Changing the Course of a River

By Brian Mattmiller '86

The conventional thinking was that emotions were relegated to a tiny portion of the brain, called the hypothalamus, and that they had little effect on the more important business of rational thinking. But Davidson's work, with the help of increasingly sophisticated imaging tools, has shown that emotions have a much more pervasive influence on the brain.

"I think of emotions as a kind of ether that permeates everything," Davidson says. "There is almost nothing we do that isn't in some way influenced by an underlying quality of mood. We used to think that mood was something that interrupted thought, rather than driving it."

Think of some of the most complicated life decisions: Should I marry this person? Should I take this particular job? Should I buy this house or that house? These are not decisions made by "cold cognitive calculus," Davidson says. "The way we make those decisions is to consult our feelings. We project into the future and think how we would feel having chosen this path or that path."

People are often accused of thinking with only their hearts or their heads, but Davidson says healthy decisions require both. This new field, known as affective neuroscience, will likely lead to more precise treatments for emotional disorders, such as depression or panic disorder. While that may mean new medications with fewer side effects, his work also suggests the optimistic finding that the mind, like the body, can be trained to change.

It is that question that leads to a more personal odyssey for Davidson, who has been an ardent practitioner of meditation since his college years at Harvard. Although he was a strong opponent of the Vietnam War, to him the peace movement soon became as much a personal journey as a social quest.

"Meditation really fit into that program," he says. "It offered a specific set of methods that suggested there was a possibility for human transformation for the better."

Once in graduate school, Davidson traveled to India, where he participated in his first intense meditation retreat. He was in a state of complete silence for several weeks. He would meditate with one hundred other people for fourteen to sixteen hours per day. They would awaken at 4 a.m. and retreat to the meditation hall. It was the hardest work he has ever done, he says - "like trying to change the course of a river."

"You begin to experience just a glimmer of what it feels like for the mind to be a little quieter," Davidson says. "You begin to see things a little more clearly. You become sort of less hijacked by your emotions." In his early years on the faculty, Davidson made a few attempts to scientifically measure this powerful force that he felt in meditation, but the technology was too crude for a serious investigation. So he put the effort aside, until recently. Today he has a number of studies in progress that are measuring whether the minds of people who regularly meditate are physically different from those who don't.

The results may provide further evidence of brain "plasticity," the idea that people can alter what was once considered a hard-and-fast trait. This optimistic idea may be especially well-received in a country that appears choked by emotional strife, triggering modern scourges like road rage and school shootings. Is it possible that, through our own disciplined efforts, we can heal our emotions in a way that Prozac can't?

"There is a disposition in this culture to find a magic pill that will eliminate certain symptoms without much effort. It's kind of the American way," Davidson says. "But our work could underscore the value of certain kinds of training and hard work that it might take to change one's mind."

Brian Mattmiller '86 first met Richard Davidson while covering research topics at UW-Madison.

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