Participate in Research
Brain Imaging Studies
Electrophysiological Studies
Attention Training
Stress-Reduction Training

Welcome to the Mind-Body Research Consortium

The University of Pennsylvania’s Mind-Body Research Consortium comprises psychologists and physicians interested in investigating the transformative effects of ancient mind-body practices such as meditation, using state-of-the-art scientific methods. The Consortium’s mission is to tackle basic research questions that are likely to impact medical and psychotherapeutic interventions to improve mind-body health.

Improving mind-body health can protect us from normal aging processes, serve as an antidote to disease states, facilitate resilience to illness, as well as help us optimize mental and physical performance in the absence of current dysfunction. While there is growing support that regular meditation practice improves physical and psychological well-being, little is known about the mechanisms by which these changes are implemented. Our research program aims to investigate the acute and enduring changes that accompany mediation practice.

Meditation trains individuals to stabilize and sustain their attention in the present moment (Kabat-Zinn, 1994). Attention, in this context, refers to bringing awareness to the contents of one’s experience without becoming “attached” to it, as if each event were being seen for the first time (Ross, 1980; De Silva, 1990). Through meditation, practitioners are encouraged to become more receptive to experiences as they occur, and to remain in a state of preparedness rather than reactively distorting experiences through abstraction, or processing them through emotional and cognitive filters. The central principles of meditation are common to many traditions (Goleman, 1972, 1984, 1988). Nonetheless, we hope to perform formal tests, to determine commonalities and differences across various meditation practices (e.g., Transcendental Meditation; Yoga Nidra; Vajrayana Buddhist meditation).

Our active research program focuses on Mindfulness-based stress reduction training because of its widespread availability, relative standardization, and its increasing popularity as a complementary treatment with proven benefits (Baer, 2003; Kabat-Zinn, 2003). Stress reduction is perhaps the most sited benefit of meditation (Smith, 1987; Smith and Womack, 1987; Baime, 1999; Yuen E and MJ., 2004)]. The bulk studies discussing stress-reduction focus on meditation’s ability to remediate stress-related somatic arousal by promoting the “relaxation-response”, which is a complex set of physiological changes that include decreased heart rate, respiratory rate, blood pressure, and oxygen consumption (Benson, 1975). In addition to stress reduction, meditation has been found to reduce symptoms of chronic pain, cancer, disordered eating, psoriasis, depression, and anxiety (for review see Kabat-Zinn, 2003). In contrast to our growing knowledge of these physiological benefits, very little is known about the cognitive effects of meditation.

Of the few studies that have been conducted on this topic, some observe positive support that mediation training improves performance on attention tasks (Valentine and Sweet, 1999; McMillan et al., 2002) academic performance (Fiebert and Mead, 1981), and concentration ability (Alexander et al., 1994). Yet, others have reported that meditation training does not improve cognitive functioning (Sabel, 1980; McMillan et al., 2002); or that meditation is not sufficiently dissociable from other relaxation techniques to warrant its specific use as a cognitive enhancement tool (Davidson et al., 1976; Shapiro, 1982). One explanation for mixed evidence regarding cognitive effects of meditation is that subjects almost certainly had widely different background and training in meditation techniques, personality characteristics, and many other differences. Another explanation is that the testing instruments lacked sufficient precision. Our research program aims to use paradigms that have been tested in numerous cognitive neuroscience studies of attention, working memory, long-term memory, and learning.

We use a variety of neuroscientific techniques in the service of our research goals including functional MRI, neuroradiography, electroencephelography, and behavioral reaction-time methods. We are currently soliciting novice and expert practioners of meditation to volunteer as research participants. Please see Research Projects for more information about our current research.