The ReSource Project is a large-scale study on Eastern and Western methods of mental training. It is a secular programme developed by a team of experienced meditation teachers, scientists, and psychotherapists. The Principal Investigator of the project is our Mind & Life Europe Board Member Prof. Dr. Tania Singer, Director of the Social Neuroscience Department at the Max Planck Institute for Human Cognitive and Brain Sciences in Leipzig.
'This is the outcome of 12 years of work, so we are rather happy about it.'
The project has published several project papers over the last months. Two studies on ReSource Change Data were published in Science Advances on 4 October. Please find abstracts and links to access these articles below.
Structural plasticity of the social brain: Differential change after socio-affective and cognitive mental training
Although neuroscientific research has revealed experience-dependent brain changes across the life span in sensory, motor, and cognitive domains, plasticity relating to social capacities remains largely unknown. To investigate whether the targeted mental training of different cognitive and social skills can induce specific changes in brain morphology, we collected longitudinal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) data throughout a 9-month mental training intervention from a large sample of adults between 20 and 55 years of age. Read more…
Specific reduction in cortisol stress reactivity after social but not attention-based mental training
Psychosocial stress is a public health burden in modern societies. Chronic stress–induced disease processes are, in large part, mediated via the activation of the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis and the sympathetic-adrenal-medullary system. We asked whether the contemplative mental training of different practice types targeting attentional, socio-affective (for example, compassion), or socio-cognitive abilities (for example, perspective-taking) in the context of a 9-month longitudinal training study offers an effective means for psychosocial stress reduction. Read more…