Following a call from the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation for research that will “expand the walls of people’s perception,” UO professors David McCormick, Elliot Berkman and graduate student Megan Lipsett secured nearly $1 million in funding for neuroscience research this September.
The funding will cover research for McCormick’s course called “Happiness: A Neuroscience and Psychology Perspective,” that helps students delve into the science of mindfulness. The goal of the research is to use fMRI scans of students’ brains in order to better understand the influence of the class’s mindfulness practices on emotion regulation and general happiness.
“The focus of the project is shifting your mindset from a self-oriented mindset,” Berkman said. “Think about your personal experiences — your own thoughts, feelings [and] emotions — and try to shift that to a broader perspective on yourself and the people around you.”
The researchers hope that this shift in mindset will stem from the unique curriculum of McCormick’s course where students learn about the science of wellbeing in lectures, but also participate in experiential learning consisting of practices such as meditation, mindfulness journaling and yoga.
“[The] course is meant to give students a new positive perspective on life, and a new skill set to navigate life in a way that will be fulfilling and lead to long term happiness,” McCormick said.
To help build this skill set, graduate student Megan Lipsett meets frequently with the students in the class to teach them meditation techniques and mindfulness practices in order to help them practice observing their thoughts and emotions from a distance.
McCormick calls this practice “self distancing,” in which people learn how to distance themselves from their inner rhetoric. You observe your thoughts and emotions “as if you’re sitting in the grass watching the clouds go by,” he said.
In order to measure the effectiveness of such exercises, the research follows a baseline and follow up model where neural scans are run on students at the beginning and end of the course. 98 students received fMRI scans during weeks two and three of the course, and they’ll be scanned again right before finals week.
“We’re looking at the changes in people’s brains, particularly while they deal with strong emotions,” Berkman said. “And we’re looking at whether learning mindfulness helps them manage those emotions.”
Half of the students scanned are from the mindfulness-centered class and the other half are students from the two introduction to psychology classes. The control group for this experiment is the portion of students taking psychology since they are a similar demographic, but are not regularly practicing mindfulness.
A few days before the scan, students are asked to recall several strongly emotional memories. They are then asked to write about those experiences and give each one a nickname that will be displayed through goggles during the scan. While the nickname for the experience is displayed, the students are asked to relive it in several different ways.
In one condition, they are asked to walk through the memory in their mind step by step. In another, they are told to take a self-distanced approach to the memory, “[Pretending] you’re a third person or a fly on the wall watching that interaction,” Berkman said. “Relive it and remember what it was like from the outside.”
In total, subjects are asked to recall around 12 to 16 memories during the scans. “These are all related to different mindfulness practices, trying to shift your perspective on a situation,” Berkman said. “We look at the different parts of the brain that are active when you do those different things.”
Overall, a combination of the fMRI information, surveys and questionnaires is used to see how the course can make the best positive impact on students regarding their long-term happiness and wellness.
Senior Addy Donovan began her position as TA for McCormick’s class over the summer and believes that it brings value to the students who take it. “I feel like there’s not many classes that teach you how to take care of yourself,” she said. “This class teaches you how to take care of yourself, your emotions, your needs, how to be empowered to make your own decisions and I think those are really useful skills for students to have.”
Among the other 10 projects being funded, UO’s is unique as it is the only one focused on a course. The promise the researchers made to the Tiny Blue Dot Foundation is “to develop this course over three years, and to use the fMRI to see what is working and what is not working,” McCormick said.
Ideally, the research being done over the next three years will allow McCormick to perfect the class and be able to distribute its curriculum to other instructors and institutions.
