Richard Davidson is a professor of psychology and psychiatry at University of Wisconsin-Madison. Davidson’s research in collaboration with the Dalai Lama has attracted the attention of both scientific and popular press. Davidson’s work is largely focused on the idea of neural ‘plasticity’ meaning that life experiences cause underlying changes in the brain that are remembered for future experiences. Davidson advocates because of the plasticity of the brain one can learn happiness and compassion as skills just as one can learn to play an instrument or learn a new sport, and that just as one can train to be good at basketball one can train to be happy. Practice and time put into mental training allow the brain to change in response and can cause one to learn to be ‘happy.’ 

 

Davidson got involved with the Dalai Lama when he went to visit him in Dharamsala, India. At that time Davidson was studying the question of why some people are more resilient to others in the face of tragedy? A famous anecdote that is often reported from their meeting is the Dalai Lama asked Davidson, “You’ve been using the tools of modern neuroscience to study depression, and anxiety, and fear. Why can’t you use those same tools to study kindness and compassion?” To which Davidson did not have a good response and this sparked an interest in studying what modern tools of neuroscience could reveal about the brains of Tibetan Buddhist monks who spent years cultivating an essence of well being by training, putting in practice, and putting in time to reach an enlightened., ‘happy’ state. This seemed as a perfect model for the study of neural plasticity in regards to emotional states. Shortly after their meeting, Davidson began to bring in Buddhist monks into the lab to run tests. Davidson has been attributed as a pioneer into using Buddhist monks as a model for how practice and training of an emotional state can alter neuronal functioning and many studies since have been utilizing Buddhist monks due to their unique, devote meditation practices to look into this question with many articles on this being published in major scientific journals.