Training the Social Brain, Effects of a One-Year Mental Training Study on Brain Plasticity, Wellbeing, Health and Human Prosociality

In the last decades, plasticity research has suggested that training of mental capacities such as attention, mindfulness, and compassion is effective and leads to changes in brain functions associated with increases in positive affect, pro-social behavior, and better health. I will introduce the ReSource Project, a large-scale multi-methodological one-year secular mental training program. Participants were trained in three separate modules allowing us to distinguish effects based on training of a) attention and interoceptive body awareness (Presence), b) care, compassion, and emotion-regulation (Affect), and c) Theory of Mind and meta-cognitive awareness (Perspective). We assessed data from more than 300 training and control subjects, with over 90 measures including subjective measures, questionnaires, event-sampling data, a variety of behavioral, brain, physiological and biological data. I will present evidence of training-module specific changes in structural brain plasticity, stress reduction, increases in attention, compassion and subjective well-being, as well as body awareness and prosocial behavior. These findings will be discussed in relation to their meaning for models of social cognition, plasticity research and contemplative studies in general, and their importance to initiate societal change. 

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