Video: Perspectives From Neuroscientist, Richard Davidson

Richard Davidson is a Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry, Director of the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior and the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience, and Founder and Chair of the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. The awards he’s received, articles he’s published, and research he’s done is impressive, and he joined the Wisdom 2.0 conference to talk about well-being as a skill.

In 1992, he had a conversation in Dharamsala, India with His Holiness the Dalai Lama, who asked him a question that changed the course of his entire career. His Holiness asked Davidson, “You’ve used tools of modern neuroscience to study anxiety and depression and fear, why can’t you use those same tools to study kindness and compassion?”

At the beginning of this session, Davidson discusses how that conversation was a wake-up call for him, and how on that day he made a commitment to His Holiness that he would do everything he could to put kindness and compassion squarely within the crosshairs of mainstream science.

In this 25-minute video, find out about the research, findings, and developments that have taken place since that conversation—to bring mindfulness, kindness, and compassion into the world of neuroscience—and what kind of developments in modern science have enabled Davidson to move forward in the work he’s doing.