The researchers also observed an increase in heart rate that corresponded to the brain changes. But the more experienced compassion meditators showed a larger brain response in areas important for processing physical sensations and for emotional responding, particularly to sounds of distress. As each of the participants meditated in-side the fMRI brain scanners, they were occasionally interrupted by spontaneous and unexpected human sounds-such as a baby cooing or a woman screaming-that might elicit feelings of care or concern.Īll of the meditators showed emotional responses to the sounds. So what does compassion look like in the brain? To find out, Lutz and his colleagues compared two groups of -meditators-one group whose members were experienced in compassion meditation, and the other a group whose mambers were not-and gave them the same instructions: to generate a state of love and compassion by thinking about someone they care about, extend those feelings to others, and finally, to feel love and compassion without any specific object. “We are trying to provide evidence that meditation can cultivate compassion, and that you can see the change in both the person’s behavior and the function of the brain,” Lutz says. Researchers have found that feeling connected to others is as learnable as any other skill. But research is revealing the possibility that we may be able to cultivate and increase our ability to feel the emotional state of compassion. We typically think of our emotional range as something that is fixed and unchanging-a reflection of the personality we’re born with. The cultivation of friendliness creates inner strength.
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