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What if the world were a kinder, wiser, more compassionate place?
Our Mission

Cultivate well-being and relieve suffering through a scientific understanding of the mind

Our Vision

A kinder, wiser, more compassionate world

What if our world were a kinder, wiser, more compassionate place? A place where we exercise our minds just like we exercise our bodies? A place where transforming your mind not only improves your own well-being, but cascades to the well-being of others in your community and around the globe?

We’re making this vision a reality at the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Faced with mental and physical health challenges at a global scale, we conduct rigorous scientific research to bring new insights aimed at improving the well-being of people of all backgrounds and ages.

Our research, rooted in neuroscience, comes down to one basic question: What constitutes a healthy mind?

To begin to answer this, we’ve investigated the science of emotions, contemplative practices and qualities of mind we suspect affect well-being, including attention, resilience, equanimity, savoring positive emotions, kindness, compassion, gratitude and empathy. The Center, part of one of the world’s top research institutions, benefits from cross-disciplinary collaborations in the arts and humanities, the physical and natural sciences, and the social sciences. We take pride in being a global hub for innovations in affective and contemplative neuroscience in addition to well-being across the lifespan.

Core Values

Conduct our work with rigor

We are dedicated to meeting our mission through high quality work, whether it’s research or other initiatives. We uphold these standards through continuous learning, respectfully challenging each other to improve, engaging in interdisciplinary collaborations, and intellectual humility.

Make an impact on the world

Impact is the grounding principle for all the research and work we do together. We pay attention to what our work means in the world, prioritize research and projects that have the greatest potential to promote well-being and relieve suffering, and strive to increase the reach of beneficial results of our work.

Cultivate a prosocial workplace

How we do our work together matters. We are committed to creating a workplace and community of collaborators that embodies our mission and vision. We practice this commitment by interacting with respect, kindness, compassion and gratitude toward each other and the resources we share.

Partnering with Healthy Minds Innovations

Healthy Minds Innovations (HMI), the external nonprofit affiliated with the Center, takes the discoveries and insights gleaned from our research and translates them into tools to cultivate and measure well-being.

The Center and HMI actively collaborate to explore the effectiveness of the "Healthy Minds Framework" for understanding how human flourishing can be nurtured consisting of four pillars of well-being: awareness, connection, insight, and purpose. Research shows that each of these four pillars are related to specific networks in the brain and can be strengthened through meditation and other forms of mental training. Learn more about the framework in the peer-reviewed paper that appeared in the The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

The Healthy Minds Framework is the core of the Healthy Minds Program, which is freely available to individuals and is also being actively studied as a well-being intervention.

Our History
1984
Early Beginnings

Richard Davidson joins the faculty at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and establishes the university’s first lab focused on emotion and the brain, called the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience. Early research in the lab focuses on mood and emotion in children and adults, concentrating on how variations in mood and emotion relate to well-being and mental health disorders. The lab expanded to the Waisman Center, also at UW-Madison, in 2001 to include a major brain imaging facility.

1992
Richard Davidson meets the Dalai Lama

In Dharamsala, India, Richard Davidson meets the Dalai Lama.

"His Holiness challenged me and asked why we were not using the tools of modern neuroscience to study qualities such as kindness and compassion rather than negative qualities of mind such as depression and anxiety. I had no good answer, and on that day, I made a commitment to His Holiness and to myself that I would do everything within my power to help place these positive qualities on the scientific map.”

1995
The Birth of Affective Neuroscience

Along with colleague Steve Sutton, Richard Davidson publishes a review paper in the journal Current Opinion in Neurobiology calling on the scientific community to support and increase collaborations in the growing field of affective neuroscience, an area that examines how the neural structure and activity in the brain influences a person’s emotion and mood.

1996
The Roots of Emotion

Richard Davidson’s lab and collaborators are the first to use fMRI technology to show activation of the amygdala – the part of the brain linked to fear and anger – in response to emotional pictures and cues in the lab. Davidson receives the prestigious MERIT Award from the National Institute of Mental Health, providing critical funding to continue work in the neuroscience of emotion, that same year.

1997
Studying Startle Responses

With colleagues, scientists in the lab including Chris Larson begin studying “startle responses” by measuring a person’s reaction to a sudden stimulus. Researchers assess responses to such stimuli in order to probe other ongoing emotional processes. Research has demonstrated that during negative emotions, startle magnitude is larger. Since startle responses are very short-lived, we can introduce startle “probes” at different latencies in an ongoing stream of information processing and in this way, characterize the time course of emotion very precisely.

2000
Emotional Roots of Violence

In a review paper published in Science, Richard Davidson and colleagues suggest that emotion regulation may be a prelude to impulsive aggression and violence. With this groundbreaking idea in mind, they urge others in the field to consider new avenues for interventions for more at-risk populations.

2001
Mind of the Meditator

The lab welcomes Tibetan Buddhist monk and long-term meditator Matthieu Ricard and leads the first experiment in the world to use fMRI imaging and EEG techniques to look at meditation’s impact on the brain in long-term meditation practitioners.

2003
Of Mind and Immunity

With collaborator Jon Kabat-Zinn, Center scientists publish the first randomized controlled trial suggesting that an 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program can produce measurable effects on the brain and immune function when participants were challenged with the flu vaccine.

In the same year, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences elects Center Founder Richard Davidson to serve as a Fellow along with other accomplished practitioners and scholars worldwide.

2004
Placebos and Pain

In a groundbreaking paper published in the journal Science, Richard Davidson is part of a team to discover that placebos may alter the experience of pain in a person’s brain.

2004
Brain Breakthrough

Center scientists Antoine Lutz and Richard Davidson are the first to discover that meditation can increase gamma oscillations in the brain, which are key markers of neuroplasticity. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, represents the first time the journal features an article on meditation, ushering in a new era and the beginning of the field of contemplative neuroscience.

2005
Expanding the Work

Center Scientist Melissa Rosenkranz and team discover a relationship between activity in the brain and asthma, suggesting that inflammatory responses in the lungs may be shaped by psychological and emotional factors. The Center continues to investigate how this works and whether certain contemplative practices can serve as interventions.

2005
The Neuroscience of Autism

Center experts and collaborators discover that individuals with autism experience less activation in the fusiform gyrus – a part of the brain related to facial recognition – and increased activation in the amygdala, an area of the brain related to emotions, especially fear. The findings, published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, are the first to examine how gaze fixation affects activity in the brain in individuals with autism.

2007
Brain Training

Researchers at the Center map brain differences related to areas of attention and emotion between short-term and long-term meditators, suggesting the idea that these areas can change with intentional training.

2008
Creation of Center for Healthy Minds

The Center for Healthy Minds, first named the Center for Investigating Healthy Minds, is founded at the Waisman Center, UW–Madison. With the support of generous donors and community members, the Center expands the Lab of Affective Neuroscience’s scope to include applied research on well-being outside of the lab in classrooms and the workplace.

2011
Newer Understandings of Pain

Center scientists make the case that emotion, pain and cognitive control are not separate functions in the dorsal cingulate – an area of the brain involved with emotion processing, learning and memory – but rather that emotion, pain and cognitive control are activated in an overlapping region called the anterior midcingulate cortex (aMCC). The review, published in Nature, challenges the influential notion that the processes are separate and argues to reexamine the connections and overlap in this region of the brain.

2012
Stress Affects Girls Differently

Center Scientist Cory Burghy and others publish findings in Nature Neuroscience suggesting that early life stress affects girls differently than boys. The study shows that early life stress in girls predicts levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which may lead to increased anxiety and depressive symptoms in adulthood.

2013
Purpose in Life Predicts Recovery

Center scientist Stacey Schaefer and colleagues find that adults who reported higher levels of meaning and purpose show improved emotional recovery following exposure to negative pictures. A growing body of literature suggests that the degree to which a person feels he or she has purpose in life is predictive of better health and life longevity.

2013
Can Compassion be Learned?

Former Center Graduate Student Helen Weng and collaborators discover that compassion training, performed for two weeks for 30 minutes per day in novice meditators, alters the brain in key areas and results in an increase in pro-social and altruistic behavior.

2013
Games for Good

Games To Do You Good,” an editorial published in the journal Nature by Daphne Bavelier and Richard Davidson, sparks conversation about how video games show promise in shaping the brain and behavior for the greater good. The Center begins research on how video games can teach kids pro-social skills such as empathy and generosity, and how such training influences different circuits of the brain.

2014
A Tipping Point for Well-Being and Meditation

Center scientists author a feature article in a special issue of Scientific American on the science of meditation, examining how ancient contemplative practices can influence the mind, body and well-being.

2014
Healthy Minds Innovations

Healthy Minds Innovations, Inc. an external, affiliated non-profit dedicated to supporting the mission of the Center for Healthy Minds, was founded. The non-profit takes the discoveries and insights gleaned from Center research and transforms them into tools and services – as well as helps manage events and public speaking engagements for the Center.

2015
Teaching Kindness in Classrooms

Center Scientist Lisa Flook publishes the first study on the effectiveness of a mindfulness-based “Kindness Curriculum,” developed by childhood and mindfulness expert Laura Pinger. The findings, focusing on preschool students, suggest that positive qualities of mind can be taught at a young age and such training can yield increases in grades and pro-social behavior such as kindness and sharing.

2015
New Directions

Through forward-thinking investments by the Center’s community and longtime University of Wisconsin–Madison supporters John and Tashia Morgridge, the Center raises funds to recruit nine new endowed faculty members to launch an interdisciplinary approach to studying well-being through a variety of disciplines such as neuroscience, women’s health, education, contemplative studies and economics.

2016
New Faculty: Charles Raison

The Center for Healthy Minds welcomes new faculty Charles Raison, the Mary Sue and Mike Shannon Chair for Healthy Minds. Raison is internationally recognized for his studies examining novel mechanisms involved in the development and treatment of major depression and other stress-related emotional and physical conditions, as well as for his work examining the physical and behavioral effects of compassion training.

2016
New Faculty: Larissa Duncan

Larissa Duncan joins the Center for Healthy Minds as a new faculty member. Duncan studies the biological and psychological pathways through which secular, contemplative practices may support child and family well-being and improve health equity. A study from Duncan and her colleagues found that mindfulness training that addresses fear and pain during childbirth improves childbirth experiences and lessens depression symptoms both during pregnancy and the early postpartum period.

2016
New Faculty: Julie Poehlmann-Tynan

Julie Poehlmann-Tynan joins the Center for Healthy Minds and brings new expertise in early childhood resilience and parent-child relationships. Poehlmann-Tynan is known for her work with children of incarcerated parents, and developing interventions to buffer stress and promote resilience in children. She served as an advisor to Sesame Street for 4 years on their Emmy-nominated initiative, Little Children, Big Challenges: Incarceration, which helped bring a new Muppet to life named Alex, who has an incarcerated father.

2016
New Faculty: John Dunne

John Dunne joins the Center as the Distinguished Chair in Contemplative Humanities. Dunne's work focuses on Buddhist philosophy and contemplative practice, especially in dialog with cognitive science. A prolific author, he publishes on a range topics, from technical works on Buddhist epistemology to broader works on the nature of Buddhist contemplative practices such as mindfulness.

2017
On the Move

With the support and generosity of UW–Madison, the Center expanded to become an administrative center under the College of Letters & Science and moved to its new home on West Washington Avenue. The move follows a number of gifts from donors to support the Center's growing scientific faculty and staff.


The space also houses the Center's newly-founded non-profit Healthy Minds Innovations, dedicated to cultivating well-being and relieving suffering through a scientific understanding of the mind.

2017
Kindness Curriculum Release

The Center for Healthy Minds releases the Kindness Curriculum for free to the public. More than 25,000 people have signed up to receive it globally. Educators and parents can access a free copy in Spanish or in English.

2017
Epigenetic Findings

Center for Healthy Minds experts publish a collaborative paper that builds a better understanding of how meditation-based stress reduction affects the epigenomes – chemical tags that sit on top of DNA. This study is the first to show that long-term meditation practice can induce a change in the regulation of our genes that influence the biological mechanisms of aging.

2017
American Heart Association Recommendation

In collaboration with Richard Davidson and other scientists around the country, the American Heart Association releases a first-ever statement on meditation, saying that “studies of meditation suggest a possible benefit on cardiovascular risk, although the overall quality and in some cases quantity of study data is modest.”

The statement is significant because it represents the first time that a professional medical society issued a consensus statement recommending meditation as a treatment option for a medical illness.

2018
Well-Being in Police

Following a pilot study with the Madison Police Department, Center experts launch a study funded by the National Institute of Justice to understand the effects of mindfulness-based training on police officer well-being.

2018
The Power of Compassion

Center collaborator Helen Weng publishes a study in the journal Frontiers in Psychology suggesting that as little as two weeks of compassion meditation training – intentionally cultivating positive wishes to understand and relieve the suffering of others – may reduce the distress a person feels when witness another’s suffering.

2018
Healthy Minds Innovations Launches Healthy Minds @Work

In 2018, Healthy Minds Innovations pilots Healthy Minds @Work, a well-being program for the mind, based on science and designed for life at work. The training program teaches simple, always-accessible skills to develop personal well-being that permeates all aspects of life, creating a more focused, compassionate culture at work and beyond.

2018
New Faculty: Sarah Short

The Center for Healthy Minds welcomes Sarah Short to the faculty. Short focuses on childhood well-being and the prevention of neurodevelopmental disorders and psychiatric illness. She has focused on prenatal influences on brain and behavioral development as well as the role brain structure and function play in relation to emerging cognitive abilities in typically developing and high-risk children.

Her current research focuses on the impact of poverty on the brain and training programs to improve outcomes for kids.

2018
New Faculty: Simon Goldberg

Simon Goldberg joins the Center for Healthy Minds as an assistant professor in the Department of Counseling Psychology. Goldberg uses tools drawn from psychotherapy research to better understand the therapeutic processes and outcomes of mindfulness and meditation-based interventions. He has collaborated on several randomized trials of contemplative interventions with Center staff and has conducted systematic reviews and meta-analyses of mindfulness-based interventions. Goldberg is also interested in therapist characteristics that relate to patient outcomes in psychotherapy, including interpersonal skills and empathy.

2018
Baby Brain and Behavior Project Findings

Findings from the Center for Healthy Minds suggest that expectant mothers' mental health may influence the white matter development in the brain of her child.

2019
New Faculty: Melissa Rosenkranz

Melissa Rosenkranz joins the Center for Healthy Minds faculty as a Distinguished Chair in Contemplative Neuroscience and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry. Rosenkranz is interested in the neural-immune and biochemical mechanisms by which individual differences in response to emotion alter resilience to and the progression of disease. Rosenkranz is also interested in the impact of meditation practice on emotion response and, subsequently, on the neural-immune and biochemical mechanisms underlying resilience or vulnerability to disease.

2019
Center for Healthy Minds Launches Loka Initiative

The Loka Initiative, a new interdisciplinary collaboration among UW–Madison programs and is housed in the Center for Healthy Minds, launches with a two-day symposium. The mission of the Loka Initiative is to support faith-led environmental and climate efforts locally and around the world by helping build capacity of faith leaders and culture keepers of indigenous traditions, and by creating new opportunities for projects, partnerships, and public outreach.

2020
Center for Healthy Minds earns Bronze certification by the Office of Sustainability’s Green Office program

In 2020, staff created a sustainability committee and sought certification through the UW-Madison Office of Sustainability's Green Office Program. The bronze certification focuses on waste and recycling, so Center's staff updated procedures for composting, extra recycling, printing double sided, etc for implementation at the Center for Healthy Minds office at 625 W. Washington Avenue.

2020
Emmy-Award Winning Program Highlights Center's Kindness Curriculum

PBS Wisconsin Education’s project Kindness in the Classroom won the Emmy for Outstanding Achievement for Informational/Instructional Programming. The video series focuses on implementing the Center's Kindness Curriculum – a free 24-lesson mindfulness guide designed for PreK-K classrooms.

2020
Research findings provides tools for achieving the “how” of well-being in daily life

Researchers at the Center for Healthy Minds introduce a new framework based on scientific evidence that suggests that well-being can be thought of as a set of skills that people can learn through practice in daily life.

2020
Mobile Mental Health Program Goes Beyond Mindfulness According to Research Findings

Findings from researchers at the Center for Healthy Minds and the School of Education at the University of Wisconsin–Madison suggests that a fully remote program administered on smartphones can also produce some of the benefits of in-person mindfulness interventions, including a reduction in symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress and an increase in feelings of social connection.

2021
New Research Network Established on Plasticity of Well-Being and Me

The University of Wisconsin–Madison has received a $2.5 million four-year grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to establish a research network on the plasticity of well-being and to develop innovative measures of the key pillars of well-being. Faculty and experts from the Center for Healthy Minds are leading the effort.

2021
Center Equity Advisory Council Announced

The Center for Healthy Minds formed an Equity Advisory Council, an external body of world class scholars and practitioners who are invited to provide advice to the Center's community on all facets of work through the lens of equity, inclusion and diversity.

Our People

We're an interdisciplinary team of researchers, scholars, staff, students and collaborators. Meet us.

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Meet Center Founder
Richard Davidson
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Our Commitment to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion are priorities in everything we do at the Center for Healthy Minds, including our choice of approaches to scientific inquiry, our partners, staffing and the policies and practices that contribute to the culture of equity in inclusion we desire.

In 2021, the Center for Healthy Minds formed a North American Equity Advisory Council, an external body of world class scholars and practitioners of color who provide advice and feedback to the Center's community on all facets of work through the lens of equity, inclusion and diversity.

Following are three ways the Center is committed to improving diversity, equity and inclusion.

Increase the Diversity of Staff and Leadership

Simply put, who leads and implements the work influences what work is done, how it is done and what meaning is made of the outcome of the work.

Every search for new staff, including faculty members at our Center, will include outreach to communities of color to broaden the talent pool for a more diverse staff. The composition of search committees must include persons of color. As well, the finalist pool of candidates for positions at CHM must also include persons of color.

Make the Research Inclusive

As a research center, our work must be clearly and intentionally inclusive in order to better understand the dynamics of well-being and the related impacts of our work across and within all communities. In addition to promoting and building strong DEI skills and knowledge among white staff at CHM, the Center is engaged in deliberate efforts to collaborate with more Black scholars and other people of color (including undergraduates, graduate students and post-doctoral Fellows) in order to include diverse perspectives and create an organization capable of building a kinder, wiser, more compassionate world for all.

Practice a Compassionate, Equitable Worldview

A kinder, wiser, more compassionate world starts with each person, and is deeply influenced by the culture and surroundings in which individuals exist. The Center and its staff continually examine and adjust who is within the Center’s circles of trust and influence, and how those circles affect the worldviews and decisions made by those at the Center. All members of the Center community must commit to actively educating themselves about issues of equity, inclusion and diversity, as well as engage in the deep inner personal work needed to challenge underlying biases and assumptions. Doing this deep personal work as individuals, and as a community, can contribute significantly to cultivating an environment where every member of the Center can flourish and bring their full, authentic selves to the work of CHM each day.

The Center is eager to collaborate with the next-generation of talented scientists advancing the science of well-being through research scholarship opportunities for underrepresented populations. Contribute to the fund here or contact Lisa Gundlach with questions.

Fy20 Funding Sources for the Center for Healthy Minds

Our Funding

The Center relies on support from competitive federal grants and the generosity of donors and funders to study well-being and relieve suffering in the world.

Learn more.

FY21 Annual Report Cover

Impact Reports

Track our progress, including the latest research findings and exciting new directions, in our FY2021 Annual Report

You can also find our FY2020 Annual Report and past versions of our Winter 2020 Impact Report. Fall, Summer and Spring.

FAQs
fMRI brain scan from Center for Healthy Minds

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