Self-Transformation Through Mindfulness by Dr. David Vago


How is the Self represented in the brain and how is it sculpted through our everyday moment-to-moment perceptions, emotions, and thoughts? Cognitive Neuroscientist, David Vago demonstrates that a systematic form of mental training involving meditation and mindful awareness has the potential to transform our self and our mental habits in a positive way. Learn more about how every moment is an opportunity to change our brain and strongly influence our health & longevity at both conscious and non-conscious levels.

A Cognitive Neuroscientist by training, David Vago has close to 20 years of experience with mindfulness practice and teaching, and over a decade conducting translational neuroimaging, cognitive, and clinical research on the basic mechanisms and therapeutic relevance of mindfulness and associated meditation/contemplative practices. Through his research, Dr. Vago focuses on one basic question – “What are the basic neurobiological and physiological components that constitute adaptive mind-brain-body interactions and their therapeutic relevance in psychiatric settings?” In addition to being an expert in the emerging field of contemplative neuroscience, David has studied the neural mechanisms of neuropsychiatric disease and chronic pain using fMRI and is translating these findings into biologically-based diagnostic and therapeutic strategies for alleviating suffering. He is the research director at the Osher Center for Integrative Medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center and a research associate in the Functional Neuroimaging Laboratory, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School.

Self-Transformation Through Mindfulness | Dr. David Vago | TEDxNashville


Transcripts of the Video:

00:08
well thank you we are all born with a
00:12
brain that has 86 billion neurons and
00:18
throughout our life we make relatively
00:22
few new neurons in fact we lose about 2
00:27
billion neurons throughout the course of
00:30
our lifetime so you may wonder if we’re
00:34
losing billions of neurons and we’re not
00:37
making a lot of new neurons what’s
00:40
changing in the brain to support all
00:42
those mental habits and behaviors that
00:45
make up our self-identity well the
00:50
answer is activity dependent plasticity
00:52
this is the function by which the brain
00:56
is continually modified through the 150
01:00
trillion cell to cell synaptic
01:04
connections that are made in response to
01:06
your everyday experiences one main point
01:11
that I hope you take home today is that
01:13
not only are they contributing to your
01:15
self-identity but they are continually
01:17
changing your brain and they are
01:21
strongly influencing your health and
01:24
longevity I hope to also demonstrate
01:27
that a systematic form of mental
01:31
training involving meditation can
01:34
potentially transform yourself and your
01:37
mental habits in a positive way in 2002
01:42
I was a graduate student in cognitive
01:45
neurosciences that was me I was studying
01:49
the brains of rats to better understand
01:52
the neural circuitry of learning and
01:53
memory memory an activity dependent
01:56
plasticity was a really important
01:57
concept for studying memory but I was
02:02
interested in how that concept could be
02:05
applied towards a neuroscientific
02:10
understanding of the self through the
02:12
lens of meditation
02:13
and mindful awareness now mindful
02:16
awareness can be simply thought of as a
02:19
way of paying attention in a way that is
02:23
continually watchful and discerning for
02:26
what is arising and passing in our minds
02:28
and in the external world now when I was
02:33
in graduate school there was barely any
02:35
science of mindfulness in fact before
02:37
the year 2000 there was the grand total
02:41
of 39 peer-reviewed scientific articles
02:44
on the topic so for good reason may be
02:47
my mentor sat me down one day and said
02:50
Dave you will not be successful in
02:52
academia by focusing on meditation
02:54
forget about all that descent and stuff
02:57
and I walked out of his office feeling
03:01
rather disappointed discouraged but it
03:05
did not deter me from this calling
03:07
fast-forward 10 years I was a faculty
03:10
member at Harvard Medical School
03:11
studying meditation in a neuroimaging
03:14
laboratory and about that time I was
03:19
invited to present my research directly
03:21
to the Dalai Lama along with five other
03:24
emerging leaders in the field from
03:26
around the world thank you that’s very
03:31
kind yes this was a really an amazing
03:35
opportunity and the advice he gave the
03:38
six of us is something I will never
03:40
forget from my lifetime he said pointing
03:44
his finger at each one of us you each
03:48
have the great responsibility for
03:50
helping to build a happy peaceful world
03:52
millions of people want a happy peaceful
03:55
world but are lacking the knowledge of
03:58
how to do so through carrying your
04:01
experiment month by month year by year
04:05
you will gain evidence to convince
04:08
others I will watch you whether you are
04:13
really whether you’re really helping to
04:16
build a happy peaceful world or not
04:19
he then jokingly threatened hopefully
04:23
and he would be watching from beyond the
04:27
grave and that even if you were in hell
04:30
he would come back as a demon and hunt
04:33
us down to make sure we were doing this
04:36
work no joke but he’ll hopefully now
04:43
when the Dalai Lama points his finger at
04:46
you and threatens you in that way or
04:47
challenges you really you you can’t
04:51
really say no so aside from providing a
04:56
sense of purpose and meaning for me that
04:59
experience really provided a pretty
05:03
solid research career plan for the next
05:05
30 years so fast forward to 2016 I was
05:10
provided the opportunity to come here to
05:12
Nashville to Vanderbilt University to
05:14
direct research at the Osher Center for
05:16
Integrative Medicine
05:17
so my interests in the self through the
05:20
lens of meditation comes back full
05:23
circle to today where I have the
05:25
resources and the support to do the
05:29
science I originally intended to do back
05:31
in graduate school
05:33
I’m currently leading a team of
05:36
scientists to continue mapping the
05:37
meditative brain or meditative mind and
05:41
to better understand what a flourishing
05:43
mind brain and body looks like from the
05:45
neurobiological the psychological and
05:47
social levels so as we contemplate the
05:52
self together today I want you
05:55
well I invite you to think about how all
05:58
of your life experiences even the guy
06:00
only up there have led to who you’ve
06:05
become today and to explore how all of
06:08
your thoughts and emotions that you’re
06:09
having right now today may lead to who
06:12
you become tomorrow the Dhammapada one
06:16
of the greatest known collections of the
06:19
buddha describes our life is shaped by
06:23
our mind for we become what we think the
06:27
basic idea here is from birth to the
06:29
present day our self our experience of
06:32
being someone our wants our fears our
06:34
desires our hopes our values our ex
06:36
Haitians our whole self-identity is
06:39
continually constructed by a string of
06:42
moment-to-moment processes of selfing
06:44
and these moments can be further broken
06:48
down into processes of perception
06:51
sensory awareness and evaluation all of
06:54
which happened on a timescale of half a
06:56
second 500 milliseconds and through
07:00
neuro physiological research it’s been
07:01
found that the brain stem and the
07:05
subcortical regions are helping to
07:08
filter out information that is
07:09
irrelevant to you and to prepare your
07:13
mind for action now this part of our
07:15
mental experience is all happening
07:17
without conscious awareness in the
07:19
second half of each moment our primary
07:22
sensory cortices located throughout the
07:23
outer surface of our brain is
07:25
integrating information coming from
07:27
perception and awareness and preparing
07:31
inferences and predictions to inform our
07:34
behavior and only by the end of each
07:37
moment around 300 to 500 milliseconds
07:40
does awareness arise and then we begin
07:43
to evaluate what it is we’re
07:44
experiencing and that evaluation takes
07:48
place in aspects of our prefrontal
07:49
cortex so this three of moments is
07:55
sustaining our mental habits and
07:58
dispositions that are self conditioning
08:01
and self perpetuating the repetition
08:05
it’s continually informing our present
08:07
state of awareness and coloring our
08:09
memories for the past and making
08:12
predictions for the future and this
08:15
basic idea here really supports the idea
08:18
that this little guy here has had about
08:22
three billion moments in 42 years to
08:25
become the guy who’s standing before you
08:27
today and somewhere along this string of
08:32
moments I developed a bad habit maybe
08:34
you can relate when I was 8 years old my
08:37
mother gave me a punching bag to deal
08:40
with my anger and frustration
08:41
thank you mom this was effective on the
08:45
short-term I would go down in my
08:46
basement and hit that bag every time I
08:48
got angrier
08:49
frustrated eventually as you can imagine
08:51
that punching bag broke and got thrown
08:54
out with the trash
08:55
but the conditioning did not go away I
08:58
never hit any people but I continued to
09:02
hit walls and doors and windows I even
09:06
have a scar in my hand to go with it a
09:09
little over a decade later when I was 20
09:13
years old my sophomore year of college I
09:14
had the opportunity to go on a
09:16
meditation retreat attend a silent
09:18
meditation retreat first time not
09:21
because of my anger but more so for my
09:23
curiosity about Buddhism and my interest
09:25
in studying the mind this was a profound
09:29
experience for me on multiple levels for
09:31
one it provided a signpost in my life
09:35
leading me to the path that I’m on today
09:38
it also provided a mindfulness-based
09:40
skill of meta awareness of my mental
09:43
habits now meta awareness refers to an
09:46
awareness of where our attention is and
09:48
where it’s going at any moment and when
09:50
we practice using a mindfulness based
09:53
approach it acts as a wedge to open up
09:58
our minds and provide insight into the
10:00
mental habits that are rising again and
10:01
again and for my anger
10:04
it provided awareness to all the
10:10
triggers and impulses and feelings and
10:12
thoughts that are associated with my
10:13
anger and the state of mindfulness is
10:16
often described as that wedge of met
10:19
awareness and if inserted deeply enough
10:21
into our minds as described by Buddhist
10:24
scholar Andy Lenski it will open our
10:27
minds up to wisdom and wisdom is subtly
10:30
different from awareness in the sense
10:33
that it can be described as the direct
10:36
experience with our mental habits for my
10:40
anger it was the body awareness of the
10:44
sensory awareness in my body it was the
10:46
tightness the clenched fists the impulse
10:49
of readiness to act that was my anger
10:53
the idea here is that when we practice
10:58
mindfulness the awareness and the wisdom
11:00
work together
11:02
helping to reduce the time spent in
11:05
judgment and evaluation to be situated
11:07
in the present moment with our sensory
11:09
awareness and to allow the emotions like
11:13
anger to arise and pass without the
11:16
impulse to act now aside from anger
11:20
there are other thoughts and emotions
11:22
that can have negative impacts on our
11:25
health and well-being anxiety fear worry
11:29
and sadness all have the tendency to be
11:32
destructive mental habits and
11:35
dispositions but only when they are
11:37
happening with great frequency when they
11:41
put the people around you including
11:42
yourself at risk for injury or they
11:44
interfere with your social functioning
11:46
it turns out that these three
11:48
dispositions specifically have the most
11:51
extensive scientific data to support
11:54
their role as risk factors for the onset
11:58
of clinical levels of depression anxiety
12:02
cardiovascular disease and I’ve even
12:05
been shown to increase the rate of
12:07
cellular aging at the level of your DNA
12:10
one study by the Centers for Disease
12:12
Control found that an angry disposition
12:14
increases your chances your risk of
12:18
developing or dying prematurely of a
12:20
heart attack by two and a half times and
12:23
there’s a whole number of studies
12:25
showing that these three dispositions
12:27
and the associated chronic stress can
12:30
have negative effects on your immune
12:33
system functioning on sensitization of
12:35
pain pathways and atrophy shrinking of
12:40
the brain regions responsible for
12:42
regulating these negative emotions so
12:44
becomes this really bad cycle because if
12:46
you don’t have the ability to regulate
12:48
their emotions as well it’s going to be
12:49
much harder to regulate them in the
12:51
future so once one of my studies that I
12:54
want to share with you today introduced
12:56
mindfulness training to a group of women
12:58
diagnosed with fibromyalgia fibromyalgia
13:02
is a chronic pain disorder associated
13:05
with widespread muscular tenderness and
13:10
chronic fatigue as well as a host of
13:12
other clinical symptoms
13:14
and we found that these patients had a
13:17
high level of anxiety and fear
13:18
associated with their pain and when we
13:21
gave them mindfulness training we found
13:23
that there was dramatic improvement in
13:24
all their clinical symptoms so that was
13:26
good but we were interested in what the
13:29
mechanism was that may be a contributing
13:32
to this clinical improvement so we gave
13:37
these patients a behavioral task that
13:39
assessed how they paid attention to pain
13:42
related words at the non-conscious
13:45
perceptual level and the more conscious
13:48
evaluative level of processing and we
13:50
could do this by varying the duration of
13:52
time that we showed them the words when
13:56
we showed him the words for 100
13:57
milliseconds they did not have a lot of
14:02
time to process the words consciously
14:04
but we could observe whether or not they
14:06
look towards or away from the words at
14:09
500 milliseconds they did have time to
14:12
process the words consciously and we
14:14
could observe whether they got stuck
14:17
thinking and ruminating upon the words
14:20
so we found two major differences
14:22
between the groups that X got exposed to
14:24
mindfulness training and those who did
14:25
not those who were untrained avoided
14:29
those pain related words at the non
14:31
conscious perceptual level and those who
14:35
were trained in mindfulness looked
14:37
towards the word suggesting that they
14:39
had less fear and avoidance and more
14:42
approach related behavior towards their
14:44
pain and remember this is the stage of
14:46
processing that they didn’t have any
14:47
awareness that they were doing this the
14:52
untrained group also had a tendency to
14:54
ruminate or get stuck at the later
14:56
stages of processing whereas those
14:59
trained in mindfulness were able to see
15:02
the word let it go and complete the task
15:06
more readily so these results
15:08
demonstrate that mindfulness training
15:10
has the ability to improve our mental
15:14
habits of attention at both the
15:16
conscious and non conscious levels
15:23
when we do neuroimaging we take a modern
15:25
imaging and a first-person introspective
15:29
methods approach in our lab and in
15:32
others and we can call this a neuro
15:34
phenomenological approach to mapping the
15:37
meditative mind and this identifies the
15:41
brain networks and systems of
15:43
functioning they’re supporting
15:44
mindfulness based practices now I said
15:47
before that there weren’t many studies
15:49
on mindfulness before the year 2000 well
15:52
since 2000 there have been up to close
15:57
to 4,000 studies on the topic and of
15:59
those 4,000 studies 21 have looked at
16:02
changes in brain structure and 80 have
16:05
looked at brain function in a
16:07
cross-section of novices who have been
16:10
trained in for the short-term and expert
16:14
meditators and although there have been
16:16
some reported differences between styles
16:20
of meditation practice and between
16:23
novices and experts I want to bring to
16:28
your attention the most common and most
16:31
consistent findings that are found
16:33
across all the studies in for brain
16:35
regions to make it easy that are
16:39
changing in brain structure and function
16:41
the frontal polar cortex is the most
16:45
anterior part of our brain right behind
16:47
your foreheads it is also thought to be
16:51
the most highly evolved part of the
16:52
human brain and responsible for
16:55
supporting meta awareness and in
16:59
conjunction with the dorsal anterior
17:02
cingulate cortex and the anterior insula
17:05
these three regions work together in a
17:10
complex attentional Network referred to
17:11
as the frontal parietal control network
17:13
to allow yourself to be continuously
17:17
aware of your body sensations and to
17:20
flexibly switch between internal mental
17:22
processing and thinking and of the in
17:26
the outside world ok another and it’s a
17:31
one really interesting finding here is
17:32
that we find in our lab that the more
17:35
one meditates the more
17:36
TV one gets in this network of brain
17:37
regions and other labs have founded the
17:39
more one meditates the more protected
17:42
these regions are from the normal
17:43
age-related atrophy that we all get
17:45
unfortunately all our brains are
17:46
shrinking in size after age 20 sorry but
17:50
if you meditate you protect them and one
17:54
other region that you see decreases in
17:56
activation is the posterior singlet
17:58
cortex or PCC that’s a major node in a
18:02
larger functional network associated
18:05
with self-reflection and rumination so
18:08
meeting the challenge set forth by the
18:10
Dalai Lama the science is beginning to
18:12
emerge to support a role for mindfulness
18:15
and meditation in improving meta
18:17
awareness and decreasing an emphasis on
18:19
ruminative types of processing
18:22
especially in the context of high
18:24
cognitive demand and also to transform
18:27
the brain and our mental habits so we’ve
18:32
learned that every thought and emotion
18:36
is leading to transforming our brain
18:43
literally re sculpting our brain at
18:45
every moment and although we do not have
18:49
any control of what what has happened in
18:52
the past we have the power in this
18:54
moment and going forward to choose how
18:59
you pay attention to your thoughts and
19:00
emotions every moment that becomes an
19:04
opportunity for you to for you to change
19:06
the way we perceive the world and ease
19:08
the burden by which there is potential
19:11
for destructive emotions like anxiety
19:15
anger and sadness so I leave you with
19:18
the question what will you fill your
19:21
mind with thank you

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