Placeholder Image

Subtitles section Play video

  • >> ALLEN: Hi everybody. Welcome. Today, I'm here-- my name is Peter Allen. I'm the Director

  • of Google University and I'd like to introduce Philippe Goldin. Philippe, just a moment aback,

  • his background is a Postdoctoral Researcher. Philippe Goldin is a Postdoctoral Researcher

  • in clinically applied Affective Neuroscience in the Department of Psychology at Stanford.

  • Hold a PhD in clinical psychology from Rectors. He also spent six years in India and Nepal

  • studying languages, Buddhist Philosophy and Debate, which means that he can prove you

  • wrong in a nonviolent way in languages that you don't even understand. Philippe is currently

  • doing clinical research funded by the NIH in three areas. And here I have to read because

  • otherwise, I'll say it all wrong. Neuroimaging Investigations of Cognitive Effective Mechanisms

  • in Healthy Adults and Individuals with various forms of Psychopathology. The Effective Mind

  • fullness Meditation and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy on Neural Substrates of Emotion and

  • Attention Regulation. And the Effect of Child Parent Mindfulness Meditation Training. The

  • question is, "Why does this matter?" Philippe and his colleagues are working on understanding

  • how meditation affects the brain. And I can think of at least four implications for this.

  • One is that meditation is moving out of the realm of faith-based practice into the realm

  • of recognized science. Two, as this research is better accepted, more people will practice

  • and benefit from meditation. Three, you will be able to submit cost of your Zafu and Zabuton

  • as medical expenses, although not this year. And fourth implication, if you haven't already,

  • you should immediately go to go/siy and sign up for the next round of Search Inside Yourself,

  • Google's own mindfulness-based emotional intelligence class. So without further ado, please take

  • a deep breath, focus, and join me in welcoming Philippe Goldin whose talk today is entitled

  • the Cognitive Neuroscience of Mindfulness Meditation.

  • >> GOLDIN: Wow! Thank you so much. That was a beautiful introduction. So, without further

  • a do, just thank you very much for the opportunity to be here, and to share some ideas and open

  • questions and suggestions, and well, let's start. So today I'm going to speak briefly

  • a little bit about Attention, Mindfulness and Brain Systems, some cutting edge research

  • where there's a huge amount of interest, both from a clinical side, because I'm trained

  • as a clinical psychologist, psychotherapist, and also Neuroscience. I'm also trained as

  • a Neuroscientist. But how--what really--how does the brain work, how is it plastic, how

  • is it influenced by different types of training? I'm only here in front of you because there

  • are hundreds of people who've influenced me, some of whom are here, people who've taught

  • me brain imaging, how to sit with patients, how to become a husband, how to practice meditation

  • and so forth. So really, I'm here, but there's hundreds of other people who really, through

  • their kindness, that's why I can stand here in front of you. So, in brief, I'm going to

  • speak a little bit about Mindfulness Meditation, one particular type of meditation practice,

  • and then look at a clinical application: how might one type of practice, Mindful Based

  • Stress Reduction, be used as a clinical intervention for adults suffering from Social Phobia or

  • Social Anxiety Disorder? There are many types of mediation practice. And that's something

  • that's very important. The word gome in Tibetan, bavna in Sanskrit, really refers to cultivating

  • a certain quality of mind. So its practices that help us cultivate a quality and there

  • are many ways to do that. So there's--just simply put, there are some classes of meditation

  • practices that really have to do with harnessing attention, focusing and developing concentration.

  • So, for example, breath, body, focused meditation, visualizing an image, a mantra, or listening

  • to a sound, or certain object list open field. These are different kinds of meditation practices

  • that they have different types of results. Then there's also linguistic, analytic linguistic

  • or reasoning, as exemplified by monks doing analytic debate which I did when I was I India

  • in Tibetan Buddhist monasteries and it's really, really fun. And this here could be taking

  • a topic like the precious human rebirth; working here at Google, why is that such an amazing

  • thing; the death meditation, generating love and kindness, these would all be objects of

  • analytic thinking, linguistic, logic types of meditation. And then, the gem of all, the

  • actual medicine, well, one form of medicine is meditation on emptiness, in Sanskrit, shunyata.

  • And this has to do with dissolving a mistake in view of how I exist, how we exist, and

  • transforming that into a view of how one exists that is a lot more fluid and healthy. So that's

  • another form of meditation practice that is really these two build up to doing this. So,

  • in the field of clinical interventions, clinical psychology, etcetera, there's a huge, huge

  • bursting interest in applying eastern concepts, eastern meditation practices, acceptance,

  • mindfulness, into western clinical practices, interventions. So for example, one of the

  • most popular Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, I believe you had John Kabat-Zinn here recently.

  • So this is really fascinating because he took people who were basically coming out of pain

  • clinics in UMass who the doctors were like "Look, we've done surgery, we've drugged them

  • up with lots of medications, we've done everything we can, we're tired of them, you take them."

  • And he basically said "Okay, I'll do it." And he caught a fad and created this program

  • "Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction" to help people with chronic, physical and emotional

  • pain, 30 years ago. Next year it'll be 30 years. So he's infiltrated the medical system

  • in a away that no one else has done to make it legitimate, to bring techniques, to help

  • people deal with themselves in a way that's really concrete, fundamental. Beautiful. Another

  • derivative that's really fascinating is Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy, literally a hybrid

  • of one of the best forms of psychotherapy, cognitive therapy and Mindfulness Meditation,

  • specifically as a treatment to prevent relapse into major depression. So this is to help

  • people who have three or more previous major depressive episodes, and helping them to prevent

  • relapse into the subsequent depressive episode. So this has been very, very efficacious and

  • wonderful clinical trials across three different study--three different continents. Another

  • form is Dialectic Behavior Therapy which specifically incorporates Mindfulness Meditation as one

  • of the techniques to help people primarily with borderline personality disorder, but

  • it's been extended to eating disorders as well. And then acceptance and commitment therapy

  • is another kind of clinical practice that is explicitly incorporating mindfulness and

  • Buddhist's ideas without talking about Buddhism at all. So these are just some examples of

  • how it's being incorporated in clinical practices right now. What I'm going to focus on for

  • today is Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction as a type of intervention. First question

  • is what is that? So it consist of three different components: formal meditation practice, breath

  • focused, body scan of sensations, being able to shift attention volitionally from different

  • sensory modalities, generating compassion, loving, kindness state of mind, and then there's

  • informal meditation practice which is just as important as the formal sitting which is

  • 10, 15, 20 times per day, just for even one breathe. So you can do it even right now,

  • just shift your attention to your own breathe just for one cycle, to breathing in and breathing

  • out. So we ask people to do this anytime, anywhere, any situation, multiple times a

  • day to build the muscle of attention, to generate the habit of checking in, dropping in. Oops!

  • And then the third component is Hatha yoga, physical stretching which is also a way of

  • getting into the body, noticing sensation. So this is the program, so to speak, that

  • we used for adults with social anxiety. Mindfulness has been shown over the past 30 years across

  • numerous clinical studies to be very effective and robust for reducing stress, pain, anxiety

  • and depressive symptoms overall. Mindfulness Based Cognitive Therapy has been shown to

  • be excellent as a relapse prevention, not a treatment for major depression, but a treatment

  • to help prevent the next depressive episode. What is mindfulness? As defined by John Kabat-Zinn,

  • paying attention in a particular way. From the psychological side, what we think about

  • that is, attention has many components. Here, we're focusing on the ability to alert, place

  • your attention on an object. The ability, when the mind becomes distracted, to reorient,

  • the ability to have a specific goal and to use top down or executive control to stay

  • on target. All kinds of qualities that are needed to get anything done. Doing this on

  • purpose, meaning I have an intention, a motivation why I'm engaging in this training of my attention.

  • Doing it in the present moment, meaning avoiding, avoiding now. So it's experiential approach.

  • Most of our life is about avoiding, avoidance of things that are not pleasant. Here, this

  • is really bringing a sense of equanimity to what's changing from moment to moment to moment

  • without pushing away things that I don't like, pulling in things that I do like. Embracing

  • anything, everything. So it's experiential approach, not easy to do. In trying to do

  • this non-judgmentally, meaning bringing, instead of an attitude of self-deprecation "I really

  • suck at this. I'm not good at this. I'll never learn how to meditate. I can't stand my mind."

  • Instead, bringing an idea of acceptance, curiosity, openness, about what is happening in my mind,

  • my mental experience, my brain. Here's a quick process model. The intention could be simply,

  • "I want to reduce my stress. I want to reduce the symptoms of anxiety." It could be that

  • "I want to increase well-being." Or could even be used as self-exploration and possibly

  • even enlightenment, if that's what you're interested in. So for example, you could follow

  • the breath and you're trying to develop attention, concentration and open awareness, calm, flow,

  • for example. But inevitably, the mind becomes distracted, often within seconds. In that

  • moment, you--either can begin to ruminate, spin. I talked about people going into a soap

  • opera mode for hours or minutes or days at a time, fantasizing, dozing. These are all

  • forms of distraction. But then inevitably, what has to happen with awareness is to redirect,

  • reorient attention and to do this without sub-judgment but in fact, doing it with kindness

  • and curiosity. And in fact, it's when the mind is distracted and when it becomes aware

  • and brings it back, that's a key moment. That's actually where a lot of learning takes place.

  • Mindfulness consists of, in this Japanese calligraphy, awareness, heart, mind. And I

  • think that's telling, trying to bring those qualities together. What mindfulness is not,

  • is equally important to consider. It's not distraction, and I'll show you some data,

  • shortly. It's not suppression of emotional experience or suppressing showing one's emotion.

  • That is not mindfulness. It's not avoidance. It's not ruminating or spinning on something

  • positive or negative, it's not that. And it's not cognitive reappraisal or thinking in a

  • way to change the meaning of something that's going on. It's not a logic thinking language

  • process. Some of the potential mechanisms for mindfulness has to do with decentering,

  • disidentifying from the contents of mind. So as I have thoughts, sensations, images,

  • memories, those are events that are occurring but they're not me. So this is decentering

  • or disidentifying. Another possible mechanism is developing attentional focus, harnessing

  • the ability to place and maintain attention. Regulation of emotion. Obviously as one trains,

  • this can harness your attention, things that would normally distract or evoke emotional

  • off-balance will occur at less and less frequently. Changing in how we view our self arises inevitably,

  • implicitly, through doing this kind of practice. And then, it's also been thought that negative

  • self-focused spinning or ruminating is decreased. So, this is a study that my wife and I did

  • awhile ago where literally, just in a sample of people with mixed anxiety depression; we

  • found that, compared to a wait-list control, no change. We found that people with mind--who

  • did the mindfulness course, actually showed a significant reduction, post mindfulness-training,

  • compared to a wait-list. In negative--I'm sorry.

  • >> What's a wait-list? >> GOLDIN: A wait-list control is people were

  • randomized either to waiting several months before they started the mindfulness class

  • versus people who got it right away. So this is mixed--these are people with mixed anxiety

  • depression and what you see is that there's, from pre to post mindfulness-training, a reduction.

  • But more importantly, the amount of meditation that people practiced during the two and a

  • half months, predicted significantly, 50% reduction in rumination.

  • >> [INDISTINCT] >> GOLDIN: Yes. Good point. So this is actually--people

  • with the mindfulness--for some reason, the people who were assigned to the mindfulness

  • group, reported greater rumination at baseline. So, there way to--there are statistical ways

  • of dealing with that, but that's also why we need multiple studies than you average

  • over them and then those things like that hopefully drop out. Those same question, yeah,

  • yeah. So they were more elevated than negative rumination, the sample at baseline. Giving

  • his talk. So I'm sure that everyone here at Google, almost everyone, probably has to do--to

  • be evaluated on performance. The most fearful, feared, social performance activity in the

  • world is for public speaking. Fortunately I don't have that, but a lot of people do.

  • And not only is it fearful, maybe in the moment, when somebody has to present in front of peers

  • or managers or bosses or CEOs, but people will ruminate, it was what were talking over

  • lunch, some people will actually--in my [INDISTINCT] with me for two weeks, before talk has to

  • be given. Negative, you know, anxiety, diarrhea, fear, sleeplessness. So this is something

  • that a lot of people experience. So this is the most fearful social performance thing,

  • but there are many, many others as well. So what is social anxiety? Well, it has a huge

  • lifetime prevalence in North America. About 12% of adults in North America will meet criteria

  • for social phobia or social anxiety disorder. It's the third most common psychiatric condition

  • after major depression and alcohol substance abuse. Third most common. It has a very early

  • age of onset. Eighty percent of cases of social anxiety begin before the age of 18. In fact

  • it's the model time of onset is really about age 10, 11, 12. And it's often undiagnosed,

  • untreated, or even if somebody shows up treatment for anxiety, the clinicians usually don't

  • ask about social anxiety. So it's usually occurs early and it usually precedes the subsequent

  • development of major depression, substance abuse, and other anxiety disorders. The other

  • very important thing about social anxiety in its early age of onset is that, it's associated

  • with the highest high school drop-out rate of all of the anxiety disorders: OCD, panic,

  • generalized anxiety, agoraphobia, etc, etc. So this is really why people are interested

  • in going younger, younger, younger. So, what is social anxiety from the first person experience?

  • So we--for all of our participants, we ask them to identify four painful social situations.

  • This client offered the following: At a job I had about 6 years ago, I was supposed to

  • introduce myself to a group of 5 or 6 new employees. The President of the company was

  • speaking first, and then I was supposed to say a few words. My anxiety grew to such a

  • heightened level right before I had to get up to speak, that I needed to leave the room

  • and the building. I had to take a walk for about a half an hour before I even got up

  • the courage to go back into the building and to admit to my manager what I had done and

  • how I had failed. So we actually use these scripts, autobiographical scripts, as stimuli

  • in our brain imaging studies, induction of a specific painful social memory. This is

  • about as real as it gets. Then we also ask people with respect to that situation, your

  • own situation, what are the automatic negative self-beliefs that arise? This client offered:

  • What's wrong with me? Why do I get so nervous? I'm going to get fired for not being able

  • to do this. The President must think that I'm an idiot and wonder why they hired me

  • if I can't even speak to a few people. If I get up there, I'm going to blush and either

  • throw up or pass out. So mental tripping, cognitive distortions, fear of physiological

  • arousal that I'm not gonna be able to control. So, one model of social anxiety, a cognitive

  • model says the following: When a person has social anxiety, is in a social situation,

  • it triggers a distorted view of the self, the social self "I'm not good enough as I

  • am. I'm going to screw up." This means the situation is a place we're evaluated as "This

  • is a dangerous place for me. This is threatening to myself." And then there's a very rapid

  • attentional shift to self-focused attention. So much so that in studies were you have other

  • people to say, "Hey, no you're doing fine. You're doing fine." The person is so internally

  • aware, internally driven; they don't process external information which, of course, reinforces

  • the disorder. And this leads to safety behaviors, not showing up to work, not making eye contact,

  • not speaking up, or being assertive when one needs to be, for example. Not going to parties,

  • bodily or somatic and concerns and problems, diarrhea, etcetera, cognitive problems, negative

  • thoughts, etc. Here, I'm going to be focusing on attention as one way to probe the brain

  • in people with social anxiety and how mindfulness might modify the neural basis of attention.

  • So the big question here is integration. Can we take incredible, beautiful, elegant technology

  • the West has to offer which is to basically go under the skull noninvasively and image

  • the brain while it's doing what it does? And ancient wisdom traditions of methods that

  • has been used for 3000 years of how to work with the mind; ways to actually identify and

  • begin to modulate mental patterns. Can we integrate this? A full description of a phenomena

  • would really entail all of these levels of granularity in my library looking at genetic

  • predispositions to people who have different anxiety disorders, to who will benefit from

  • cognitive therapy, from mindfulness, from medications, how this influences molecules,

  • neurons, neural circuits, and in cognition, emotion behavior. This will be a full explanation.

  • Here, today I'm just focusing on brain and cognition emotion. So we use the MRI, Magnetic

  • Resonance Imaging, which essentially is a huge magnet. Beautiful machine. Here's a picture,

  • this one is the Dalai Lama, Richard Davidson, a researcher from Madison showing His Holiness,

  • the Dalia Lama, how this works. And I'm going to give you a one slide primer on what is

  • the dependent variable in FMRI, Funtional Magnetic Resonance Imaging. You're lying in

  • the scanner on your back, like the woman you saw a moment ago, and then what I do is I

  • present you with a negative belief. "People think I'm socially incompetent," you read

  • that. This triggers firing in specifics populations of neurons, having to do with language processing,

  • self reflection that activate neural circuits, brain systems, not just specific areas but

  • circuitry. That then says, "Hey, the neurons are firing, please send more oxygenated hemoglobin,

  • more cerebral blood volume, cerebral blood flow to the areas where neurons are firing.

  • Bring more oxygen; bring more glucose because the neurons are consuming energy." And then

  • we, through a lot of signal processing and statistical modeling, try to infer what are

  • the parts of the brain that are active when a person is spinning on a negative self believe?

  • So it's a whole series of processes--steps, but we can do this. What are the possible

  • brain bases of the psychological mechanisms that mindfulness may attach? Well, attention,

  • emotion regulation, self view. Wonderful work by Merry Philips, Helen Mayburg, and lots

  • of neuroscientists are beginning to delineate where does emotional reactivity occur in the

  • brain and emotion regulation? So in the context of a social situation that's feared, this

  • could actually activate very quickly, fear, arousal, anxiety. So we know that roughly,

  • this is very condensed, but roughly there's the limbic and paralimbic system in which

  • there's a whole set of brain regions that detect what's personally salient and even

  • generate emotional reactivity. This sends a signal, bottom-up signal, "This is threatening

  • to me. This is dangerous to me." And it actually recruits activity in regulatory systems, many

  • of which and instantiated in the prefrontal cortex parietal that says "Please select some

  • strategies and engage in top-down regulation to either increase or decrease the current

  • emotional state." So we are literally doing this consciously, non-consciously in our brain

  • all the time. And these regulatory practices often are mediated by the way that we view

  • our self and our skillfulness or lack of skillfulness in language: How we think, how we interpret,

  • how we view our self. So here's just one task, for example, that we use. We ask people--we

  • present people with their own painful autobiographical social situations, like the one I read earlier,

  • then we have to present one negative belief at a time and have people spin on their own

  • negative belief about themselves in that painful situation. Then we ask them to provide a rating

  • and then we train them to implement some kind of emotion regulation strategy. Attention

  • focusing, here, that was operationalized as "When a cue comes on above your negative belief,

  • please shift your attention to the physical sensation at the tip of the nose of the breath

  • moving in and moving out." Physical subtle sensation, shifting attention. We also have

  • an attention distraction condition as a control where we ask people a pair of three digit

  • number and say count backwards by one from a three digit number, 168,167 and so forth.

  • Attention distraction. And then thirdly, cognitive reappraisal. Think in a way to reinterpret

  • the meaning of the belief, to make it less toxic for yourself. Three different strategies.

  • There are many more than this. We only look at these three. So, cutting to the chase,

  • we found that post mindfulness training, post-MBSR, we found that all three forms of emotion regulation,

  • the ability to volitionally work with your psychology brain to down regulate negative

  • emotional reactivity. We found that the red bars are ratings of--subjective ratings in

  • the scanner of negative emotion to the negative beliefs. The blue bars are that same rating

  • after doing self-talk or cognitive regulation, after doing attentional focus, and after doing

  • distraction. All three methods were more efficacious after doing this two-month training in mindfulness

  • meditation. Greater skill in being able to identify emotions and to skillfully regulate

  • them as needed. Just to go into a little more detail, attention is a very limited resource.

  • We all know that. It's also that attention itself is not a unitary thing, but actually

  • has many components. So, three components here. Michael Posner is the superstar person

  • in the field of attention. He's done incredible work on all levels, looking at from genetics

  • to training kids, in attention abilities. And here, they--he and his former student

  • who's a professor at [INDISTINCT], they've developed a wonderful computer task that assesses

  • three components; there are many more, but only three components of attention. Alerting,

  • meaning the ability to sustain your vigilance on an object, to focus on an object. So your

  • coding, can you keep your mind right on the object? You're meditating on the breath; can

  • I keep my mind right on the breath? Reorienting, when the mind becomes distracted, can I switch

  • or shift my attention back to the object of meditation, back to the object of the work

  • that I'm doing? Third is Executive Control, selectively attending to I want to focus on,

  • actively inhibiting things that are task-irrelevant. This is considered executive functioning,

  • or cognitive control, or top-down control of attention. These three, from alerting,

  • to reorienting, to executive, literally develop in the brain over the first two decades of

  • life progressively. Such that kids really develop executive--begin to develop executive

  • control in their teens. So there's literally a developmental trajectory of these abilities

  • in the mind brain. These three components are instantiated in the brain in a distributed

  • network of brain regions which is really wonderful because that means we can probe the effective

  • attention training on the neural substrates of these components of attention. So, do you

  • find enhanced or decreased activity when people are more distracted, when they're more focused,

  • when they've trained the muscle of attention, or different ages, or on or off coffee, for

  • example. Cutting to the chase here, the regions that are in these colorful circles are regions

  • that we found to be the parts of the brain that were more active, that make up parts

  • of this attention network from pre to post mindfulness training, in this case, 15 adults

  • with social anxiety. So, meaning that, people who, these sociophobics, who engaged in the

  • mindfulness mediation training, when challenged to regulate their attention, from pre to post

  • training, they showed increased neural activity as well as behavioral indices of the ability

  • to regulate their attention. Fifteen is very small, so this was the basis for getting an

  • NIH grant and now we're doing this with 60 people. Also randomizing people to mindfulness

  • based stress reduction and exercise wellness program based stress reduction, because exercise

  • has been shown in some cases for people with certain kinds of anxiety disorders, to be

  • just as efficacious as some kinds of therapy. So it becomes important to delineate group

  • effect, exercise versus not exercise, attention training versus physical motivational training,

  • to really delineate what are the--how do brain systems change. What--how are different clinical

  • interventions better or worse with different kinds of anxiety disorders. So this was very

  • promising that we literally saw neural evidence along with converging behavioral evidence

  • of attention training. To look at the amygdala, in this case, the right dorsal medulla, this

  • is a brain region that it's very popular because when people are experiencing emotion, this

  • is an area that becomes very active. So, when spinning on the negative self-beliefs "I'm

  • not good enough. People don't like me," we found very strong amygdala activity. And I

  • want to show you what happens during these conditions: Spinning on my own negative belief,

  • shifting my attention to the breath, healthy controls, some reactivity, some down regulation.

  • Sociophobics at baseline: Delayed but then a rapid increase and then subsequent decrease

  • in amygdala response during spinning on negative beliefs. So it takes some time to bellow up

  • spinning on the belief and amygdale, the brain, this part of the brain, is literally reacting

  • to this negative beliefs. Now, this is Pre and Post. The black is Pre, the same people,

  • Pre mindfulness straining. Orange is post. And there are few things that I want to point

  • out. First, here, there's an initial burst in the people after the mindfulness training

  • in this amygdaly reactivity when spinning on beliefs. One of the things that happen

  • when you slow down and when you become more aware of body, thoughts, emotions, is that

  • you become more aware. That's not always pleasant. But that's not--the goal is not to remove

  • what's unpleasant. It's to be more aware. So, one way to interpret this initial burst,

  • is that people, in this case the sociophobics, where actually more aware of their emotional

  • reactivity when they were confronted with their own negative beliefs, greater emotional

  • awareness. But notice that then it quickly dropped. Notice that this occurred before

  • the instruction to shift their attention to the breath, what was initially a cued effortful

  • process to shift attention to the breath. After two and a half months, these people

  • shift to the left and start to implement the attention regulation automatically, perhaps

  • with awareness, perhaps not. Meaning, that what was an effortful practice becomes automatized.

  • >> Whatever this means, being valued the [INDISTINCT] population?

  • >> GOLDIN: Yeah. This is--these are across the fit--in this case, the fifteen adults

  • with social phobia and themselves two and a half months later in the same exact task.

  • >> Do you have any sense, sorry, in [INDISTINCT]... >> GOLDIN: No, go ahead.

  • >> ...like of a, like error bars, so we can tell...

  • >> GOLDIN: Yeah. >> ...I can't tell whether, you know, whether

  • this squiggle is just noise or whether that's actually meaningful.

  • >> GOLDIN: Yeah. That's a good question. So, the fMRI signal--there are many ways to do

  • signal processing and fMRI brain reactive--brain neuro response tends to be quite noisy. So

  • we do a lot of stuff and the only place where it was significant, the only place where you

  • see a significant drop--significances here in the sociophobics compared to themselves

  • baseline, post MBSR, where you see this reduction. That's the only where it's significant. Of

  • course it's only fifteen subject which is why this was pilot data for 60 where your

  • going to have more power because that's--in psychology, fifteen is a small sample size.

  • >> It may not be [INDISTINCT] but what do you--how do you interpret the gap at the end

  • of the chart were the trend reverses? >> GOLDIN: Yeah. Its miles significantly different

  • and actually, you know, I don't have an interpretation for the end of this. In fact, these are each

  • 12 seconds so realistically, another way to do this, and we're trying it out, is to makes

  • this two minutes long. Because when you think about reactivity to something, you're in the

  • hallways, you say "hello" to Suzie and Suzie doesn't look at you, or Suzie--Suzie's absorbed

  • to something and is not really attending to you, the reactivity--there's an immediate

  • reactivity, there might be a quelling, and then there's a continuing burst as we spin

  • or cascade on "What's up with Suzie?" Like, "Why isn't she paying attention?" "Why is

  • she dishing me?" So, real samples would be much longer than just 12 and 12 seconds. So

  • we're actually exploring that now, doing two minute--several two minute samples which I

  • think is probably more ecologically valid but we have to start somewhere. Also self

  • view I just wanted to give just a little bit here because this is something that's really

  • exciting which until recently no neuroscientist would ever touch. Now there's a burst of interest

  • in "Can we not find the self?" That's not the enterprise. Because there is no--there

  • is no central brain region of self, but there are different ways of manipulating how a person

  • views themselves and you can see that in the brain. So here, here's one version of the

  • self Analytic Narrative View of myself. This is past-future oriented: How is Philippe yesterday?

  • How is Philippe going to be tomorrow? Its conceptual, it's a fixed concept and it's

  • associated with ruminating on the self. It's a very conceptual linguistic-based view of

  • self. In contrast, there's another version of this way of relating to the self which

  • is really more experiential. Present-moment focused which is why this is interesting for

  • mindfulness, continuously changing experience of the self. Not a fixed concept. A reduced

  • over generalize memory which actually mean is been related to reduction and depression

  • and anxiety. So, in terms of creativity, given that this is a very creative place, reading

  • some--in preparation, I was reading some stuff on creativity, the extent to which a person

  • has a fixed view of themselves and their abilities, they perform at that level. They extend to

  • which a person has a more fluid sense of self, less caught up in fixed conceptual notion.

  • That person, literally in experimental studies, can make associations that are more long,

  • more interesting. They can bring things together that normally are not very closely associated;

  • they have less abstraction in thinking more creatively. If you have self, I think is at

  • the basis of that kind of the intellectual creativity and neuroscience are just beginning.

  • It's actually hard to publish neuroscience of self studies, but there's an interest right

  • now. So in terms of this two, more analytic, more experiential, more embodied sense of

  • self, and what we find is there's--across many, many self studies, you see there's this

  • set of three brain regions that come up all the time. These are midline structures: Medial

  • prefrontal cortex, dorslal medial prefrontal cortex and posterior singulet. These three

  • show up all the time. In this particular study, we found out in controls and also sociophobic

  • which is very promising. So, this is a very robust when you're doing self-focused attention.

  • Cutting to the chase, what we found here is, in the sociophobic, post mindfulness training,

  • we found significant reduction in neural react--neural response from pre to post in brain regions

  • having to do with linguistic processing, thinking to your self--about yourself. Cognitive regulation

  • here, more this--reduction in metacognitive awareness, parts of the brain and how to maintain

  • a concept of self are reduced. And medial prefrontal, place where self-focused attention

  • occurs--tends to occur, also went down. Reduction in thinking, maintaining a concept of self

  • and self-focused attention dropped in the people who did the mindfulness class. So they

  • had a less of this conceptual narrative fixed concept, and had more of an embodied self.

  • And this is--the hot colors here indicating greater attention, actually. So in summary,

  • I hope that I've shown you, is that for people who completed the mindfulness class, in the

  • context of a threat stimulus, personally, it is, sort of syncratic negative self-beliefs,

  • reduction in emotional reactivity, and increase in the ability to apply different regulations

  • strategies, be they cognitive or attention, and decreases in conceptual sense of self

  • and use of language in the context of ones own negative self-beliefs. Meditation is associated

  • with changes in the neural bases of attention regulation, shift from conceptual experiential

  • self and, I didn't show it here, but we're now looking at neural synchrony across brain

  • regions, are they more connected, integrated in temporal analysis in people who have done

  • more and more meditation practice. Thank you for your attention. So there are many other

  • studies that we're doing, etcetera. But I'm more interested in what you think, and questions

  • you have, maybe things from your own experience or what are some of the implications? Where

  • would you push, pull, drive is going to work? Do you have a microphone?

  • >> Here. >> GOLDIN: For people who are remote somewhere,

  • sir. >> Yeah, one of your slides cited as an aspect

  • of the more conceptual notion of self over generalized memory, could you say a little

  • more about that? >> GOLDIN: Yeah. In people with, specifically

  • with people with depression, there tends to be what's called over generalized memory.

  • So when you ask people who are in a current repressive state to think back about a situation,

  • they tend to color their memory of past situation as "Oh, I was always sad. Things always suck."

  • They actually lose--women in current depression, may lose memory for details and they over

  • generalize into, kind of swats of memory and inferences, as opposed to remembering details

  • for specific events. And that's been shown prospectively. You take me when I'm fine,

  • current happy state, depressed state, "Philippe what happened three weeks ago, six weeks ago,

  • nine weeks ago," and you've recorded those. I over generalize and I lose specificity over

  • generalized memory which is problematic when you run to a person and say "Yeah, you were

  • sad," or "this occurred but you," you know, they'll hear the details of how you responded

  • and your were effective, people tend to forget that.

  • >> I'm curious, how much of this works cross culturally? Like for example, in Japan people

  • get up and sing in front of each other where, that must be very common, right?

  • >> GOLDIN: Yes. Thank you so much. I did not ask him to ask that. Social anxiety in particular,

  • manifests differently. Okay. So here we go, west--no but we are very mixed culture right

  • here. But in the United States, generally it's the cowboy culture: rough, tough, strong,

  • individualistic. People with social anxiety have a very poor self-esteem and they're very

  • worried that--about negative evaluations by others of the self. Japan, there's another

  • form of social anxiety where the fear is not about me, but other people, you know, other

  • people having a negative evaluation of me. The fear is that "I'm going to do something

  • in public that will embarrass you." And is a very clear, specific form of social anxiety

  • that is "I'm terrified that I'm going to do something to embarrass you." That is really

  • culturally influenced. The next question is, so you take people who are from, say, mainland

  • China. They moved here, then they had children. First generation, they have children, second

  • generation, when do you begin to see shifts in patterns of psychopathology or shifts in--sub

  • forms of social anxiety? From landing here, first generation, second generation, cultural

  • influence infiltrates the view of self, language. For example, in Tibetan language, there's

  • not a word for self--low self esteem. There is no such word, so much to that at a meeting

  • with His Holiness, the Dalai Lama; people were like, "Yeah, one of the many things we

  • have here is low self-esteem. We do everything to buttress up and make everyone think that

  • we're doing fine, and we don't need your help, and I don't need your help," but in fact that's--we

  • know that's not the case, whereas, in Tibetan language, there is no such word. Also in Tibetan

  • language, there is no word for emotion. Destructive, harmful states of mind, no word for emotion

  • which--think about Greek, you know, Greek, ancient Greek culture, ancient Indian culture.

  • There is no word for emotion in Tibetan language. >> Just a minor...

  • >> GOLDIN: Oh, mic, mic. In case somebody wants to hear it.

  • >> Just a minor comment. Not big. I remember I had a lecture a number of years ago, the

  • speaker who is a historian from Yale said, "There is no word for "shallow" in French

  • even though some people might argue that the French invented the concept." So, the fact

  • that the word doesn't exist doesn't necessarily mean that the concept doesn't exist...

  • >> GOLDIN: True. >> ...or the problem, even without the concept.

  • >> GOLDIN: True. But there's recent study that was done in UCLA where they, in healthy

  • controls, they induced certain emotion, emotional states and then what they did is they had

  • people label the emotion. The act of labeling ones emotion which is a cognitive method,

  • right? Already distanced oneself from the emotion state, "Oh, I'm angry." There's an

  • awareness and there's--just labeling distance from itself. So that is a form of emotion

  • regulation, just using language in that way. So, in one way, I would go the opposite, can

  • we actually become more skillful in identifying subtle, subtle, subtle, emotional states?

  • Be it viscerally [INDISTINCT] cognitively, and then apply a more refined vocabulary to

  • identify those and label them. So--but it's true, with--even when we don't have a label,

  • people still experience things, but then they just don't have--there's not a consensus on

  • a word that I would use to communicate that. >> How long after the MBSR training, did you

  • measure your subjects? >> GOLDIN: How long... ?

  • >> After the MBSR training. >> GOLDIN: About a week or two, after completing

  • the mindfulness program. And--so that would be kind of the immediate effects of having

  • just competed. What we're doing now, is we're following people for at least a year after

  • completing therapy. Because this was a good point, learning often occurs, consolidates

  • overtime, and there's even evidence that two, three, four months later, people who actually

  • get it, even after completing a course or--even psychotherapy, yeah?

  • >> You presented the limbic system as a reactive system, but isn't it an also an active system

  • that seeds negative thoughts and emotions? >> GOLDIN: Say it again because...

  • >> Isn't it also an active system that seeds things in the cognitive part of the brain?

  • >> GOLDIN: Oh, not seeds no, yeah. So the limbic--the limbic system is a distributed

  • set of nodes which has been associated with emotional states and specifically, emotion

  • detection. So like you watch a disgusting film clip, there's this limbic system, there

  • are parts of it, like the anterior insula, amygdala that will--when something salient

  • comes on, it would be more active. So emotion detection, but also when you--when you do

  • a mood induction, emotion generation. Seeing will not--doesn't occur in the limbic, although...

  • >> I said seeding. Not seeing. >> GOLDIN: Seeding?

  • >> Seeding emotions as well as [INDISTINCT]. >> GOLDIN: Oh, seeding, as in generating.

  • >> Genrating. >> GOLDIN: Yes. So, then also there's generation

  • of emotion. Not exactly the same set, there's a sub-set of regions like subgenual, anterior

  • cingulate, and amygdala are associated with generating emotion. When you actually ask

  • people to--there's a study when you'd ask healthy people to generate sad mood, or people

  • with current major depression to generate, to enhance the sad mood, there's some reliable

  • areas that are associated with increasing. And those have actually become targets of

  • direct brain stimulation studies right now, with surgery, in fact. A little controversial

  • but, yeah. >> The functions that you mentioned are learned

  • in childhood, like the executive function and...

  • >> GOLDIN: Uh-huh. >> ...are some of those better--are there

  • some that adults can learn better than others? Are there some that the brain development--there's

  • two point where it's harder to, to change in adult stage as suppose to others?

  • >> GOLDIN: Yeah. As a general principle, the older--the more that we're alive, the longer

  • that we're alive, the--in general, there's less plasticity. So much so you can take a

  • three year old and take out the entire left hemisphere, and all the functions that were

  • supposedly instantiated in left hemisphere, transfer. There's a beautiful, amazing, I

  • mean, we human animals are amazing in that functionality can shift across brain matter.

  • So there even examples of people who are born with only one hemisphere, and only later when

  • they were teens did they ever get an MRI that showed "Oh my gosh! Hemisphere is gone," and

  • they seem almost 100% normal. So it's a beautiful plasticity. But as we get older, we become

  • more rigid. As we become older, cortex becomes thinner, one study that--a cross sectional

  • study that was done by Sarah Lazar showed that cross sectional, where it's not prospective,

  • cross sectional, they found that people--longer--people who reported being meditators for more years

  • had less cortical thinning compared to aged matched people who didn't do any meditation.

  • So that was really exciting and interesting but its cross sectional, co-relational which

  • is, you always have to take that with a grain of salt. So having said that, there's all

  • sorts--there's a huge interest in neuroplasticity right now, but it doesn't seem to be present

  • in the entire brain, but only portions of it. So there are limits that people have to

  • train their attention that can--might be constrained by genetic, might be constrained by life experience,

  • but also are constrained by not having [INDISTINCT]. So, I wouldn't say you can take somebody who

  • has early stage Alzheimer's and be able to train that away. Not even close. But we can

  • harness our attention and if you'll sit with somebody who's done a lot, a lot, a lot of

  • practice, you can feel it. It's--it's palpable. And you can measure it which is important.

  • Okay. Thank you.

>> ALLEN: Hi everybody. Welcome. Today, I'm here-- my name is Peter Allen. I'm the Director

Subtitles and vocabulary

Click the word to look it up Click the word to find further inforamtion about it