an alien in the best possible way. She is just a remarkable individual.

One of the things that is so fascinating about people who have taken their meditative training to depths we can’t even imagine is that they are completely different.

It’s not as though the training flattens things out and they all become peaceful and emotionally flat. They are dramatically different from one another.

00:29:43 – “Exactly the same, only more so”

Cortland:

What captures or summarizes this for me is what happened when Mingyur Rinpoche came out of retreat.

Several years ago, he did a five-year wandering retreat. In the middle of the night, he suddenly left his monastery in rural India.

I think many people knew he was going to do this at some point, but he didn’t tell anybody when. He literally jumped over the wall and left in the middle of the night.

He didn’t even tell his closest attendants. Then he disappeared for about five years. Nobody knew where he was.

When he came back, everybody was asking, “What is he like now? Is he different?”

Our friend Paul MacGowan, who is a documentary filmmaker, summed it up perfectly. He said, “He’s exactly the same, only more so.”

I thought that was the perfect distillation, because it was true.

You couldn’t say he wasn’t different, but somehow he was different in exactly the same way. It was as though what made him who he is had been amplified in a beautiful way.

These are examples of tapping into your superpowers rather than trying to self-correct toward some idealized version of a person.

Richie:

This little exercise you just laid out is a really important teaching for me.

You and I have talked about this offline periodically. Each of these people is an exemplar of the further reaches of human flourishing. They’ve all put in enormous amounts of practice and led remarkable lives.

Yet each of them is really different. They have distinctive personalities.

The idea that if you meditate long enough, your emotions will somehow subside is just not true.

Each of these people has meditated an enormous amount in their life, way more than even you have, and you’ve meditated an enormous amount, Cort.

Yet they are uniquely different. There are aspects of their personality and marks of their demeanor that remain similar, so you can recognize them even after, as with Mingyur Rinpoche, a five-year retreat.

They’re still there, except more so. That, to me, is really interesting.

At least to some extent, the asymmetries we talked about at the beginning are like that.

They do move around some. They may particularly move around with someone who is depressed and does certain things to improve their depression. But at more advanced levels, they don’t seem to move very much.

They may partly reflect relatively enduring qualities, aspects of demeanor that differ among people.

There’s a reason people are different and have different kinds of superpowers. We need those differences to be maximally helpful.

Different teachers have different styles, and they can appeal to different kinds of people. In other areas of life, those same differences would also be adaptive.

00:33:15 – Are differences in brain asymmetry inherited?

Cortland:

Around the time you were doing this work, there was a lot of amazing research on heritability, including twin studies.

At the University of Minnesota, where I did my undergraduate degree, one of my first classes was with Tom Bouchard. Some really interesting work was done there, and I got a bit of a front-row seat to it.

Was there ever any work that you or others did on the heritability of these individual differences in asymmetry?

Do we know how much is due to our genetic predispositions?

Richie:

There has been some work, and we did some twin studies.

Asymmetry with twins is actually a bit complicated. It would take us down a whole tangent to explore it deeply because there is a phenomenon in certain groups of twins called mirroring, where co-twins have opposite patterns of asymmetry.

It has even been expressed in systemic anatomy, where organs are on different sides of the body in co-twins. It has to do with how cell division works and basic issues in embryogenesis.

Cortland:

Really? This is even with identical twins?

Richie:

Yes, even with identical twins.

There is a lot of complexity, and you have to account for that complexity. But putting all of that aside, there is evidence for heritability.

This could be the subject of another Dharma Lab. We should pin this.

00:35:03 – Heritability does not determine whether we can change

Richie:

Just because something is heritable doesn’t say very much about its modifiability.

Cortland:

Usually, even if things are heritable, it’s 40 to 60 percent. There aren’t many things that are entirely determined that way.

Richie:

Exactly.

Typically, behavioral characteristics, or things related to behavioral characteristics like this, are influenced by many genes, even hundreds of genes.

It’s not a simple, single genetic contribution, as with a disorder like Huntington’s disease, which is due primarily to a single gene.

Because of that, it’s also more complicated.

00:35:18 – What handedness reveals about the brain

Richie:

One of the things we wanted to mention is handedness.

I noted in the previous Dharma Lab recording that all the work we’re talking about was done with right-handed people.

Right-handed people account for roughly 85 percent of the population.

Left-handed people are more variable than right-handed people. Among right-handed people, virtually all of them, 99-point-something percent, speak with their left hemispheres.

Among left-handed people, it’s not the case that the right hemisphere is always associated with language. It’s much more variable, and there is more bilateral representation of function among left-handed people.

There are many interesting things associated with that.

It may be that certain groups of left-handed people are actually better at tasks requiring integration between the two hemispheres because they have more bilateral representation.

Cortland:

Some left-handed people may have an increased ability in synthesis or things that are cross-hemispheric?

Richie:

Yes.

To give you an example, I looked at this a while ago, and I’m not sure it’s still true. But at one point, if you looked at the membership of the American Institute of Architects, there was a much higher percentage of left-handed architects than left-handed people in the general population.

That is an example of an occupation that may benefit from the cognitive style that is more prevalent among left-handed people.

Cortland:

Are there other professions or similar things where you see an overrepresentation of left-handed versus right-handed people?

Richie:

I don’t know the recent findings on this.

We can do another episode of Dharma Lab after I poke around in the most recent research. There might be, but I’m not sure.

00:38:26 – Finding the strength in your natural predispositions

Cortland:

As usual, every time we have one discussion, we somehow create five more discussions that we need to have.

Maybe we can round this one off by returning to the key point about how this insight can help us at a personal level.

It seems to be about identifying and leaning into the natural predispositions we have rather than viewing them as weaknesses.

It’s about finding the buried superpower within things we might otherwise think of as a problem or a deficit.

I know that has certainly been true in my life.

Do you have any final thoughts along those lines, Richie, or any practices that have helped you?

00:39:09 – Meta-awareness and experiential fusion

Richie:

One of the things we talked about earlier was what changed in our lives and what may not have changed and remained consistent.

One of the big things for me is the presence of meta-awareness. That is simply knowing what is going on in my mind.

I would say my earlier years were characterized by a term that Cort and I invented and wrote about in an earlier paper. We call it “experiential fusion.”

I was totally fused with the emotions I was experiencing. I didn’t have this background awareness that was a container for it all and provided an opportunity to look at it with curiosity.

That itself is a highly stabilizing and regulatory capacity that all of us have.

I think that is really important.

Whatever our style is, there is a lot of reason to respect different styles. We need people with different skill sets and different superpowers.

If we can cultivate meta-awareness so that we are aware of these differences rather than simply being in the river and carried away, I think that is really helpful.

00:40:45 – The skill at the heart of flourishing

Cortland:

It’s funny you say that.

If the question is how we tap into these latent superpowers, and I think back on my own life, I would say that was certainly the starting point and, in many ways, one of the key ingredients, especially in my early years of practice.

It was simply being more aware of what was going on within me: my mental and emotional habits, my thoughts and emotions, and how those played out in my life and relationships.

It was leaning into that and exploring it.

Meta-awareness is the vehicle for doing that. You can’t do it without meta-awareness.

That was profoundly transformative.

We talk about flourishing as a skill and well-being as a skill. In many ways, meta-awareness may be the critical linchpin for the whole thing.

Richie:

I would 100 percent agree with that.

Cortland:

Such a beautiful thing.

Hopefully, if you’re still with us, you found this dialogue enjoyable. Please tune in again. We will certainly continue this discussion and pick up some more of these threads.

Thank you, Richie. As always, it’s a joy.

For everyone who joined us, thank you for tuning in.

Richie:

Wonderful to be here. Thanks, Cort.

A Moment in the Lab

There are rare moments in science when the data do not merely confirm a hypothesis. They rearrange the boundaries of the imaginable.

One of those moments occurred in our laboratory at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in the early 2000s. Antoine Lutz, then a postdoctoral fellow in the lab, and I were examining the raw EEG recordings from Mingyur Rinpoche during meditation. We were not looking at polished statistical summaries or averaged waveforms. We were looking directly at the ongoing electrical activity of the brain in real time.

What we saw made us pause and look again.

The traces revealed extraordinarily powerful high-frequency oscillations sweeping across the scalp with remarkable synchrony. The signal was so large that our first instinct was skepticism. Could this be artifact? Muscle contamination? A technical error?

But the deeper we looked, the clearer it became that we were observing something biologically real—and something profoundly important.

At that moment, we realized we might be seeing evidence that long-term contemplative practice could fundamentally alter large-scale brain dynamics.

That work would eventually become our 2004 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: “Long-term meditators self-induce high-amplitude gamma synchrony during mental practice.”

Looking back now, I believe this paper marked one of the founding moments of modern contemplative neuroscience.

Before Meditation Entered Mainstream Neuroscience

It is difficult to remember now how little was known about meditation and the brain twenty years ago.

Meditation research existed largely at the margins of mainstream neuroscience. A handful of studies had reported changes in slower brain rhythms such as alpha and theta activity, often associated with relaxation or concentration. But there was little persuasive evidence that intensive contemplative training could produce enduring changes in the brain’s intrinsic functioning.

More importantly, there was little serious engagement between first-person contemplative traditions and modern neuroscience.

The prevailing scientific assumption was still that most psychologically important traits were relatively fixed by adulthood. Attention. Emotional style. Compassion. Baseline wellbeing. These were often treated as stable characteristics rather than trainable capacities.

The contemplative traditions claimed otherwise.

For centuries, Buddhist practitioners had asserted that systematic mental training could transform the mind at its deepest levels—not temporarily, but enduringly. Yet neuroscience had no clear mechanism through which to understand such transformation.

Our 2004 study began to change that.

The Discovery of Gamma Synchrony

The paper made three major contributions.

1. The first clear neural signature of long-term meditation training

The practitioners in our study had accumulated between approximately 10,000 and 50,000 hours of meditation practice over decades of training. One of the practitioners included in our sample was Mingyur Rinpoche himself.

During the generation of what Tibetan traditions call nonreferential compassion—a state of unconditional loving-kindness and compassion without fixation on a specific object—we observed dramatic increases in high-frequency gamma oscillations and large-scale synchrony across distributed brain regions.

These effects were not subtle.

Indeed, in the paper we noted that the amplitude of these gamma oscillations was, to our knowledge, “the highest reported in the literature in a nonpathological context.” In other words, it was off the charts!

For the first time, we had compelling evidence that extensive contemplative training was associated with measurable alterations in brain function

2. The introduction of gamma oscillations into contemplative science

At the time, gamma oscillations were becoming increasingly important in neuroscience.

Researchers such as Francisco Varela, Wolf Singer, and Giulio Tononi were exploring the possibility that synchronized gamma activity helps bind distributed neural processes into coherent conscious experience. Gamma rhythms had been linked to attention, learning, working memory, perceptual integration, and awareness itself.

Our study suggested that meditation might directly engage these integrative mechanisms.

Read more

In this episode of Dharma Lab, Dr. Richard Davidson and Dr. Cortland Dahl explore boredom and restlessness from both a scientific and contemplative perspective. Richie explains why boredom often brings us face to face with the “default mode” of the brain, the self-referential narrative we carry around about who we are. Cort reflects on the physical, restless energy of boredom, and how meditation can turn that discomfort into an object of curiosity. They also offer a simple and powerful tool to bring more awareness into our day: the next time we feel the urge to escape boredom, we can pause, notice the urge, and let that moment become a practice.

Watch on YouTube; Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

If these conversations are useful, please consider subscribing to our YouTube channel.

Episode Companion Flashcards!

In this episode

00:00:00 – Have we lost the ability to be bored?
00:00:58 – Why boredom matters
00:01:21 – “I could not sit still”
00:03:34 – Boredom and comfort with our own mind
00:04:19 – The default mode network
00:05:01 – Why awareness can feel uncomfortable at first
00:06:52 – The body’s role in restlessness
00:08:36 – Richie’s childhood outlet: the bicycle
00:11:12 – Why kids need to move
00:12:15 – Meditation as training for boredom
00:13:19 – Phones as an escape from discomfort
00:14:41 – The everyday practice of not checking your phone
00:16:25 – Turning the urge into a cue for awareness
00:18:44 – What does boredom actually feel like?
00:20:21 – Who is actually bored?
00:22:03 – Turning ordinary waiting into practice

Written transcript for those who prefer to read

00:00:00 – Have we lost the ability to be bored?

Cortland Dahl:
We’re now living in a world where we just have such an easy escape hatch. We carry around these devices, and it’s so easy to distract ourselves that I feel like we’ve almost developed an incapacity to be bored.

Richie Davidson:
Our response to boredom, our relationship to boredom, has a lot to do with our comfort with our own mind. One of the things about boredom is that we tend to get bored when there’s not stuff for us to do. And when there’s not stuff for us to do, we are confronted inevitably by our own mind.

00:00:58 – Why boredom matters

Cortland:
Hello everyone. Welcome to Dharma Lab. I’m here with my dear friend and colleague, Dr. Richard Davidson, one of the world’s eminent neuroscientists, and I’m Cortland Dahl.

Today we’re going to talk about something I think probably everybody experiences, and maybe experiences a lot, which is boredom and restlessness.

00:01:21 – “I could not sit still”

Cortland:
I have such vivid memories of this. If we had a normal distribution of where people fall and how easily bored they are, I’m pretty sure I would have been an outlier. I was so easily bored as a kid. I was one of those kids who just could not sit still.

I have vivid memories, especially of summer afternoons, sitting at home and desperately trying to call my friends to see if anybody wanted to hang out. There was nothing on TV. This was back in the days before you could get everything on demand, just boring daytime TV shows.

And I remember this feeling of crawling out of my skin. I literally could not sit there. We had no mobile phones. This was long before the iPhone and smartphones. But I would have done anything to have had something like that.

Now it’s kind of amazing. After years of meditation, I would say if one thing has changed in my life, it’s my relationship to boredom. I kind of feel like I’m immune to boredom now. There’s a whole long practice history with that.

But I thought we could start by talking about boredom because we’re now living in a world where we have such an easy escape hatch. We carry around these devices, and it’s so easy to distract ourselves that I feel like we’ve almost developed an incapacity to be bored, to just sit with that.

So maybe we could talk about it from a scientific perspective. We can both share our personal experiences. But let me kick it over to you, Richie, and see if you have any opening thoughts. Then we can dive into it more deeply.

00:03:34 – Boredom and comfort with our own mind

Richie:
I think boredom is an interesting topic.

Cortland:
It is. That’s the weird thing. It’s strangely interesting. Boredom is not boring.

Richie:
Yeah, it is strangely interesting.

I think it’s a phenomenon that has been deeply impacted by changes in the fabric of our society, by the development of technology and so forth.

And I think boredom, our response to boredom, our relationship to boredom, has a lot to do with our comfort with our own mind.

One of the things about boredom is that we tend to get bored when there’s not stuff for us to do. And when there’s not stuff for us to do, we are confronted inevitably by our own mind. That is the one thing we can’t get rid of.

People try, with drugs and other ways to dull the mind, but under most circumstances we have our minds.

00:04:19 – The default mode network

Richie:
From a neuroscientific perspective, we know that when a person is not engaged in a demanding activity that really requires their mental resources, what is active is a mode of brain function that we call the default mode.

The default mode is mostly associated with self-referential thought. By self-referential thought, we mean the narrative we tell ourselves about who we are and all the things associated with that.

And for a lot of people, that’s uncomfortable.

00:05:01 – Why awareness can feel uncomfortable at first

Richie:
We have data from work we’ve done using our Healthy Minds program with beginning meditators who’ve never meditated before. We often see that after the first week or so of cultivating awareness, they actually become more anxious. They report more anxiety.

We think it’s not that they’re actually experiencing more anxiety, but that they’re noticing what’s going on in their mind. And what’s going on in their mind is often quite chaotic.

Simply becoming more aware of it makes them more anxious, or they perceive their anxiety more accurately for the first time. And so they report higher scores more accurately.

So I think one of the reasons people try to find strategies to get rid of boredom is because the chaotic nature of their own mind is uncomfortable.

I actually think this is why people engage in certain kinds of leisure activities that are cognitively demanding, but that don’t serve any other function other than being interesting leisure activities. For example, doing crossword puzzles or Sudoku.

There are a lot of people who spend a lot of time doing those things, and people report that they enjoy it. I think they enjoy it because it temporarily blocks the default mode. It temporarily engages other parts of their mind, so they’re not aware of the self-referential activity. They’re not aware of the narrative going on in the background.

00:06:52 – The body’s role in restlessness

Cortland:
I’m curious about one thing I’d love to unpack from a scientific point of view: the relationship between these brain networks, specifically the default mode network that you talked about, and the rest of the nervous system.

If I think back to my teenage self sitting on the couch, which to me is the most intensely bored I can remember feeling in my life, I think at that time I was completely oblivious to what was going on in my mind.

When I remember that, I don’t remember the thought activity. Now, having meditated, I’m sure it was going on, but I just didn’t know how to attend to what was going on in my mind.

But what I do remember is the physicality. There was almost this charge of restless energy. I needed to release the energy, and it just had nowhere to go. You’re kind of just this ball of energy, and yet it’s like you’re trying to constrain a ball of energy that’s trying to get out, but there’s no release for it.

I’m imagining there are all sorts of things going on in the brain and the nervous system. It points to the relationship between thought activity, which can be completely subterranean at times. We’re not even really aware of all the thought activity, and yet it can have this bidirectional relationship with emotional experiences and physical experiences.

I wonder if you could speak to that a little bit too, because I think the felt experience of boredom is often a very physical experience.

00:08:36 – Richie’s childhood outlet: the bicycle

Richie:
Yeah, that’s so interesting.

When I think back to my childhood, during those periods I got on my bicycle.

Cortland:
That’s what I should have done, probably.

Richie:
I developed a lifelong habit, which I still have, of riding my bicycle.

I grew up in New York City, in Brooklyn, and for me my bicycle was liberating. I rode all over Brooklyn. I rode over the Brooklyn Bridge to Manhattan all the time. This was before I had permission to go on the subway by myself, but I could go on my bicycle. My parents didn’t really know where I was, and I just went. I explored all over.

That was important for me. I also felt a kind of somatic restlessness, but I was able to deal with it through physical activity.

00:09:38 – Restlessness, the body, and the brain

Richie:
Getting back to the essence of your question, I think it is certainly the case, and we’re learning more and more about this now, that there is bidirectional communication between the brain and the body.

We know there are certain networks in the brain that communicate with the body. Activity in the brain will be expressed in part through the body, through changes in both the autonomic nervous system and the skeletal muscular system, through muscle tension and things of that sort.

One of the signs of anxiety is increased muscle tension, and you can measure that with electromyography. It’s a way to measure the electrical activity of muscles noninvasively, in the same way we measure the electrical activity of the brain. We can put sensors on muscles in different parts of the body, and there is indeed activation in these muscles associated with anxiety.

When we’re bored, I think we notice this muscle activity more because there is no competing demand for our mind. Our awareness might be pulled to the places where the signal is strongest. And there may be a lot of signal in the body.

00:11:12 – Why kids need to move

Richie:
I think particularly for boys growing up, it never made sense to me that kids were expected to sit at desks for the majority of the day in school. It just seems so inconsistent.

Cortland:
Yeah. It’s like a recipe. It’s like a boredom inducement, as though you were designing a system to make kids restless.

Richie:
Right. Designing a system that seems inconsistent with their developmental stage. They need to move.

Cortland:
It certainly was for me. It was like torture having to sit for hours on end and not move.

Richie:
So I think that also plays into this.

When we begin to notice our body, it’s kind of the somatic parallel to noticing the chaotic nature of our mind. You were saying that you didn’t really notice a lot of anxious thoughts, but you did feel a lot of pent-up activity in your body.

I think for young kids, the somatic representation is particularly important.

00:12:15 – Meditation as training for boredom

Cortland:
Yeah, and it’s a great entry point too, because from a practice point of view, what do you do with that? What would be the inner skill set to shift that dynamic and work with it in a more healthy way?

A lot of it, I think, is the physicality and the somatic aspect of it. So maybe we could talk about how each of us has practiced with this.

One of the gifts of meditation practice is that I think it’s almost impossible to have a meditation practice in which you don’t have to really grapple with boredom. You’re literally sitting doing nothing for long periods of time. That is basically what you’re doing.

Sleepiness and lethargy are strangely painful when you really can’t escape them. Anybody who experiences jet lag knows that well. It’s almost physically painful when you’re exhausted, and yet there’s nowhere to go and nothing to do with it.

Boredom is similar when there’s no escape hatch, so to speak.

00:13:19 – Phones as an escape from discomfort

Cortland:
I noticed there’s a Gen Z meme going around. Younger generations these days have grown up with devices in their hands and have very little experience sitting with the discomfort of boredom. Equally, we could have a whole other topic on social discomfort. The fact that you can look at your phone is also an escape hatch for social discomfort.

In a way, it makes us less resilient because you don’t have to deal with that discomfort. Therefore, when it happens, you’re almost unprepared. You haven’t developed the muscle memory to do that.

But with boredom specifically, there’s this meme. I won’t use the term because it’s quite profane, but basically it’s just sitting and doing nothing. Put your phone down and just sit there. There’s discussion about the benefits of doing that as unfamiliar territory.

For us growing up, we had no choice but to sit and do nothing at times. But it’s interesting that there’s a recognition that unplugging and dealing with the discomfort of not being plugged in all the time is actually pretty helpful and important.

Let’s each share our practice experience with this. What have you found helpful, and how have you worked with that?

00:14:41 – The everyday practice of not checking your phone

Richie:
Just riffing off what you said, Cort, there are times, and this happens virtually every day for me, when I might be waiting in line. I could be waiting to get coffee somewhere, or waiting for my wife when we’re going out together. Maybe I go downstairs and I’m just waiting a few minutes.

I’ll notice that I have a period, maybe as short as two or three minutes, where there’s nothing scheduled. I feel the urge to take out my phone.

And I notice the urge. I just say, “Okay, I’m not going to take out my phone. I’m just going to sit here and be aware. I’ll be aware of the urge. I’ll be aware of my body.”

I might be able to go outside and feel the fresh air and just enjoy this few minutes of awareness.

It’s an intentional choice. I have at least a couple of those every single day where I notice, during an interstitial period where there’s nothing and I’m just waiting for something, that there’s an urge to pull out the phone because that’s what we do during these times in our modern society.

And I make an intentional choice to let it stay in my pocket.

It’s gotten to the point where it’s a little moment of celebration that I still have enough residual self-control to resist this, and then enjoy that moment of awareness.

00:16:25 – Turning the urge into a cue for awareness

Cortland:
It’s very similar with me, to the point where it has become clear that you can actually train yourself so that the impulse and the urge spark awareness.

For me, awareness is the go-to practice. It’s the easiest entry point. It’s almost like you rewire yourself so that you feel that urge, and then immediately on the heels of that, it’s like, “Oh, I don’t have to. That’s not a fulfilling experience. I know what it feels like to always do that, and I’m going to do something else.”

Another thing I do is almost like a preemptive strike on the habit. Knowing there are certain times when that tends to happen, I intentionally leave my phone somewhere else.

When the space opens up, I don’t even have it next to me. I would literally have to go to a different room. The example I’ve given many times is the urge to pick it up first thing in the morning or to look at my phone when I go to bed.

I made a decision to leave my phone in my office. Often, when I finish work before dinner, I put my phone on its stand in my office, which is a room I don’t usually go into after dinner. Then it’s not even in my orbit.

I still notice those urges. It’s kind of like, “Where’s my phone?” And then I remember it’s in the office. I’m certainly not going to get up and go somewhere just for that purpose alone.

00:18:09 – Breathing with restless energy

Cortland:
There are two things I’ve found really helpful in terms of what to do in that space.

One is using the breath as a support for awareness. Mindful breathing has always been part of my practice since my early days as a meditator. With that kind of restless energy, sometimes I’ll just take a few deep breaths and it settles the mind. That’s really helpful.

Sometimes I love to pay attention to the restless energy itself, the energy of the urge, the energy of the impulse, and not even try to change it or dampen it.

00:18:44 – What does boredom actually feel like?

Cortland:
As we started with, boredom is kind of interesting as an experience. It’s painful when we’re trying to avoid it. The pain is the impulse to escape the discomfort. But when you ask, “What actually is boredom? Where do you feel boredom?” it changes.

I can tell you exactly where I feel boredom. It feels like a buzzing energy. Then I notice it’s almost like a movement impulse. There’s something that feels like my premotor cortex is firing. It’s almost this feeling of, “I need to move in some way.” But it’s like the precursor to movement. It’s the impulse to move.

You can almost feel the body mobilizing. But somehow you’re not in a situation where you’re going to open the door and run down the street. It’s a mismatch between the context and the impulse to move. And that mismatch creates this weird discomfort, at least in my own experience.

When I pay attention to it, it’s weird because it’s the feeling of boredom, but the mind is interested.

Usually you would think those are mutually exclusive. You can’t feel bored and be interested. One is the absence of the other. But I can tell you, you can very much experience them at the same time. Maybe it ceases to be boredom at that time, but some elements are still there. It’s like the residue of boredom is still there, but you’re fascinated by it.

It’s very interesting when you look at it.

00:20:21 – Who is actually bored?

Richie:
I think the somatic residue is still there, but you change the mindset. You can also examine: who is it that’s feeling this boredom? That can be very helpful too.

Cortland:
Totally. That one I do in retreat every time there’s a hint of boredom. That’s my go-to practice.

Often it’s almost like: what is boredom, and who’s experiencing it?

Then I feel like I don’t find anything. It’s there one moment, and the moment I look, it’s like, “Where did that go?” It has a totally different effect. It seems like it’s there, and then it’s just ethereal. Suddenly it’s like, poof, somehow it changes.

Richie:
I experience that when I’m actually sitting meditating. If I have boredom, or something very similar with sleepiness, just really looking at it with curiosity, “Who is actually sleepy?” Then it changes without trying to fix it.

It’s not like I’m trying to get rid of sleepiness. No, I’m really interested in: what is sleepiness? How does it feel?

00:22:03 – Turning ordinary waiting into practice

Cortland:
Okay, that’s it. We need to put a pin in sleepiness. We need to do an episode on sleepiness too, because that is another one that is so painful when you’re trying to avoid it.

As a meditator, it’s really painful to avoid sleepiness. It becomes a subtle spiral where you’re trying to avoid something you’re feeling, and it’s hard to get out of it. But when you turn toward it, it’s fascinating.

Boredom is the same.

I think we talked about awareness, and this last point is more of an insight practice. It’s getting curious and digging into either “What is boredom?” by unpacking the different dimensions of it, or, as you’re saying, Richie, “Who is it that’s experiencing this?”

This gets into a very Buddhist deconstruction of the self, which is incredibly interesting and powerful. It completely turns the table on boredom. Suddenly it’s fascinating.

You can use these little moments when you’re waiting for a cup of coffee, or you’re stuck somewhere, or you’re waiting for your friend or partner to go somewhere. There are just two minutes, and you’re sitting there. Suddenly all those moments become interesting and meaningful, rather than something you need to escape.

It becomes kind of a beautiful thing in life.

Any final thoughts before we sign off on this one?

Richie:
I think we covered this in a nice way. Thank you.

Cortland:
All right. To everyone watching, if you have not tried this for yourself, this may be less interesting theoretically, but super interesting experientially if you actually try some of these techniques.

I highly recommend a little inner exploration with this one if it’s not already on your inner roadmap.

Thank you again for joining us and tuning in. Hopefully you found something helpful here, and we’ll see you soon in another episode of Dharma Lab.

Thank you.

“We are all participants in a grand experiment for which none of us have provided our informed consent.”

Richie said that early in this month’s AMA, and he meant the experiment running on your attention right now (social media, modern technology). The average adult opens their phone about 152 times a day.…

Read more

He was known not only for the depth of his realization, but for his extraordinary compassion. He lived with almost nothing. People would travel from all over the world to meet him and make offerings, but he never used those resources for himself. Instead, he would save them and use them to free animals that were about to be killed. He bought goats destined for ritual slaughter. He traveled long distances to fishing ports near Calcutta, where he would purchase thousands of freshly caught fish and release them back into the ocean. He was a strict vegetarian and spoke constantly about the suffering of animals, insisting that compassion must extend beyond human life.

An Unlikely Meeting

One of the most striking stories I heard about him involves an unlikely connection with the Christian Trappist monk Thomas Merton.

Merton isn’t as widely known today, but in the 1950s and 60s, he was a towering figure in the modern spiritual landscape. He helped revive contemplative practice within Christianity and traveled extensively to meet teachers from other traditions. During his time in Asia, he met many of the great Tibetan masters who had fled their homeland.

After meeting a number of these teachers, he eventually connected with Chatral Rinpoche. By all accounts, this meeting was different. Merton felt he had found his teacher. He planned to return to Asia to study more deeply with him.

But he never got the chance. He died suddenly in Bangkok, electrocuted in a tragic accident.

Still, before his death, there was a series of conversations between these two men—two deeply committed contemplatives from very different traditions—sharing their inner experience. What an amazing conversation that must have been. Two masters of their respective traditions, two lifetimes of inner exploration, shared in a deep, intimate conversation.

We don’t know exactly what was said. But according to some accounts, Chatral Rinpoche gave Merton the name Rangjung Sangye, which translates roughly as “self-arisen Buddha.” However we interpret that, it suggests Chatral Rinpoche felt that Merton had reached levels of awakening described in the Buddhist tradition.

One Mountain or Many?

That story has stayed with me for years, because it points to a question that sits at the heart of meditation practice:

• Are there many paths up a single mountain? Or are there many mountains?

• Do the world’s contemplative traditions lead to the same realization, described in different languages? Or do they lead to fundamentally different insights into the nature of mind and reality?

This question shows up even within Buddhism.

• Are the different lineages and teachings pointing to the same awakening, or are they mapping distinct destinations?

To even begin answering these questions, we have to get clear on what we mean by awakening. At its most fundamental level, awakening suggests a radical shift in the way we experience ourselves, our minds, and the nature of reality. This isn’t about adopting a fresh set of beliefs or a new philosophy, but rather a profound transformation in perception—one that fundamentally alters our relationship to our thoughts, our emotions, and the landscape of human suffering. Yet, the moment we attempt to pin down this transformation, things get complicated, as various traditions map this inner terrain in strikingly different ways and some important questions emerge:

Is awakening something we already are, a matter of discovering qualities that have been there all along? Or is it something we become, the result of gradually purifying the mind and cultivating qualities like wisdom and compassion?

Is awakening about connecting to something beyond us? Does it somehow involve a divine force or higher reality? Or is it about recognizing something within our own experience?

I don’t have any definitive answers here. But I think these are questions worth exploring. And not just philosophically, but also experientially.

From a scientific perspective, we’re only beginning to scratch the surface of these age-old questions. There are early efforts to study advanced meditation states, but the terrain is vast, and the tools are still crude relative to the subtlety of the mind.

So for now, I’ll stay within the domain I know best: Buddhist contemplative traditions. Even here, the diversity is striking.

Pure Awareness

In certain strands of the Tibetan tradition, awakening centers on what is called rigpa, a Tibetan term pointing to pure nondual awareness. The idea is that there is a level of open, clear, luminous awareness present in every moment of experience, including sleep, dreaming, and states of apparent unconsciousness. Awakening, from this view, is not the achievement of some new state. It is what happens when you have recognized this awareness so thoroughly, and grown so familiar with it, that you never lose sight of it. Not just in meditation, but in the middle of a conversation, a strong emotion, or an ordinary afternoon.

One way this is described is as the union of samsara and nirvana. In some Buddhist frameworks, samsara, the cycle of suffering and dissatisfaction, stands opposite nirvana, its cessation. But from the rigpa view, they are not opposites. Nirvana is nothing more than being fully in touch with pure awareness, so completely that it pervades every experience without exception. You are in the world but not caught by it. The final state of awakening is not a particular state of mind. It is the recognition that pure awareness is the true nature of every state of mind.

Richie did some of the earliest research in this area, studying advanced meditators like Mingyur Rinpoche and looking for the neural correlates of what practitioners describe as open, effortless awareness. The science is young, but there are some fledgling efforts to study this form of meditation practice.

Cessation

A very different picture of awakening emerges from the Theravada tradition, common in Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Southeast Asia. Here, the key term is cessation: a complete stoppage of ordinary experience, and even of refined meditative experience. There are no thoughts, no emotions, no sensory input, no meditative consciousness of the kind found in deep absorption states. It’s a complete gap.

The path that leads there involves refining attention to a high degree, combined with penetrating insight into the nature of experience. One description is that experience begins to pixelate. The normal flow breaks down into flickering moments, each one conditioning the next, and the whole process suffused with a sense of dukkha, unsatisfactoriness.

This is not the union of samsara and nirvana. Nirvana here is the end of samsara. Cessation is the moment when the stream of conditioned consciousness is severed for the first time. The point is not integration with everyday life. The goal is not to bridge this experience into the kitchen or the office. The path ends in the cessation of ordinary experience, not its transformation.

The felt quality of the path reflects this. Where rigpa practices emphasize space, openness, widening the aperture of awareness as wide as it can go, the Theravada insight path involves precise, penetrating attention to impermanence, change, and the conditioned nature of everything that arises. The practice is all about zooming in, not out.

There has been a small amount of research on cessation states in advanced meditators, attempting to locate neural correlates of these gaps in experience. It’s early work, but there are preliminary studies underway.

Stability and Absorption

A third domain worth mentioning is shamatha, sometimes translated as calm abiding or tranquility. This is the broad category of practice that includes contemporary mindfulness, where you rest attention on a focal point like the breath and return to it each time the mind wanders. Gradually, attention stabilizes. Periods of presence extend.

At the advanced end of the shamatha spectrum sits what is now a fairly popular topic in meditation circles: jhana practice. Jhanas are the deep states of absorption found in a number of Buddhist lineages, but most widely practiced in the Theravada tradition. In the early stages, the mind becomes highly concentrated on an object, often the breath. This shifts to absorption in a mental image or inner experience, sometimes described as inner light or sound. Eventually even these inner objects fall away, leaving refined states that are difficult to describe if you haven’t encountered them.

Both the Tibetan and Theravada traditions acknowledge these states without treating them as awakening. Some teachers are genuinely skeptical of them, since the bliss and tranquility of deep absorption can become an end in themselves, a pleasant cul-de-sac. Every tradition agrees that some degree of stability is necessary, but they disagree about whether advanced absorption states are required, helpful, or even counterproductive.

What’s especially striking is how different the phenomenology is across traditions. In the rigpa-oriented approach, shamatha involves widening awareness, not narrowing it. You might use the breath as a support, but the intention is not to restrict attention to a single point. The point is to let awareness become panoramic, open, effortless. Thoughts and emotions can move freely without disturbing the quality of presence. In this style of practice you hear a lot about “open awareness” and “effortless presence.”

In classical jhana practice, the movement is in the opposite direction. The field of attention narrows. Thoughts slow and stop. The senses recede. There is a stillness like being at the bottom of a deep ocean, knowing the surface is there but feeling entirely separate from it. Some describe a state where even the connection to inner experience eventually becomes very fine and subtle. And then, in some cases, even that drops away.

Cliff Saron and his team did important early work in this area, studying meditators over extended retreat periods in what became known as the Shamatha Project. More recent research has followed as well, but research on this fascinating body of practice is still very early.

At the Edge of Understanding

Science is just beginning to explore these differences. Early studies—some of Richie’s work with advanced practitioners, as well as projects like Cliff Saron’s Shamatha Project—offer hints, but we’re still at the edge of what can be measured.

So where does this leave us?

If we return to that original question — is there one mountain or many? — we’re left, at least for now, without a clear answer.

What we do see is a landscape of extraordinary richness. Different maps. Different paths. Different descriptions of what lies at the summit.

And then there are moments like the meeting between Merton and Chatral Rinpoche, an intimate dialogue between two practitioners from entirely different worlds, recognizing something in each other that transcends those differences.

What a wonderful and mysterious journey.

Warmly,

Cort

P.s. We would love to hear your reflections on these questions. What path resonates most with you? And what is it about this path that draws you in? Please share your thoughts and experience in the comments below.

Watch on YouTube; Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

If these conversations are useful, please consider subscribing to our YouTube channel.

CHECK OUT EPISODE COMPANION FLASHCARDS below!

This is the second part of our conversation on hemispheric specialization with Dr. Richard Davidson and Dr. Cortland Dahl. For the first part, see Your Brain Is a Storyteller, where we explore what split-brain research reveals about consciousness and emotion. For more on the popular science misreadings Richie warns about here, see our recent episode on Why dopamine isn't your problem. Dr. Richard Davidson is the William James and Vilas Research Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and founder of the Center for Healthy Minds and the Healthy Minds App. His new book with Dr. Cortland Dahl, Born to Flourish, was published by Simon & Schuster in March 2026.

Podcast Chapter List

00:00:00 – Intro clip: Creativity requires both hemispheres
00:01:30 – Welcome to Dharma Lab
00:02:47 – Left brain/right brain ideas in popular culture
00:04:00 – Where did these ideas come from?
00:05:11 – Language, handedness, and hemisphere differences
00:07:36 – The myth of the creative right brain
00:08:50 – The 200 million neurons connecting both hemispheres
00:10:38 – Split-brain patients and the corpus callosum
00:11:57 – What surprised Richie in the early asymmetry research?
00:13:10 – The resting brain data they almost threw away
00:15:15 – Stable patterns in the resting brain
00:16:04 – From “noise” to emotional style
00:18:23 – The prefrontal cortex and emotion
00:19:58 – Could you choose to use one side of the brain?
00:21:52 – A grain of truth, taken too far
00:22:55 – Sequential vs. parallel processing
00:23:50 – Why real creativity requires both hemispheres
00:24:51 – Interhemispheric coordination and creativity
00:26:08 – Tibetan mudras and two-handed movement
00:27:31 – Visualization, imagination, and creativity
00:28:34 – Closing

Earlier Post on Brain Asymmetry (Part 1)

Written transcript for those who prefer to read

Lightly edited for clarity and readability.

Intro clip: Creativity requires both hemispheres

00:00

Richard Davidson:
One of the things that’s true about language, and especially about speech, is that it’s sequential. We can’t say six words at the same time. Just can’t do it.

Cortland Dahl:
I’m pretty sure my son could when he was really young, but in any case, it’s usually true.

Richard Davidson:
Usually true. But if you have pictures of those six words — let’s say there are six animals and you present a picture — you can see all six at the same time.

That difference is what we call sequential versus parallel processing. There are certain kinds of visual-spatial skills that can be done more in parallel, and other kinds of skills and tasks that require more sequential activity.

And of course, real human creativity, I think, requires both.

This is why we have this massive fiber bundle that connects the two hemispheres together so they can work in an integrated way. I think it’s really an oversimplification to think that the right hemisphere is creative and the left is not.

Every human being has the potential to be creative. When humans are the most creative, we’re harnessing the full capabilities of our brain. It’s not just the right hemisphere or the left hemisphere. It’s both.

Welcome to Dharma Lab

00:01:30

Cortland Dahl:
Hello everyone. Welcome back to another episode of Dharma Lab. I’m Cortland Dahl. I’m here with Dr. Richard Davidson, who we all affectionately call Richie, one of the great living neuroscientists on the planet.

Today we’re going to continue a discussion we’ve had previously about some of Richie’s most important early work.

Richie, I’m excited to ask you about this, partly because I myself have always wanted to geek out and hear more about these things. We always have a million things to talk about, but I never get to talk to you about this.

In a previous episode, we talked about your very early research when you were just at Harvard, coming out of grad school, and your early work that showed differences between the different hemispheres of the brain — what is most simply referred to as asymmetry between these different hemispheres.

We talked a lot about that, and we can put a link to that previous discussion.

Left brain/right brain ideas in popular culture

00:02:47

This was back in the late seventies and into the eighties. Then something very interesting happened in the nineties.

I graduated from high school in 1992 and was just starting college. There was a book at that time, and there was all sorts of stuff in the popular media about asymmetry, although that word probably wasn’t used. I remember a lot of things about the left side and right side of the brain.

There was a book that I think was something like Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. It was pointing, in many ways, to your work, which you were very much at the forefront of and had been for many years at that point.

But I imagine, like many things, there was probably a lot of oversimplification and perhaps even misunderstanding about what the science really says and what’s really going on in the brain.

So maybe we could start there, going back to this discussion about asymmetry and what your research and other researchers were really finding about the different hemispheres of the brain — and how that relates to things like creativity, being more logical, and all the stuff that was at work in our popular conversations about the brain at that time.

Where did these ideas come from?

00:04:00

Richard Davidson:
Thank you for that great introduction. There’s so much to say. Just being primed with that brings back intense memories from that period. I was very much living this.

I published more than 100 papers on brain asymmetry in one way or another, and edited two books on brain asymmetry that were published by MIT Press. They were major compendiums at the time, with a scientist in Norway named Kenneth Hugdahl, one of my early collaborators.

So yes, there’s so much to say.

Let’s begin by asking where these ideas may have come from.

In the previous episode of Dharma Lab, where we began to introduce this topic, one of the things we talked about is that the left hemisphere can speak and has language much more so than the right hemisphere — at least in most people.

Language, handedness, and hemisphere differences

00:05:11

I should say that these broad generalizations about the left and right hemisphere are roughly true for right-handed people only. They are not necessarily true for people who write with their left hand.

That itself is a whole topic of really interesting conversation, and we’ll bracket it. We can come back to it today briefly. But for now — and I apologize to all you lefties out there — since the majority of people are right-handed, roughly 85%, we’ll just stick with that for now.

One of the questions scientists posed is this: if the left hemisphere can speak and really is the primary province of language, what is the right hemisphere doing?

It’s presumably not just an appendage. It’s not just there to structurally latch on to the left hemisphere and hold it in place. It has to be doing something.

Does it have some specialized role? If the left hemisphere is specialized more for language, is there some set of functions for which the right hemisphere may be better than the left hemisphere?

Scientists discovered that there are certain kinds of visual and spatial tasks that the right hemisphere seems to be better at.

Now, when we say “better,” what we mean is typically a little bit better. It’s not like there are absolute differences. It’s not like the right hemisphere can do this and the left hemisphere can’t do this.

Similarly for language, although for language, the lateralization seems to be more definitive, particularly for speaking. For right-handed people, it’s pretty much the case that the left hemisphere can speak and the right hemisphere cannot speak. That’s pretty clear, and there are various ways in which that has been demonstrated.

The myth of the creative right brain

00:07:36

Let me get back to the title of this popular book, Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain. There was a lot of hype that the right hemisphere is the creative hemisphere and the left hemisphere is the analytic hemisphere.

When it got overgeneralized, it became something like: the right hemisphere is more interesting and the left hemisphere is boring.

Those kinds of generalizations, in my view, were taken way too far.

The other really important thing to keep in mind is that within a hemisphere, there is a lot of specialization as well. The anterior portions of the cerebral cortex, the prefrontal region, are doing something quite different from the back of the brain.

The visual areas and the parietal area are doing different things. The parietal area is where visual information, auditory information, and kinesthetic information are all integrated. It’s kind of a multi-sensory melting pot.

So these characterizations may apply to certain specific regions within a hemisphere, and not necessarily to the whole hemisphere.

The 200 million neurons connecting both hemispheres

00:08:50

The other thing that is so important to keep in mind is that in most of us who are neurologically “normal,” meaning we have basically intact brains, there are roughly 200 million neurons connecting one side of the brain to the other.

It’s a huge number. It’s the largest white matter fiber bundle in the brain. White matter refers to the axons that connect neurons together.

There are 200 million neurons connecting many different parts of the two hemispheres, virtually from the front to the back of the brain.

If I were to present information to one hemisphere — and you can do this by doing certain tricks — it would be presented initially to one hemisphere. If you are focusing straight ahead and information is presented on the left side of that fixation point, that information will be projected initially to the right side of the brain. The pathways are crossed.

Similarly, if you are focusing straight ahead and information is presented to the right of that fixation point, it goes to the left hemisphere of the brain.

But the moment it gets to one hemisphere, it is automatically transferred to the other hemisphere, so both hemispheres become recipients — unless, for some reason, there is damage to the fiber bundle connecting the two hemispheres.

Split-brain patients and the corpus callosum

00:10:38

In the previous episode of Dharma Lab, Cort, you brought up the case of split-brain patients whose corpus callosum — the main fiber bundle that connects the two hemispheres of the brain — has been surgically severed.

That is not done very much anymore, but in patients who have very severe epilepsy that originates in one hemisphere and spreads to the other hemisphere, producing a huge grand mal seizure, it was found that if you surgically separate the hemispheres, you can dramatically reduce the severity of the epilepsy.

So that has been done. It’s not done very much anymore, but there was a time when that kind of neurosurgery was done.

There are patients walking around with two hemispheres that are relatively independent because the fiber bundle was severed. But in most of us, that’s not true.

Our two hemispheres are talking together all the time. Whatever specialization might exist, and it does exist to some extent, the two hemispheres are typically cooperating and sending information rapidly back and forth.

What surprised Richie in the early asymmetry research?

00:11:57

Cortland Dahl:
I’m curious. There are two big questions I want to ask. One goes back to the book and the stuff in popular culture, but maybe let’s set that aside for a moment.

You had been researching this for a long time. You started back in the seventies, and this was clearly a huge focus of yours in the eighties.

Amidst these hundreds of papers that you studied, plus hundreds more in the broader field with other colleagues and researchers, what were the things that were surprising?

When was your mind blown? When were you surprised? What were the big breakthroughs where you thought, “Whoa, I didn’t see that coming,” or that really shifted the understanding in some way?

Richard Davidson:
I would say the biggest breakthrough was that these were the days before MRI was available, before functional MRI was available.

Cortland Dahl:
So most of this was EEG, looking at electrical patterns in the brain?

Richard Davidson:
Exactly. We were looking at EEG, electrical patterns from scalp electrodes that were non-invasive. You’ve had that done to yourself. And we can make some inferences about how activation patterns are shifting and occurring using that method.

The resting brain data they almost threw away

00:13:10

The thing that was most mind-blowing to us from all this work is that when you put these electrodes on people and just ask them to sit and rest — before we gave them tasks — we would collect eight minutes of resting data.

They would alternate between one minute of eyes open and one minute of eyes closed. We would collect eight minutes of “resting” data.

Cortland Dahl:
So you were doing, as we do in brain imaging all the time now, an early resting-state analysis, essentially.

Richard Davidson:
Exactly. But we typically did very little with that in the early days. Actually, in the very early days, the honest truth is we did nothing with it.

It was just a time to make sure our recordings were accurate. If there were any tweaks in calibration, or if an electrode was not making good contact, we would fix it at that time.

But we would throw out the data, because we were interested in what happens when we give people tasks and look at changes in the brain.

It turns out that we were throwing out the most interesting data.

What people were showing when they were just sitting and resting and not doing anything turned out to be fascinating. Some people had greater activation on the left side of their brain when they were sitting and resting. Other people had greater activation on the right side.

That differed depending on whether the electrodes were in the back of the head or the front of the head, so it wasn’t the same across the hemispheres.

Stable patterns in the resting brain

00:15:15

When we first started seeing this and paying attention to it, we thought, “It can’t really be stable. It can’t be a characteristic of people.”

So we brought people back a week later, a month later.

Cortland Dahl:
So you thought it was just random shifting. If you looked long enough, you would see that everybody was all over the place. You just got a snapshot, but you didn’t want to draw any conclusions.

Richard Davidson:
Exactly.

Then we brought people back several weeks later, several months later. Unbelievably, it was super stable.

If a person was showing left-sided activation today, if we tested them three months from now, we would almost certainly see a very similar pattern three months later.

Cortland Dahl:
So this is like a neural disposition, basically.

Richard Davidson:
A neural disposition.

It didn’t matter who the people were putting on the electrodes, who was testing them, or what day of the week it was. They were showing a very stable pattern. Remarkably stable.

That really blew our minds. We were not expecting that at all.

From “noise” to emotional style

00:16:04

Once we started discovering that, we thought: if this is really a stable characteristic, then it must be associated with some behavioral differences or experiential differences.

That’s when we started our whole journey into this domain of affective style, or emotional style, which refers to enduring ways in which people respond differently to emotional challenges.

We discovered a whole bunch of interesting things with that.

This is a great case of something we first thought of as noise turning out to be the most interesting part of our experiment. Fortunately, we were paying enough attention that it enabled us to discover something novel.

Cortland Dahl:
It’s funny that there’s such a parallel with how the default mode network was discovered later with imaging research. It was almost the exact same thing: accidentally noticing something in resting-state periods.

That seems like a natural segue into what eventually became this popular meme around the brain, the left side and right side. It’s funny how it becomes almost a caricature of the brain. We’ve talked elsewhere about dopamine or the amygdala. There may be some legitimate, genuine scientific insight, but then we draw all sorts of conclusions. It becomes good and bad, overly simplistic, and we lose the nuance.

The prefrontal cortex and emotion

00:18:23

If we translate that into what you actually learned, in this case it sounds like a lot about emotion. At some point we’re going to talk about the whole field of affective neuroscience, because I’m imagining that in those early days you weren’t necessarily thinking about emotion as a guiding principle, but it sounds like it led you into that realm.

Richard Davidson:
We were thinking about emotion early on. That was part of what we were trying to do. We were thinking particularly about what role the prefrontal cortex was playing in emotion.

In the last episode of Dharma Lab, I mentioned this obscure paper written by a very famous neuroanatomist at MIT.

Cortland Dahl:
The cult classic of scientific research, I remember.

Richard Davidson:
Right. This was a guy I studied neuroanatomy with, Walle Nauta. He wrote a paper published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, where he speculated for the first time, really by a mainstream scientist, about the role of the prefrontal cortex in emotion.

That is what got me started on this path to look at the prefrontal cortex and emotion.

But the hype about brain asymmetry was focused on the specializations in the back of the brain, not the front of the brain. We were really the first to introduce the notion of asymmetries in the front of the brain that may be related to emotion.

There was earlier work on asymmetries having to do with language and visual-spatial processes, more focused on what is going on in the back of the brain. The right-brain coloring book is really alluding to work focused on specialization of the two hemispheres in the back, not in the front.

Could you choose to use one side of the brain?

00:19:58

Cortland Dahl:
A lot of the stuff in popular culture gave the impression that you could kind of choose. Even the title of that book suggests, “I want to draw from the right side of my brain,” and somehow I’m going to shut off the left side.

To what degree is this under volitional control? I’m guessing some function or activity might be, but maybe not. To what degree is there any control?

Richard Davidson:
One of the very early papers I published — which I haven’t thought about in literally decades — was a biofeedback study where we gave people feedback, not based on activation in one hemisphere or the other, but based on the difference in activation.

We were giving them feedback to change their asymmetry. We found that people were able to do that to some extent with very little training, just using this kind of neurofeedback.

Cortland Dahl:
On the one hand, that makes sense to me. You could learn quite quickly what you’re doing that makes something go up or down.

But it’s a different thing to say that a given function, like drawing, can be shifted in that way. Language, for example, probably isn’t something you’re going to shift to the right side of the brain. Certain functions, processes, and activities are going to fall more to one side or the other.

When it came to all the stuff in popular culture, did that make sense to you? Did it feel like it was drawing on something legitimate, or did it feel like we were in hand-wavy territory?

A grain of truth, taken too far

00:21:52

Richard Davidson:
There was a grain of truth, but it was way overgeneralized.

To the extent that it is grounded, it is referring to what may be going on in posterior parts of the cortex, mostly the parietal and temporal regions of the brain.

It’s interesting to ask what fundamental dimension might actually be the basis of this lateralization. That was a question asked early on.

Why is language more specialized to the left hemisphere? Is there something about the left hemisphere in those regions that is more conducive or preferential for language? And what is going on in the right hemisphere that may be more conducive to certain kinds of visual and spatial functions?

Sequential vs. parallel processing

00:22:55

One of the core dimensions that has been studied — though I would not say it is definitive — is that language, especially speech, is sequential.

We can’t say six words at the same time. Just can’t do it.

Cortland Dahl:
I’m pretty sure my son could when he was really young, but in any case, it’s usually true.

Richard Davidson:
Usually true.

But if you have pictures of those six words — let’s say there are six animals and you present a picture — you can see all six at the same time.

That difference is what we call sequential versus parallel processing. There are certain kinds of visual-spatial skills that can be done more in parallel, and other kinds of skills and tasks that require more sequential activity.

Why real creativity requires both hemispheres

00:23:50

Of course, real human creativity, I think, requires both.

This is why we have this massive fiber bundle that connects the two hemispheres together, so they can work in an integrated way and utilize whatever specialization might be in each hemisphere together, in a synergistic way, to accomplish something that may be greater than either hemisphere alone can accomplish.

I think it’s really an oversimplification to think that the right hemisphere is creative and the left is not.

Every human being has the potential to be creative. When humans are the most creative, we’re harnessing the full capabilities of our brain.

It’s not just the right hemisphere or the left hemisphere. It’s both.

That is one of the really important take-home messages.

Interhemispheric coordination and creativity

00:24:51

One of the speculations that is super interesting — although there really has not been very much science around this — is that what may really stimulate creativity are tasks that require a lot of interhemispheric coordination.

One class of tasks that require a lot of interhemispheric coordination are certain kinds of motor tasks. For example, jugglers.

Juggling requires a lot of interhemispheric coordination. It’s not just hand-eye coordination, but coordinating what’s happening between the two hands.

One of the things we know is that pretty much the control of the right hand is in the left motor region of the brain, and the left hand is pretty much controlled by the right side of the brain.

If the hands are working together, it requires interaction between them. So one really interesting, untested hypothesis is whether exercises that facilitate this kind of interhemispheric coordination may be beneficial for certain kinds of creative activities that may have nothing to do with those motor tasks.

Tibetan mudras and two-handed movement

00:26:08

Cortland Dahl:
We talked about this Tibetan practice of mudras, where you’re doing things with your hands, but what’s going on with one hand is totally different from what’s going on with the other hand.

It’s like the whole thing where you pat your head and circle your stomach, but on steroids. They almost have to operate completely independently, but it goes against some biological wiring. You have to retrain something deep to do that.

That would be an example of something where you’re doing it physically, but the idea is that perhaps it is opening something up in the creative space, or in some other way.

Richard Davidson:
Yes. This was something that Cort and I talked about just before we started recording.

There are these mudras in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition. They are hand gestures, and they can be very complex and quite different. They involve different motions of each hand, all occurring simultaneously in a kind of beautiful orchestration when done by an accomplished practitioner.

There may be some real side benefits that Tibetan yogis thousands of years ago had some experiential insight about, which may potentially be revealed in some future science.

Visualization, imagination, and creativity

00:27:31

Cortland Dahl:
There are so many interesting things there. That’s another little rabbit hole.

It’s interesting that at the time you do those physical gestures, you’re also doing very elaborate movements with your imagination. You’re visualizing whole worlds, essentially. It’s like you’re dreaming something into existence, but you’re doing these physical movements at the same time.

It really is all about creativity in some respect.

I’ve already cataloged a whole range of things to talk about. In a subsequent episode, I really want to dig deeper into the hemispheric differences in the resting state — not only that you found those hemispheric differences, but what they mapped onto in terms of experiential qualities.

What was different about those people aside from the electrical activity in their brain? Maybe that’s something we can dig into in a future episode.

Closing

00:28:34

Richard Davidson:
I’d love to do that.

Cortland Dahl:
Yet another great window into all the amazing work you’ve done, Richie. Thank you for sharing this.

And for everybody joining, thank you for sticking around and spending a little time with us. I can promise many more discussions like this. So if you found this interesting, there will be much more to come.

Thank you, Richie, and thank you everybody for tuning in.

Richard Davidson:
Thank you, Cort. Thank you all.

Watch on YouTube; Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

If these conversations are useful, please consider subscribing to our YouTube channel.

CHECK OUT EPISODE COMPANION FLASHCARDS!

Podcast Chapter List

(00:00:00) – Dopamine is not something we can turn off

(00:03:46) – What is a neurotransmitter?

(00:06:04) – Dopamine as neurotransmitter and neuromodulator

(00:08:20) – Why the brain is too complex for simple chemical stories

(00:12:02) – The awe and mystery of the brain

(00:15:51) – Dopamine, motivation, and the myth of dopamine detox

(00:17:04) – Wanting vs. liking

(00:19:24) – Doom scrolling and the loop of seeking

(00:22:32) – Does dopamine explain why we keep scrolling?

(00:24:21) – Experiential fusion and mindless behavior

(00:25:42) – Why one molecule is never the whole story

(00:26:57) – Novelty and reward prediction error

(00:29:00) – The Easter egg example: seeking, finding, and disappointment

(00:30:23) – Dopamine in different brain circuits

(00:35:37) – What actually helps with compulsive loops?

(00:37:47) – Savoring as a way out of wanting

(00:39:24) – Meditation, breath, and the practice of savoring

(00:43:20) – Letting go of seeking

(00:43:56) – Gratitude, bodhicitta, and the sweetness of connection

(00:45:28) – Renunciation as reorientation

(00:48:00) – Closing

Related Topics From the Archives:

Written transcript for those who prefer to read

Lightly edited for clarity and readability.

Dopamine Is Not Something We Can Turn Off (00:00:00)

Richard Davidson:
Dopamine is essential for human life.

Cortland Dahl:
There’s no turning dopamine off.

Richard Davidson:
No turning dopamine off. And anyone who thinks they’re going on a dopamine detox and really banishing their brain of dopamine, I hate to burst the bubble, but that would not be compatible with life.

Dopamine is essential in motivation, desire, seeking, and anything that is goal-directed. It has been described by the neuroscientist Kent Berridge as central to “wanting,” which he contrasts with something that it is often confused with: “liking.”

Many times, we like the things we want. But not all the time. Sometimes we get caught up in a wanting cycle that is not necessarily leading to liking.

But dopamine also plays an incredibly positive and important role. When I spring out of bed in the morning, go down to have my cup of tea, and have the strong aspiration to meditate, that is inevitably relying on the dopamine system too.

Welcome to Dharma Lab (00:01:45)

Cortland Dahl:
Welcome everyone to another episode of Dharma Lab. I’m Cortland Dahl, and I’m here with my dear friend Richie, Dr. Richard Davidson, who, as I’m sure most of you know, is one of the most eminent neuroscientists on the planet.

We’re incredibly fortunate to have him in discussion yet again, and for a topic that he is especially well suited to talk about, which is dopamine.

I never thought dopamine would be a hook for a conversation like this, but it has taken on almost mythic status in popular culture. It has almost become the bad boy of the brain, like the amygdala, which is one brain region that always gets a bad rap and is associated with all sorts of negative things.

These days, of course, we hear a lot about dopamine. You might have heard of things like a dopamine detox, which makes it sound like dopamine is some toxic thing in the brain that we want to get rid of or shut off or have less of in some way.

So we thought we could get into the science of neurotransmitters generally, and then specifically dopamine. What does the science really say? What function does dopamine actually play, not only in our brains but in our ability to thrive and flourish?

Richie, maybe we can start by zooming way out. I’m guessing people have heard the word dopamine. Some may have geeked out a little and learned more or even tried something like a dopamine detox. Other people may have heard about serotonin or other neurotransmitters, but my guess is that people’s understanding is still a little fuzzy.

Could we start with the idea of a neurotransmitter, and then zoom in and look at dopamine specifically?

What Is a Neurotransmitter? (00:03:46)

Richard Davidson:
Yes. Thank you so much. This is a juicy topic and very appropriate for Dharma Lab.

There is a constellation of molecules in the brain that play many different roles. One of those roles is what you mentioned: a neurotransmitter.

A neurotransmitter has a very specific role in mediating the interaction between two neurons. When one neuron fires, it sends an electric potential down the axon of that neuron. You can think of the axon as the wire extending from the cell body. The cell body is where the basic machinery is, and the axon extends from the neuron.

Those axons can be short, and they can also be very, very long. If I asked you right now to move the big toe in your right foot, all of you should be able to do that. That is actually a neuron that extends all the way from your brain to your big toe.

Cortland Dahl:
That’s a single neuron? That’s cool. I didn’t know that.

Richard Davidson:
Yes, it is a single neuron. Neurons have many different lengths.

At the end of the axon, there is machinery that releases a little packet of chemical. That packet binds to what is called a receptor on another neuron, and that initiates an electric change in the second neuron.

That is how communication works between two or more neurons. That is called a neurotransmitter.

Dopamine as Neurotransmitter and Neuromodulator (00:06:04)

There are also neurotransmitters and other molecules that act as neuromodulators. A neuromodulator is different from a neurotransmitter. Dopamine, which is the topic of our conversation today, can serve as both a neurotransmitter and a neuromodulator.

What is the difference?

A neuromodulator alters the threshold for the firing of a neuron. It is not directly involved in cell-to-cell communication in the same way. It is more like the molecular soup in which the neuron resides, and that changes the threshold for the firing of the subsequent neuron.

There are many molecules that serve as both neurotransmitters and neuromodulators, and dopamine is one of them.

I think most neuroscientists would agree that we have not yet discovered the full range of neuromodulators and neurotransmitters in the human brain. It is a vast number. In the popular press, we’ve heard about dopamine, serotonin, maybe norepinephrine, maybe GABA. But there are hundreds of these molecules playing complicated roles.

This is why, in general, it is extremely hazardous to pin a particular mental state on a single molecule. That is almost assuredly excessively simplistic and wrong.

To the best of our knowledge, there is no well-defined psychological state that can be pinned to one specific molecule. It is much more complex than that.

Why the Brain Is Too Complex for Simple Chemical Stories (00:08:20)

Cortland Dahl:
Just as a footnote, I think it’s mind-boggling when you hear how complex our brains are. Could you say a little about the estimates of how many neurons there are, and then beyond that, the connections between neurons?

Now we’re talking about neurons communicating with each other. It’s an order of magnitude we can’t even comprehend.

Richard Davidson:
The estimated number of neurons in the human brain is about 85 or 88 billion.

Cortland Dahl:
That’s a “b,” everyone.

Richard Davidson:
Yes, billion. And the estimated number of connections among those neurons is in the trillions.

Cortland Dahl:
That’s in your head, everyone. Trillions of interconnections, and all these little communications, neuromodulators and neurotransmitters. The number of times that is happening right now, as you’re listening, is beyond what we can actually think about.

Richard Davidson:
That’s very true. I often reflect on this as a humility induction, because it is so complicated and we really understand so little of it at this point in time.

If we pause to appreciate the complexity, and if we are honest with ourselves, it really is a humility induction.

It also exposes how gross our measures are. We’ve done a lot of research with EEG, including the first paper we published with long-term meditation practitioners. EEG involves putting electrodes on the scalp surface. We use it because it is non-invasive and has very fast time resolution.

But some people have likened EEG to taking a stethoscope, putting it on the hood of a car, and trying to understand how the car works by listening to the sounds from the stethoscope. That is what EEG is like.

Cortland Dahl:
So by “gross,” you mean it is such a coarse level of analysis for something that is so incredibly nuanced, beyond what our minds can comprehend. At some point in history, we’ll look back and it will seem like the Stone Age, the way we look at the brain now.

Richard Davidson:
Totally.

There is a whole class of research that goes on in animals, and there are serious ethical issues about this kind of research. That could be the subject of another Dharma Lab. We won’t talk about that right now.

Putting those ethical issues temporarily aside, those studies in animals are done because they use methods that cannot be used in humans. They are invasive methods that allow scientists to look at a much more granular level of analysis that cannot be examined with the methods we currently have in humans.

The Awe and Mystery of the Brain (00:12:02)

Cortland Dahl:
This was not where we were expecting to go, but I think this could be another episode too: the mystery of the brain.

You might come to somebody like Richie and think you’re going to get sophisticated knowledge, and in many ways you will. But in another way, you get a sense that even the world’s leading experts are barely knocking on the door of this universe that is so awe-inspiringly complex and nuanced.

It’s almost like looking up into the night sky and feeling the majesty of this incredible universe, and realizing that this is literally happening between our ears. It’s awe-inducing when you open up to that.

Richard Davidson:
It is. We are constantly forming new synapses, and even structural changes in the brain happen much more quickly than we ever thought they could.

One really interesting thing about the brain is that it has no receptors for feeling itself. When you touch your skin, you can feel that. If you put a vibrator on the skin, you would feel that. But if you opened the brain and put a little vibrator directly on the brain, you wouldn’t feel it.

There is probably an evolutionary reason for this. Our brains are active all the time. If we felt tingling every time our brains were active or new synapses were forming, it would disrupt our capacity to navigate everyday life. We wouldn’t be able to sleep. It would interfere with everything.

But I sometimes do a little practice where I envision all these changes occurring. It is majestic. It really is awe-inspiring. I’ve looked at enough images from studies that have taken samples of brain tissue, where you can see with an electron microscope at super-high resolution what we can’t see non-invasively. You see the extraordinary complexity and beauty that we simply do not have introspective access to.

Cortland Dahl:
Yet another topic to put a pin in for a future episode: the mystery of the brain, and beyond that the mystery of consciousness.

But let’s zoom back in to neurotransmitters and neuromodulators. One way to think about this is that neurotransmitters are how neurons are talking to each other, and neuromodulators influence the level of activity between neurons.

Dopamine is interesting because it has become so meme-worthy. What do we actually know about dopamine and the functions it serves in the brain?

Dopamine, Motivation, and the Myth of Dopamine Detox (00:15:51)

Richard Davidson:
Dopamine is essential for human life.

Cortland Dahl:
There’s no turning dopamine off.

Richard Davidson:
No turning dopamine off. Anyone who thinks they’re going on a dopamine detox and really banishing their brain of dopamine, I hate to burst the bubble, but that would not be compatible with life.

Dopamine is essential in what we can think of as motivation, desire, seeking, anything goal-directed where we have a plan. Even if it’s a pedestrian plan, like after this podcast we might go have dinner. It could be something as simple as that. There is an element of motivation involved in that, and it involves the dopamine systems in the brain.

Wanting vs. Liking (00:17:04)

Dopamine has been described by a very famous neuroscientist, Kent Berridge at the University of Michigan, who has made seminal contributions to our understanding of the dopamine system. He has labeled a key function of the dopamine system as “wanting,” and he contrasts that with something it is often confused with, which is “liking.”

Many times, we like the things we want. But not all the time.

For Dharma Lab viewers, who likely have some appreciation for how the mind works, I think we all have some insight into recognizing that sometimes we get caught up in a wanting cycle that is not necessarily leading to liking. It is a kind of perseverative loop of wanting.

This is part of the reason why there are popular stereotypes about dopamine.

But dopamine also plays an incredibly positive and important role. When I spring out of bed in the morning, go down to have my cup of tea, and then meditate, and have the strong aspiration to meditate, that is inevitably relying on the dopamine system too.

If dopamine were completely blunted, it would be very difficult to get out of bed and do anything. You can think of dopamine as part of an approach-oriented, energetic stance.

Anytime we have an aspiration to do something, that is going to rely, at least to some extent, on the dopamine system. So this is not a system we want to get rid of.

Doom Scrolling and the Loop of Seeking (00:19:24)

Cortland Dahl:
Let me give you a real-world experience, and I’d love to ask how dopamine does or does not play a role in it.

I am very rarely on social media. It’s not something I spend much time on. But the other night I had an experience that a lot of people probably have all the time. Somebody forwarded me a link from one of these apps where you end up scrolling forever.

It was a video that made me laugh hysterically out loud. I was sitting by myself in a room, and if someone had looked in the window, they would have thought I was nuts.

It was a video where two friends were looking at themselves on the screen, and one had put on a filter that made it look like a bug was crawling across the other person’s face. So the person sees what looks like a spider on their face and starts slapping themselves. It was hilarious.

I watched that and was literally laughing hysterically. And the algorithms of these apps know when you watch the whole thing twice. So then it shows you more of the thing you clearly liked.

Then there was another one, and the next one was even funnier. It was wives playing a prank on their spouses, pretending to freak out like something was happening, just to see what the husband would do. And the husbands would start screaming and running around. Again, it was hilarious. I was laughing out loud.

But then I got into this loop where I was trying to find another one. It was so funny, and I had this little burst of joy. Then I literally wasted an hour of my time. After a few minutes I wasn’t laughing anymore. I was just scrolling mindlessly.

I wasn’t consciously thinking, “I have to find another funny video.” I was just in this inner loop, sucked into the endless scroll, until I finally thought, “I’ve got to go to bed.” Then I felt like, “What a waste of time.”

That first minute or two was actually funny. It was nice to laugh hysterically. And then it became a lot of mind-numbing scrolling that was utterly unsatisfying.

So let’s look at a moment like that from the perspective of what is going on in the brain, and specifically with dopamine. These are the moments where people demonize dopamine, as though that’s the thing that happened and we need to somehow extract it.

What would you say about that?

Does Dopamine Explain Why We Keep Scrolling? (00:22:32)

Richard Davidson:
Those are interesting experiences that I think all of us have occasionally.

I would say dopamine likely plays some role, at least in the initial entry into that scrolling perseveration. Whether it is sustaining that over the whole period of time, I don’t know. It’s an interesting question.

Part of it depends on the extent to which you feel a real strong urge to do it. If someone took away your phone at that point, how would you react? There are ways of probing whether the wanting cycle is really dominant.

There could be other reasons why people scroll. One of my theories is that people engage in this kind of behavior in part to block the default mode, because the scrolling is consuming.

I’m curious about your phenomenological report of when you are scrolling. But I think that at least in the initial stages of scrolling, when people are really into it, there is what we would call experiential fusion.

Experiential Fusion and Mindless Behavior (00:24:21)

Cortland Dahl:
For sure.

Richard Davidson:
Their whole awareness is fused with the activity they’re engaged in. There’s not a lot of meta-awareness. They’re just sucked in.

Cortland Dahl:
It’s almost like there’s no conscious doom scrolling, because if you were fully aware and conscious, you would just stop doing it.

I sometimes have the same experience drinking soda. You almost have to do it mindlessly, because if you really savor the taste, it’s actually kind of gross. I’ve noticed there are certain foods and certain things you consume that only work mindlessly.

Richard Davidson:
But that’s not true of French fries.

Cortland Dahl:
Richie, now you’re in sensitive territory. We’re not going to go there. I will concede soda. French fries, we’ll see. I’ll experiment with that.

But it’s true. Certain things only work mindlessly. When you consciously do them, you would not do them anymore because they don’t feel good. It’s interesting. It changes a lot.

Richard Davidson:
Exactly. That is in part what sustains that kind of behavior as well. And I don’t think that is primarily a dopaminergic process.

Viewers may ask, “Okay, then what molecule is responsible for that?” And I would say, likely 500 molecules. Don’t even try to think about it that way. It’s not the right level of analysis.

Novelty and Reward Prediction Error (00:25:42)

Cortland Dahl:
Going back to Berridge’s work, we have a whole episode on the distinction between liking and wanting, and there’s a great paper where he summarizes a lot of the research in this area.

If you look at the experience I was having, there was a moment of genuine liking. I was having fun. I was laughing hysterically. Then there was a moment of seeking. I was just looking.

There are all sorts of interesting things in the way algorithms work. There is something around duration. There is something around novelty. If you really pay attention, it’s not just that everything is the same. The algorithm gives you things that are different intentionally, and then you get something you like and it feels new again.

If you got the exact same thing 10 times in a row, even if you liked it at first, you would grow accustomed to it. It would lose the novelty factor. So there is something around duration, novelty, and emotion. There are all sorts of things mixed into it.

Richard Davidson:
The novelty piece you’re mentioning is really important. It is a very important aspect of dopamine function that has been studied.

There is this idea of a reward prediction error, as it is called in the technical scientific lingo.

What is a reward prediction error?

In this case, you have a certain class of video that you’re looking at. You saw one, so you have a mental model of what these videos are like.

Cortland Dahl:
So now that’s what I want. That’s the wanting. I’m looking for that.

Richard Davidson:
Exactly. You’re looking for that.

Let’s say the next video you encounter is even more hysterical. That is a reward prediction error. You would actually see a larger dopamine spike than you saw previously.

If you saw a video that was comparable to what you just saw, there wouldn’t be any change in the dopamine signal. If you saw a video that was much less interesting and less compelling, there would be a decline, a decrement in dopamine.

Dopamine signaling is very dynamic and responsive to the information to which you are being exposed. It plays an important role in certain aspects of learning, and it informs your future seeking.

The Easter Egg Example: Seeking, Finding, and Disappointment (00:29:00)

Cortland Dahl:
Let’s unpack that.

We just had Easter in the U.S., and I had this image of a little kid running around looking for an Easter egg. They have the model. They know what they want. They’re looking, they’re not finding, then they find something. Sometimes they find something beyond what they expected, maybe an extra big piece of candy or the basket with all the candy.

That seems like a good example because the seeking is very clear. The mental model is very clear. The not finding, and then the finding more, has all the dimensions you talked about.

But it’s interesting. You’re saying that when the kid is looking for the Easter egg and doesn’t find it, say they lift up the cushion of the couch and there’s nothing there, dopamine levels will actually drop in that moment?

Richard Davidson:
Yes.

Cortland Dahl:
Because if you forget about the neurotransmitters and just look at behavior, of course the seeking doesn’t stop. They immediately shift and think, “Where do I need to go next?”

So there’s something still driving the seeking. But if dopamine is dropping, and if dopamine is that motivational, goal-directed impulse in the brain, how does that work?

Dopamine in Different Brain Circuits (00:30:23)

Richard Davidson:
Those are excellent questions. It’s an opportunity to speak about another piece of complexity: dopamine is found in a number of different parts of the brain. It’s not just in one isolated location.

Its function in different parts of the brain is different. It is the same molecule, but the location is different, the receptors are different, the connections are different, and the function is different.

The dopamine that is part of the wanting circuit is found primarily in an area of the brain called the ventral striatum, a subcortical area that is rich in dopamine.

We know that if there is brain damage to that area, based mostly on animal studies, animals will not seek in the ways we’ve been talking about. But it doesn’t affect their enjoyment of a reward.

Let’s say bananas are their favorite food. They can smell the banana. They know it’s six feet away. If they walk, they can get the banana. But they will not go and get it, even though they can smell it.

But if you put the banana in their mouth, they will enjoy it. Scientists know they enjoy it because they make certain sounds and facial expressions when they are enjoying it. If you video them, you can see it.

There are other molecules that seem much more associated with pleasure. The two major classes of molecules associated with pleasure in the brain are endogenous opiates and endogenous cannabinoids. Endocannabinoids are related to the active ingredient in marijuana, and they are found endogenously in the human brain. Those molecules are active in response to pleasure.

The reward prediction error signaling I was talking about is mediated in a different but adjacent part of the brain that is also rich in dopamine. The caudate nucleus is critically important for prediction error signaling. There is also prediction error signaling in other areas of the brain, including the prefrontal cortex.

So these dopamine-related functions occur in different areas of the brain.

Cortland Dahl:
So going back to the Easter egg example, the child is looking for something, wanting something, and not finding it where they expect it to be. Is it in the caudate that the levels would drop, but in the ventral striatum they might still be high because the child is still seeking?

Richard Davidson:
I’m not sure what would happen in that specific case. If the child is still seeking, you would expect dopamine levels to be high in the ventral striatum.

The prediction error changes we’re talking about are phasic changes. They are extremely short-lived, very dynamic, up and down. They are like an evoked potential, an electrical signal that goes down and then up very quickly.

These are changes that we cannot see in the human brain because we do not have methods to look at changes on that time course non-invasively.

What Actually Helps with Compulsive Loops? (00:35:37)

Cortland Dahl:
Zooming out, with memes like dopamine detox, I think what people are trying to understand and intervene in are these cycles that are essentially unfulfilling but become almost compulsive behavior. Doom scrolling is maybe the classic example.

You’re doing something inherently unfulfilling, and yet you do it compulsively and for long periods of time.

One key takeaway is that this is likely much more complex than we normally think. Even with one chemical, one neurotransmitter or neuromodulator, it depends on which part of the brain you’re looking at, which network you’re looking at, and the time course from one moment to the next.

So you can’t just say, “That’s the thing we want to stop happening,” because it is way more complex than that.

But what could we say? In my mind, disentangling liking and wanting is one of the most helpful things for understanding how this is processed in the brain. What would you want people to know that could help them navigate some of these compulsive behaviors that we get stuck in?

Savoring as a Way Out of Wanting (00:37:47)

Richard Davidson:
The knowledge we’re providing in this discussion can be helpful as background. But locking onto it in an excessively concrete way may not be that helpful.

Getting stuck in doom scrolling may involve dopamine initially, but it has to be much more complicated than that. It clearly involves other things too.

I think the distinction between wanting and liking is very important. Creating the causes and conditions that help us appreciate the liking, and really tune in to the events or stimuli associated with liking, can be enormously helpful.

Some psychologists have called this savoring. We can really savor these positive moments, and that can help us get unstuck from the loop of wanting.

The dopamine story is interesting, and at a very high level there is truth to the fact that dopamine is primarily associated with wanting and seeking. To the extent that this kind of behavior is causing problems, we can do our best to change it.

But one of the best ways to change it may be simply to focus more on liking.

Meditation, Breath, and the Practice of Savoring (00:39:24)

Cortland Dahl:
That is such an important point, and it reminds me of key insights from meditation and my own practice.

Even with something like mindful breathing, which was the first practice I learned and one I still do, there are practices where the orientation is almost neutral. You step back and orient to awareness itself. You are not worrying so much about what is happening within the field of awareness. Whatever is happening is just a neutral phenomenon, and orienting to awareness itself is the focus.

But there is another kind of practice that is very different, and it is all about savoring.

You can practice breathing with awareness in many different ways. One way is where awareness is the main point and the breath is just a support or anchor. But another way is to breathe as a process of savoring. You really tune into the felt sense of the nourishing, even healing quality of the breath.

Because I’ve done both forms of practice, and a lot of the savoring aspect, even now as I do this I have goosebumps. I can feel this chemical reaction in my body. My whole body is feeling this just because the moment you remember it, it starts happening.

At the beginning, it uses the imagination. Then at a certain point, it elicits a visceral response. You feel this pleasant energy, and you immerse yourself in the healing energy of your own breath. It is there every moment.

That is different from stepping back and being aware. Both are helpful and profound, but they do different things.

The key is that you can do this with anything. Loving-kindness and compassion practices are like savoring connection. You first elicit the feeling of connectedness.

I can do this right now. We’re talking, and I can say, “This is Richie. I love Richie.” Immediately I feel that. I do love you. And then you can immerse yourself in that.

It is a skill to stay tuned in. It’s like finding the frequency. Habit energy pulls you off course, but you learn to keep it dialed in, and you can get good at it.

When you’re around the Dalai Lama, he is always in that frequency. He is never not in that frequency. You can feel it when you’re with him. He is radiating that because he is completely dialed into that frequency.

In a way, this quality of savoring is a skill you can learn and deploy in different ways. It could be eating an orange. It could be connecting with somebody else. It could be how you relate to your own breath.

There is no chasing in it. It is just tuning into something that is already there.

Letting Go of Seeking (00:43:20)

Richard Davidson:
Exactly. I love that description. You don’t need to seek it because it’s right there.

You can let go of seeking completely and tune right into the delicious nectar that is always there.

Cortland Dahl:
I feel like if people just knew this, it would change so much. There is so much chasing in our lives. Even meditation can become another place where we bring chasing energy and seeking energy, which almost never works out very well.

Maybe we can end here. Are there any practical things from your own practice that help you stay with the savoring side of things, and notice the pull toward chasing and seeking?

Gratitude, Bodhicitta, and the Sweetness of Connection (00:43:56)

Richard Davidson:
For me, appreciation and gratitude are really important.

Also, the kind of practice that you and I do before each Dharma Lab episode, bodhicitta practice, is very important. Reflecting on how our actions can be of benefit to others has a sweetness associated with it.

Really leaning in and connecting to that sweet quality of connection is heart-opening for me. It naturally allows the wanting piece to subside on its own.

There is not an active pushing down of wanting. It is more about leaning into and connecting with this sweetness.

If you do find that wanting is rearing its head, then to use a strategy we’ve been taught by Mingyur Rinpoche, you can become aware of it. Really just be aware of your wanting. If you stay aware of it and do not get totally sucked into it, it will subside on its own.

Renunciation as Reorientation (00:45:28)

Cortland Dahl:
That’s beautiful. There are some helpful things here, especially if we zoom out to the detox idea.

A lot of the meme around dopamine detox is almost an abstinence mentality. You just need to stop all stimulation, anything that is creating problems. It can feel like a retreat-from-the-world mentality.

This reminds me of one of the most misunderstood words in Buddhist psychology and meditation practice. There is a Tibetan term, ngé jung, which we often translate as renunciation. But renunciation conjures up exactly the detox mentality, as though it is all about letting go, distancing yourself from the bad stuff or the things that create problems.

But what that term really means, and what I think is a more accurate and helpful translation, is reorientation.

It is more about what you are turning toward than what you are letting go of or turning away from. If you forget that, it is not sustainable. It is depleting. You have nothing bringing you joy or motivating you. You have taken something away, but there is nothing there to sustain you.

This is about orienting toward something nourishing, fulfilling, and wholesome. Then the letting go becomes natural, because you are tasting an alternative that is obviously superior to the thing you let go of.

Doom scrolling versus connecting with a friend, or savoring something meaningful. Of course that feels better. You have that contrast in your mind, rather than just saying, “I’m going to let go of that,” and then what?

So maybe it is not just about letting go of endless wanting and craving. It is perhaps even more about what you like, what you savor, and what you find fulfilling.

It feels like you are giving the brain analysis of that.

Richard Davidson:
That’s beautiful.

Closing (00:48:00)

Cortland Dahl:
We could clearly talk a lot more about this. It feels like we just scratched the surface. We introduced a whole cast of characters with other neurotransmitters and other things, so maybe we can do more of this in future episodes.

As always, thank you so much, Richie. I learned a lot. This is super interesting, and I’m sure everybody came away with something helpful in their lives.

Thank you for everything you shared.

Richard Davidson:
Thank you. Wonderful to be here.

Cortland Dahl:
Stay tuned. I’m sure we’ll have many more conversations like this. If you’re still with us, thank you for watching, and we’ll see you again soon. Take care.

During one experiment, we recorded brain activity using EEG while participants engaged in an open awareness meditation infused with compassion.

Then we looked at the raw data from one practitioner in particular: Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche.

As the signal streamed across the screen in the lab, something extraordinary appeared. Electrical traces from dozens of electrodes spread across the cortex suddenly rose and fell together in rapid synchrony.

For a moment we wondered if it was an artifact.

But it wasn’t.

We realized we were seeing something momentous—patterns of brain activity that had never been observed before.

The brain was generating extraordinarily strong gamma oscillations—fast neural rhythms around 30–80 Hz—synchronized across widely distributed regions of the cortex. Even more striking, this synchrony emerged almost immediately when Mingyur Rinpoche entered the meditative state.

Gamma synchrony has long been associated with moments when the brain integrates information across distributed neural systems—periods of perceptual binding, learning, and insight.

Seeing such powerful, large-scale synchrony suggested something profound: through training, the brain may become more capable of integrating information across neural networks. In other words, the capacity for insight itself may be trainable (Lutz et al., 2004).

Over the past two decades, neuroscience has begun to explore this possibility. A fascinating new study published recently in Nature Communications now provides fresh evidence about what happens in the brain during the moment of insight, revealing how sudden understanding reorganizes neural representations across the brain.

What the researchers discovered reinforces something contemplative traditions have suggested for centuries:

Insight is not merely intellectual.

It is a reorganization in how the mind represents reality.

When the Brain Reorganizes Perception

In the study, participants viewed ambiguous black-and-white images known as Mooney images. At first glance these pictures appear to be meaningless patterns of light and shadow.

The brain struggles to interpret them.

Then suddenly the image resolves.

A dog.

A face.

A spider.

What moments earlier looked like random shapes becomes instantly recognizable.

Using neuroimaging, the researchers observed a striking neural shift during this moment. Activity patterns in visual regions—particularly the ventral occipito-temporal cortex, which plays a key role in object recognition—reorganized dramatically.

Before insight, the brain encoded the image as disconnected fragments.

After insight, the same sensory input was represented as a coherent object.

The researchers describe this transformation as representational change.

What is especially cool about this experiment is that nothing about the external stimulus had changed.

But the brain had changed how it interpreted what it was seeing.

The world remained the same.

The mind reorganized.

The Emotional Spark of the “Aha”

Insight is not purely cognitive.

When participants experienced the sudden realization that revealed the hidden object, activity increased in the amygdala, which processes emotional salience, and the hippocampus, which detects novelty and supports memory formation.

This helps explain why insight feels so distinctive.

An “Aha!” moment carries a sense of surprise and emotional resonance. The brain registers that something important has happened.

And this matters for learning.

When participants were tested days later, problems solved through insight were far more likely to be remembered than those solved gradually.

Insight is therefore not simply a flash of understanding.

It is a powerful learning event.

The Brain as a Prediction Engine

To understand why insight can be transformative, it helps to recognize something fundamental about how the brain operates.

The brain is not a passive recorder of reality. Increasingly, neuroscience views perception as a process of prediction. The brain continuously generates models of the world and updates those models using incoming sensory information (Friston, 2010; Clark, 2013).

Most of the time these predictive models allow us to navigate the world efficiently.

But they can also become rigid.

We interpret ambiguous situations through habitual narratives about ourselves or others. These interpretations can become so familiar that they feel like reality itself.

Insight occurs when these predictive models are suddenly updated or reorganized. The brain recognizes that its previous interpretation was incomplete. A new representation emerges. And the same situation now appears in a different light. In this sense, insight may represent a moment of rapid neuroplasticity—when the brain abruptly reorganizes its internal models and begins to perceive the same world in a fundamentally different way.

This capacity for cognitive reorganization may also play an important role in trauma recovery, where healing often involves loosening rigid threat predictions and restoring the brain’s flexibility to interpret experience in new ways.

This figure beautifully illustrates the central thesis of the essay: insight is literally a reorganization of how the brain represents reality.

Brain activity during the moment of insight. When participants suddenly recognized the hidden object in an ambiguous image, patterns of neural activity in visual cortex reorganized dramatically. The same stimulus remained unchanged—but the brain’s internal representation shifted.

Insight in Contemplative Practice

Contemplative traditions have long emphasized this process.

In Buddhist psychology, insight involves seeing clearly the mental processes that construct our experience.

Through careful observation of the mind, practitioners come to recognize that:

• thoughts are mental events rather than facts

• emotions are dynamic processes rather than fixed states

• the sense of self is a continually evolving construction

From a neuroscientific perspective, these realizations may reflect transformations in the brain’s predictive models of identity and experience.

The same principle that allows a Mooney image to suddenly resolve into a recognizable object may also allow our understanding of ourselves to shift.

When that shift occurs, patterns of suffering that once seemed inevitable can begin to loosen.

The brain is literally seeing differently.

Read more

See below for FLASHCARDS, Full Transcript Below

Watch on Youtube; Listen on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.

FLASHCARDS / EPISODE COMPANION HERE

Podcast Chapter List

(00:00:00) – The brain is a storyteller

(00:01:03) – Welcome to Dharma Lab

(00:04:05) – Norman Geschwind and behavioral neurology

(00:06:31) – The thumbtack story: emotional memory without conscious memory

(00:12:12) – Language, the left hemisphere, and the corpus callosum

(00:19:04) – Brain asymmetry and emotion

(00:22:54) – Why emotion was so understudied

(00:29:26) – Brain asymmetry, attachment, and aversion

(00:31:19) – The prefrontal cortex and the old divide between thought and feeling

(00:37:07) – Studying emotion in newborn infants

(00:42:37) – Meditation, brain asymmetry, and the immune system

(00:47:04) – Why “it’s not so simple”

Written transcript for those who prefer to read

Lightly edited for clarity and readability.

Subscribe now

The Brain Is a Storyteller (00:00:00)

Cortland Dahl:
The example you gave earlier, with Broca’s area and the split-brain findings, points to something fascinating. Parts of the brain are not always talking to each other. One part of the brain clearly knows something, but the part that communicates doesn’t. And it doesn’t stay silent. It makes something up.

That’s the funny thing. In the absence of information, we don’t just stay silent. When we don’t know something, we are not comfortable with not knowing. Some instinctual part of us fills in the blanks almost all the time.

Richard Davidson:
Exactly. The human mind and brain is a storyteller. This is how we make sense of our world. We create these narratives.

Welcome to Dharma Lab (00:01:03)

Cortland Dahl:
Welcome everyone to another episode of Dharma Lab. I’m Cortland Dahl, and I’m here with Dr. Richard Davidson, who we all lovingly call Richie.

As many of you know, Richie is one of the most pioneering and widely studied neuroscientists on the planet. It’s a gift to be in conversation with him.

Today we’re going to have a conversation I’ve wanted to have for a long time. I moved to Madison, Wisconsin in 2012 to study with Richie, and over the years I’ve heard many conversations at the Center for Healthy Minds about neuroscience, meditation, and the mind. But one thing that has never really happened, even for those of us who work closely with Richie, is a kind of broad “download” from him about the amazing body of work he has contributed to over the decades.

Many people know Richie as a pioneer of contemplative science and contemplative neuroscience, the scientific study of how practices like meditation affect the mind, the brain, and our biology. But he is also a pioneer of affective neuroscience, which you might think of as the neuroscience of emotion.

To be a pioneer in one field is extraordinary. To be a pioneer in two is kind of mind-boggling.

So today I want to dig into some of those key insights, especially around neural asymmetry, which was a huge part of Richie’s early career and a central theme in affective neuroscience.

Norman Geschwind and Behavioral Neurology (00:04:05)

Richard Davidson:
This topic is near and dear to my heart. It still is something I’m extremely interested in. It really began when I was a graduate student and had the opportunity to study with Norman Geschwind at Harvard Medical School.

Geschwind was one of the great towering figures in what we now call behavioral neurology. I took a course with him on functional neuroanatomy, which is basically how different parts of the brain are connected to different behavioral functions.

He was a neurologist, so he looked at people’s behavior as an external reflection of what was going on in the brain. He was an extremely keen observer of behavior, and he was also very demanding. He was what we would now call a localizationist, someone who believed in the specific localization of different functions in different parts of the brain.

He used to say that if you don’t believe in localization, it’s because you don’t know neuroanatomy well enough. That pushed me to learn neuroanatomy deeply, including doing a human brain dissection.

I also went on rounds with him, where he would visit neurological patients in the hospital. He would do these bedside exams that were incredible, using clever ways of interacting with patients to reveal what might be different about their brains.

The Thumbtack Story: Emotional Memory Without Conscious Memory (00:06:31)

Richard Davidson:
One of the most famous demonstrations I saw involved a technique associated with Korsakoff, who described a syndrome of dementia related to alcoholism.

Korsakoff showed that there can be a separation between memory for declarative information and memory for emotional information.

A person with severe dementia might not recognize you if you came back the day after seeing them. They may have no conscious memory of who you are. But the question was whether the same was true for emotional information.

The demonstration was this: a doctor would put a thumbtack in his hand and shake the patient’s hand. The patient would feel the prick and withdraw. The next day, the doctor would return and ask, “Do you know who I am?” The patient would say no. The doctor would identify himself and offer his hand again.

But the patient refused to shake his hand.

When asked why, the patient confabulated. He said something like, “I think your hand is dirty, and I don’t want to shake your hand.”

That’s a beautiful demonstration of the dissociation between declarative memory and emotional memory. The declarative memory was gone. The patient did not recognize the doctor’s face or name and had no conscious memory of having seen him. But the emotional memory remained.

Cortland Dahl:
That one point has huge implications for life. We often have an interpretation of something and we are completely convinced of it. It seems so real that it doesn’t occur to us that it’s an interpretation.

And yet the mind may have limited information, or may not be conscious of something, and it creates a whole story. In some cases, the story is flat-out wrong. But in the moment, it feels like reality.

Richard Davidson:
Exactly. And this is not just occurring in patients with frank brain damage. This is happening in all of us all the time. This is how our minds work. The mind creates a story about the world, and it’s from that story that we operate.

It is not from some veridical perception of things in the world. There is no such thing as that. Our minds are constantly creating these stories.

This relates directly to our insight pillar of well-being, which is about the narratives we are constantly creating about ourselves.

Language, the Left Hemisphere, and the Corpus Callosum (00:12:12)

Richard Davidson:
One of Geschwind’s great contributions was his work on language-related lateralization in the human brain.

In virtually all right-handed people, which is about 85 to 90 percent of the population, it is the left hemisphere that can speak, while the right hemisphere cannot.

There is a key region called Broca’s area, named after Paul Broca. Damage to this area, often through stroke, can impair a person’s ability to speak. What is interesting is that this is one of the most clearly lateralized functions in the human brain. If this area in the left hemisphere is damaged, the corresponding area in the right hemisphere does not simply take over.

The two hemispheres of the brain are very similar in many ways, but they have important differences. They are connected by the corpus callosum, a massive bundle of white matter that connects neurons in one hemisphere to corresponding neurons in the other. It is the largest pathway of connection in the human brain.

In the past, for some patients with severe epilepsy, surgeons would cut the corpus callosum to prevent seizures from spreading from one hemisphere to the other. This left people with two disconnected hemispheres.

When that happens, you can demonstrate strange dissociations. For example, if a split-brain patient is blindfolded and holds a glass in the left hand, the sensory information goes to the right hemisphere. But because the right hemisphere cannot speak, and the information cannot cross to the left hemisphere, the person may not be able to verbally identify the object. If you give them multiple-choice pictures, though, they can point to the glass.

Cortland Dahl:
That’s the same basic finding. One part of the brain clearly knows something, but the part that communicates doesn’t. And it doesn’t stay silent. It makes something up.

Brain Asymmetry and Emotion (00:19:04)

Richard Davidson:
Most early research on brain asymmetry focused on the back of the brain, where language and some perceptual differences were located. The left hemisphere was specialized for speech and language. The right hemisphere seemed better at certain visual-spatial skills.

But another early observation was especially interesting: when patients had damage to the left hemisphere, especially including the left prefrontal region, they were more likely to show depression after the brain damage. Two people could have comparable amounts of damage, but if the damage was in different hemispheres, the emotional consequences could be different.

That led to the conjecture that the left hemisphere might play some role in emotions that are antithetical to depression. These patients often seemed anhedonic, meaning they were not experiencing much pleasure.

There were also clinical reports of patients with right-hemisphere damage, whose left hemisphere was intact, showing inappropriate laughter or joy in situations where that would not normally occur.

These were early clues that there might be interesting emotional differences between the hemispheres.

Why Emotion Was So Understudied (00:22:54)

Richard Davidson:
In those days, emotion was very understudied. Almost all the research on the brain and emotion was done in rats. It was focused mostly on the hypothalamus and basic drives like hunger and sex.

But these neurological patients were showing emotional changes from cortical damage, without frank damage to subcortical structures. That was fascinating to me.

I began thinking about ways to frame this theoretically. One important point is that asymmetries are not restricted to humans. You see asymmetries in other species. So maybe asymmetry is not fundamentally tied to language. Maybe language is one component of a deeper biological system.

There was a famous but obscure paper from 1959 by an ethologist, someone who studies animal behavior in natural environments. The paper traced approach and withdrawal behavior across the whole span of evolution, even in single-cell organisms.

The basic claim was that if an organism behaves at all, it will approach and withdraw. That is the fundamental behavioral decision an organism makes with respect to its environment.

In a moment of loose but creative insight, it occurred to me that asymmetry is a fundamental property of nervous systems, and approach and withdrawal are fundamental behavioral patterns. Maybe they are connected. Maybe the observations about depression and euphoria in brain-damaged patients had something to do with this.

Brain Asymmetry, Attachment, and Aversion (00:29:26)

Cortland Dahl:
That’s fascinating from a Buddhist perspective. In Tibetan Buddhism, there is not the same kind of biological mapping, but there is an incredibly sophisticated understanding of the mind, psychology, and what is called the subtle body. Asymmetry shows up all over the place. And while the terms approach and avoidance are not used in the same way, attachment and aversion are central terms. You can see the correlation.

Richard Davidson:
Yes. I’ve thought about that too. There are breathing practices, such as unilateral nostril breathing, that may differentially activate each hemisphere. There is research on that as well.

This was the beginning of my theory of brain asymmetry and its relation to approach and withdrawal, or perhaps attachment and aversion.

The Prefrontal Cortex and the Old Divide Between Thought and Feeling (00:31:19)

Richard Davidson:
This was happening in the late 1970s. I became especially interested in the prefrontal cortex.

Another major influence on me was Walle Nauta, one of the great neuroanatomists of the 20th century. He was at MIT, and I took his neuroanatomy course while I was a graduate student at Harvard. His area of focus was the prefrontal cortex.

He wrote a paper called “The Frontal Lobes and the Regulation of Mood.” It was the first time I had read someone speculating that the prefrontal cortex had something to do with emotion, not just cognition.

Historically, the prefrontal cortex was thought of as part of the brain’s cognitive machinery. Emotion and cognition were often seen as separate. This was really a byproduct of a philosophical dogma: rational thought on one side, emotion and feeling on the other, with the two considered independent and often at war.

The idea that thought and feeling could be working synergistically together was not in the lexicon or imagination of scientists in those days.

Studying Emotion in Newborn Infants (00:37:07)

Richard Davidson:
When we began, the only noninvasive way to study the human brain was EEG, which records electrical activity from the scalp. We began recording brain electrical activity in the prefrontal regions while trying to activate emotions associated with approach and withdrawal.

We thought that if these patterns were truly fundamental, they should appear very early in life. So we studied babies, including newborn infants.

How do you elicit emotional responses in newborns? It turns out to be pretty easy. We gave them a small squirt of sugar water, which they loved, and a small squirt of lemon juice, which produced a very different facial response.

Charles Darwin had written about facial expressions of emotion in humans and animals, and he claimed that expressions of pleasure and disgust were innate and present from birth. We tested this by recording the infants’ facial expressions and brain activity.

Even 72 hours after birth, you could clearly see different facial responses to sugar water and lemon juice. We also saw differences in brain asymmetry in the predicted direction.

There were big individual differences. People differ in their asymmetry at baseline, before you do anything.

People with greater left-sided prefrontal activation tend to be more approach-oriented. They tend to be more optimistic and ready to go when an opportunity presents itself. People with greater activation in the same regions of the right hemisphere tend to be more avoidant and shy.

Meditation, Brain Asymmetry, and the Immune System (00:42:37)

Cortland Dahl:
What are the takeaways from this research? Beyond just being interesting neuroscience, how does this help us understand our own minds and navigate our inner terrain?

Richard Davidson:
There are many things to say, but one concrete project led to my most highly cited scientific publication. It was published in 2003, and to the best of our knowledge, it was the first randomized controlled trial of mindfulness-based stress reduction, or MBSR, that had ever been done.

MBSR was developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn as an eight-week intervention to give people initial training in awareness practices. We studied MBSR in a group of very stressed employees at a tech company in Madison, Wisconsin.

We brought participants into the lab before and after the eight-week program and measured asymmetry in their brain. We wondered whether beginning meditators might show a shift toward more left-sided activation, which we associated with a more optimistic, approach-oriented style.

The study also happened to end around Thanksgiving, which is when many people receive flu vaccines. We asked participants not to get a flu vaccine before the study ended. Instead, we gave them the flu vaccine ourselves and took blood samples before and after, which allowed us to measure antibody response.

We hypothesized that people who went through the meditation training might show a more robust response to the vaccine.

That is what we found. People showed a greater increase in left-sided activation over the course of training, and they also showed a more robust antibody response to the flu vaccine compared to untreated controls.

At the time, these were very novel findings. The study has limitations. It was not a large sample, and the methodology was not perfect. But it was the first study of its kind.

Why “It’s Not So Simple” (00:47:04)

Richard Davidson:
There is a lot more to say about asymmetry. I’ll conclude with a puzzle.

We measured brain electrical activity in very long-term practitioners who had been meditating for decades and had tens of thousands of hours of practice. They did not show extreme left prefrontal activation.

So it is not so simple.

That raised all kinds of questions about what this metric is actually reflecting. It is clearly reflecting something interesting, and it seems to be associated with early stages of meditation practice. But there may be an inverted U-shaped function, and the story is more complicated than we originally thought.

We originally thought about this in terms of approach and withdrawal, positive and negative emotion. But deeper reflection on Buddhist psychology suggests that the way we parse emotion may be imperfect.

There may be a better way to think about emotion: not simply positive versus negative, but virtuous or unvirtuous. In other words, some emotions lead us toward greater awareness, connection, insight, and purpose, while others detract from those qualities.

That gives the framework much more nuance and complexity. It became clear to us that this complexity had to be taken into account.

Closing (00:49:17)

Cortland Dahl:
I think we just mapped out about ten future Dharma Lab episodes. This was fantastic.

I’ve wanted to have this conversation for a long time, just to geek out on these questions and these lines of research, because they are so fascinating and have so many implications.

I have even more questions now than when we began. I especially want to talk about the 1990s, when asymmetry caught the popular imagination through ideas like “left brain” and “right brain.” As one of the pioneers of that field, I’d love to hear how you think about the ways it was popularized, simplified, and maybe misrepresented.

But that’s another conversation.

Thank you, Richie. And thank you everyone for listening. This will not be the last conversation of this kind. Take care, and see you soon.

But something else happened in that moment. As he flew through the air, before he knew whether he would live or die, his mind opened into a state of awareness unlike anything he had ever experienced. No pain. No fear. No past or future. Just a radiant clarity so complete and compelling, so foreign to anything in his life up to that point, that it completely reorganized his identity.

He couldn’t make sense of it afterward. He had no framework for what had happened. No spiritual vocabulary, no philosophical context. All he knew was that his understanding of his own mind, and of what was possible for a human being, had been permanently altered. And he had no idea where to look.

He spent more than three decades searching.

The Inner Sky

His search took him in many directions. Eventually it brought him to a meditation retreat with Mingyur Rinpoche, the Tibetan teacher that Richie and I have both studied with for many years. Sitting in that retreat, something clicked. He had finally found the language for what had happened to him on that battlefield.

The word in Tibetan is rigpa.

Translated literally, rigpa just means awareness. But this translation misses something. This is not ordinary awareness, the kind we operate from most of the time, which is filtered through layers of identity, habit, memory, assumption, and reaction. It isn’t the awareness shaped and narrowed by who we think we are, by our personal history, by the million small lenses we’ve accumulated over a lifetime without realizing it.

Rigpa is not that. It’s the nature of awareness itself. The open, knowing quality of mind that underlies all of our ordinary experiences of self, while being completely beyond them. The classic image is sky and weather. Clouds, storms, clear days, all of it arises within the sky and passes through it. The sky is never touched.

This is what my friend had glimpsed. The shock of being so suddenly at the precipice of death stripped away everything ordinary, and for a few seconds he saw what was underneath.

Mingyur Rinpoche calls rigpa our “inner sky.”

The Most Direct Path

Within the Tibetan tradition, this recognition of rigpa is considered the most direct path to awakening. It doesn’t require a gradual transformation through meditation or a slow refinement of character. Rather, it’s a recognition, available right now, of something already present and already complete. The “fruitional approach,” as it’s sometimes called, begins from the premise that you are not a broken thing that needs to be fixed. You are already in this moment, as awake as you will ever be. The work is to see that clearly, to stop overlooking it.

But of course, that’s harder than it sounds.

Rigpa is so simple that we don’t believe it. It’s so close that we look right past it. Like the air you breathe, or, if you’re a fish, the water you swim in. The very immediacy of it makes it invisible.

Getting in touch with rigpa involves two parallel streams of practice.

One is the direct method: learning to glimpse this pure awareness, growing familiar with it through repeated recognition, until what was once a rare flash becomes something more continuous. In the Tibetan tradition, this typically happens through so-called “pointing out instructions.” These are experiential instructions given by deeply experienced teachers that guide students to explore different states of consciousness, and eventually helping them see beyond all these shifting states to the underlying “essence” of mind that has been there all along. This is described as “meeting your own mind face to face.” But you’re not meeting the busy, reactive mind crowded with thoughts and reactions and memories. It’s a direct encounter with the very nature of consciousness.

There are many ways to get a glimpse of awareness: Being in nature, moments of joy and celebration, experiences of awe and wonder. But most of these experiences come and go without us recognizing what just happened. They’re just memorable experiences that quickly pass by. To nurture them, we need to recognize what they are and learn how to find our way back to them. This is what “pointing out instructions” are for.

The other stream is slower and less glamorous. It works with everything that blocks this encounter from happening. It unearths our mental and emotional habits and loosens the rigidity of our unconscious beliefs. It illuminates the places where we’re stuck, the patterns we return to compulsively even knowing they don’t serve us. This stream of practice is known as “ngöndro” in Tibetan, which translates as “foundational practices.” This path includes a whole series of meditations and contemplations:

• Reflections on the unique opportunity we have as human beings

• Contemplations of the fragility of the circumstances we take for granted

• Meditations on how easily we get caught in cycles that don’t serve us

• Practices that reorient the heart toward compassion

• Imagination-based practices that help us to let go of old mental and emotional baggage

• Meditations on generosity and giving that upend the feeling of inner impoverishment that many of us carry through life

Most people spend years with these practices, doing the unglamorous work of loosening up the mind so that a glimpse of pure awareness becomes possible.

A New Frontier in Contemplative Science

Almost none of this has been studied.

Richie has spent decades studying some of the most advanced meditators alive, including Mingyur Rinpoche. He documented brain states that are genuinely extraordinary, both during meditation and at baseline. But that research captures the outcome of decades of training. It doesn’t show the before and after, or what happens to an ordinary person when they have their first glimpse of pure awareness.

There are so many interesting questions we have yet to explore: What actually happens in the mind and brain when someone recognizes pure awareness for the first time? What do the foundational practices do as they slowly loosen the hardened layers of self? What shifts in someone who has been caught in cycles of suffering and begins, for the first time, to see through them?

We don’t know. We haven’t looked.

The process of recognizing and growing familiar with rigpa reflects the far reaches of human potential, an area of inner exploration almost entirely unmapped by modern research. Richie and I talk about this often. There’s an unwritten assumption running through most of the scientific literature on mental health that simply being free from psychological disorders is the best we can reasonably hope for. That being “okay” is as good as it gets.

These teachings point in a completely different direction. They describe a dimension of the human mind that isn’t damaged or in need of repair. A source of clarity, care, and creativity that isn’t something you build toward but something that’s already here, already whole. Many wisdom traditions point to this same territory. The Tibetan tradition does it with particular precision and depth, but it isn’t alone. The mountain has more than one path, and people have been finding their way up it for a long time.

Finding Your Way Home

My friend’s story from Vietnam has stayed with me since he shared it so many years ago. He didn’t arrive at an experience of pure awareness after decades of meditation practice. He stumbled into it in the worst possible circumstances, and had spent thirty years trying to understand what it was. He wasn’t looking and searching simply to understand what he’d experienced. He was lost and he wanted to find his way back home. He just needed a map.

Most of us are not going to have a dramatic beginning to our journey like my friend did. There are many ways to get a glimpse of pure awareness. But his story captures something important about the human condition: We spend much of our lives looking and searching. We don’t always know what we’re looking for, but there’s a vague sense that something more is possible than whatever it is we’ve got going right now. But we’re looking outside ourselves. It usually never occurs to us that what we’re looking for might already be here, and that the place to find it is not outside, but within.

My friend found that out on a battlefield in Vietnam. He spent thirty years finding his way back. But the path doesn’t have to take that long, and it doesn’t have to start with a mortar shell. It is right here, waiting to be recognized.

Warmly,

Cort

Podcast Chapter List

0:00 Relationships are rough: using partnership as a spiritual path
1:11 Introducing Devin and Nico Hase and This Messy, Gorgeous Love
5:36 What can a monastic tradition teach us about relationships?
7:05 Devin on translating Buddhist teachings into modern lay life
9:53 Nico on bringing Dharma into the gritty reality of family and partnership
11:29 Richie on family, feedback, and why Dharma must matter in real life
15:23 Retreat, relationship, and why we can’t hide from ourselves
18:04 Partners as teachers: what relationships reveal about us
19:34 Nico on monastic ideals, friction, and freedom
21:29 Richie on being exposed, seen, and changed by relationship
22:16 Self-knowledge, co-regulation, and the dance of partnership
23:36 Writing the book together and relationship as mirror
25:07 Cort on intimacy, fear, and what love uncovered
28:40 Relationships are rough: the myth of smooth sailing
30:04 Vulnerability, exposure, and becoming resilient together
31:21 Dukkha and the “bumpy ride” of partnership
34:24 Appreciation, gratitude, and learning to see the good
42:42 Conflict styles: volcanoes, diplomats, and dodgers
52:19 The trance of nice: kindness, emotion, and authenticity
55:12 Practical takeaways: check-ins, fun, and daily connection
57:43 Final reflections on relationships, friendship, and the book’s wider relevance