Meditate to Learn Compassion

Is compassion a skill that can be perfected, like playing a musical instrument or competing in sports? A study published this spring suggests: Yes. Researchers at the University of Wisconsin assert that cultivating compassion and kindness through learned meditation practices can make a person more empathetic.

Previous studies have pinpointed the insula and anterior congulate cortices in empathetic responses. Researchers recently investigated the voluntary generation of compassion in this neuronal network by asking participants to engage in compassion meditation, and measuring their brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The participants were Tibetan monks with a minimum of 10,000 hours of meditation practice. Sixteen of these subjects were matched with age-matched controls with no previous meditation experience. The controls were taught the basics of compassion meditation 2 weeks prior to commencing the research. (More)

Source: Brain Blogger