by Jason Boulware and Jean Matelski Boulware Click here to watch the interview! Richard J. Davidson, PhD, is a renowned neuroscientist and one of the world’s leading experts on the impact of contemplative practices, such as meditation, on the brain. He is the founder of the Center for Healthy Minds at...

At the Center’s 2016 Wisdom Research Forum, Dilip V. Jeste, MD delivered a presentation titled, "Wisdom from a neuroscience perspective". Dr. Jeste is Senior Associate Dean for Healthy Aging and Senior Care; Estelle and Edgar Levi Chair in Aging; Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry and Neurosciences;...

By Karla Tecson, International Business Times Researchers at the University of Southern Queensland are designing a new measure that would "accurately and objectively" capture an individual's level of wisdom. The new psychological measure of wisdom might be able to tell whether you make...

By Liza Finlay, The Huffington Post, HuffPost Impact Is empathy contagious? Turns out it is. That may be hard to believe. Especially at this time of year, when frantic shoppers cut lines to snag deals and even the good folk at the Salvation Army fall prey to thieving employees. But, in fact, empathy...

From Iraq to oxytocin, a round-up of big thoughts from big empathy experts. By Ada Calhoun 1. Sociologist Sam Richards asks if it’s possible to understand the motivations of an Iraqi insurgent? He wonders: Can anyone truly understand and empathize with another? 2. Buddhist roshi Joan Halifax explains...

By Alison Gopnik, the New York Times An excerpt: Humphrey, an emeritus professor of psychology at the London School of Economics, may not have solved the mind-body problem, and there is something to be said for the awkward geekery of philosophical analysis and experimental data. But he has some really...

By Douglas Fox, Scientific American An excerpt: ... One might think, for example, that evolutionary processes could increase the number of neurons in our brain or boost the rate at which those neurons exchange information and that such changes would make us smarter. But several recent trends of investigation...

by David Munger from Seed Magazine "Medical writer Tom Rees devotes his blog Epiphenom to the scientific study of religion. Last week he examined a study on the relationship between intelligence and religious belief. Published in Social Psychology Quarterly , this study by Satoshi Kanazawa replicated...

by Melinda Wenner from Scientific American " Fantasizing about sex gets more than just your juices flowing—it also boosts your analytical thinking skills. Daydreaming about love, on the other hand, makes you more creative, according to a study published in the November 2009 Personality and Social...

by Ray Tallis from New Scientist "Most neuroscientists, philosophers of the mind and science journalists feel the time is near when we will be able to explain the mystery of human consciousness in terms of the activity of the brain. There is, however, a vocal minority of neurosceptics who contest...

Again, the tactic here is to acquire more objectivity and to transcend the influences of the highly subjective schematic ‘lens’ by creating psychological distance from automatic, reactive conceptualization. Through objectification, we learn to observe and analyze how we think, what we feel, how we...

“Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9 percent of everything you think, and of everything you do, is for yourself—and there isn’t one.”― Wei Wu Wei These are two paragraphs from my almost finished book- Realizing our Original Mind . ‘While the self seems real and substantial, our dis-identification practice...

There is little direct commentary on the function of memory in the Buddha’s teaching; it is taken for granted that our existence is accumulative: nothing is really forgotten, and our present state is continually filtered through the effects of the past. The Buddha explains memory’s dual importance...

My new book incorporates the writings of contemporary Buddhist scholar, psychologists, cognitive scientists and physicists to provide a fascinating and authoritative framework for the interpretation of the Buddha's teachings. In this revised and expanded edition, the Eightfold Path and the practice...

If Social Constructionism does not prefer monistic Postmodernism over dualistic Modernism, it should include, next to living expressions and spontaneous gestures, criticism into its process model, occurring as independent confirmation and implying coordinated reflection between the knowing organism and...

Abstract: Wisdom has played a central role in the attempt to understand the positive nature of human behavior for more than 4,000 years. Neuroscientists, cognitive psychologists, and life span developmental scholars have joined this discussion in recent years to empirically investigate the physical and...

Stephen S. Hall "A compelling investigation into one of our most coveted and cherished ideals, and the efforts of modern science to penetrate the mysterious nature of this timeless virtue. We all recognize wisdom, but defining it is more elusive. In this fascinating journey from philosophy to science...

Nathan Bupp interviews Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on humanistic wisdom. Available online: http://www.secularhumanism.org/index.php?page=bupp_26_6&section=library