Hampshire College

Antoine Lutz will deliver a lecture entitled “Exploring the potential influences of Buddhist meditation on brain and behavior” on April 13 at 6 p.m. in Franklin Patterson Hall.

Dr. Lutz is an associate scientist at the Waisman Center’s Laboratory for Functional Brain Imaging and Behavior.

His research focuses on the neurodynamical correlates of consciousness and on the relationship between neuroplasticity and meditation training. He holds a doctorate in cognitive neuroscience from Pierre and Marie Curie University in Paris.

This lecture is sponsored by the Foundation for Psychocultural Research - Hampshire College program in Culture, Brain, and Development (CBD), and is free and open to anyone who would like to attend.

For further information, please contact Paula Harmon at pmhNS@hampshire.edu.

Abstract:
Meditation can be conceptualized as a family of complex emotional and attentional regulatory training regimes developed for various ends, including the cultivation of wellbeing and emotional balance. Among these various practices, there are three styles that are commonly studied. One style, focused attention meditation, entails the voluntary focusing of attention on a chosen object. The second style, open monitoring meditation, involves nonreactive monitoring of the content of experience from moment to moment. The last style, compassion meditation, entails deliberately invoking an emotional state of empathy, affection, and compassion for others. Dr. Lutz will present key neuroimaging findings illustrating how specific neurophysiological mechanisms are involved in such meditation practices and how meditation training has a long-term impact on mental processing and on the brain.