Recent research from Dr. Shackman and colleagues at the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds has been incorporated into the Spring 2016 ‘Fuel Happiness’ campaign organized by Lululemon, the international athletic apparel company.

In a project spearheaded by Dr. Helen Weng, we demonstrated that compassion training can increase prosocial behavior and is associated with changes in a complex network of brain regions involved in social cognition and emotion regulation. This work provides preliminary scientific evidence that compassion can be systematically trained and that increased altruism emerges from changes in the brain.

The Fuel Happiness campaign is designed to spread the news about recent meditation and mindfulness research and, in so doing, encourage all of us to to take a few moments to cultivate an increased sense of compassion for themselves and others.

Weng, H. Y., Fox, A. S., Shackman, A. J., Stodola, D. E., Caldwell, J. Z. K., Olson, M. C., Rogers, G. M. & Davidson, R. J. (2013). Compassion training alters altruism and the neural responses to suffering. Psychological Science, 24, 1171-80.

Learn more about the paper here.