The breakthrough in imaging tech-niques led Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz, now aresearch psychiatrist at the School ofMedicine at the University of Californiaat Los Angeles and author of THE MIND &THE BRAIN, to wonder two decades ago,“What kind of internal experience is gen-erated by the neuronal activity capturedon a brain scan? Even more important,how can we use scientific discoverieslinking inner experience with brain func-tion to effect constructive changes ineveryday life?”1 A student of Buddhistmeditation, he developed a form of ther-apy to change the faulty chemistry of awell-identified brain circuit: that of thepatient with Obsessive CompulsiveDisorder. (OCD is a prime example ofpathological brain processes in which

negative thoughts can be traced on anMRI). He told his patients: “The feelingof doubt … is a false message, due to ajammed transmission in the brain.”2

They learned to change the way theythought about their thoughts throughregular refocusing, which engaged themin intentional rather than automaticbehavior, activating a different brain cir-cuitry. Not only did he introduce a newtreatment for mental illness, he also provided hard evidence that the mindcan control the brain’s chemistry as he demonstrated how refocusing literally reprograms the brain, and mindfulness gives people more controlover their lives. On another front, the millennial inner

science of meditation became the focusof experiments by Dr. Richard Davidson,a pioneer in contemplative neuroscienceat the University of Wisconsin atMadison. With the cooperation of theDalai Lama, he made MRIs of Tibetanmonks in such meditative states as visual-ization, one-pointed concentration, andthe generation of compassion. Accordingto Davidson, “the brain can be trans-formed through engagement with purelymental practices derived from theworld’s great religious traditions…. Thebrain, more than any other organ in ourbody, is the organ built to change inresponse to experience.”3

When the Dalai Lama was asked whatgreater benefit he hoped for from thisline of research, His Holiness replied:“Through training the mind, people canbecome more calm—especially thosewho suffer from too many ups anddowns. That’s the conclusion from thesestudies of Buddhist mind training. Andthat’s my main end: I’m not thinkinghow to further Buddhism, but how theBuddhist tradition can make some con-

THE Neurobiology OF “We”Patty de Llosa

The mind is its own place, and in itselfCan make a heaven of hell, A hell of heaven.

—John Milton, PARADISE LOST

DID YOU EVER WONDER, somewhat apprehensively, whetheryour true inner Command Center rests in the complex bio -mechanics of your brain or the vast reaches of your mind? Italways seemed to me as inscrutable as asking which came first,the chicken or the egg. But the study of neuroplasticity is chang-ing the way scientists think about the mind/brain connection.While they’ve known for years that the brain is the physical sub-strate for the mind, the central mystery of neuroscience is howthe mind influences the physical structure of the brain. In the last few decades, thanks to PET and MRI imaging techniques,scientists can observe what’s actually going on in the brain whilepeople sleep, work, make decisions, or attempt to function underlimitations caused by illness, accident, or war.

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Reshaping the brain, re-opening to the world

Ramon y Cajal. Drawingof a neuron, 1899

in other parts of the brain.8 As Siegel fur-ther explained at a recent conference,“the neural representation of the EiffelTower, or what’s called its neural netprofile, is created by experience as themind links past, present, and anticipationof the future. No one on the planetknows how a neural firing turns into amental image but we know where it hap-pens and that it somehow leads to a sub-jective mental process. The mindemerges at the interface of neurobiologyand the interpersonal transactions ofexperience between minds.”9

The good news is that while our earli-est interpersonal experiences may havecreated detrimental repetitive patterns,new patterns are formed all through ourlife span. We can liberate ourselves fromthose old patterns through new neuralconnections. And Siegel believes interper-sonal relationships are key to new forms ofmental flow that shape the focus of ourattention and what we envision. “Sincethe mental processes of attention andimagination change the firing in the brain,the brain can be changed by the mind.”10

Siegel is convinced that the develop-ment of attention through meditativeexercises is a crucial aspect of inner bal-ance. He recommends it to his patients,telling them mindfulness helps peopleregulate their internal states, includingtheir immune system, their emotions,their attention, and even their interper-sonal interactions. “Now, for me,” headds, “that’s not a surprise. Becausemindfulness promotes the growth ofintegrative fibers in the brain, which arewhat’s needed for regulation across allthese domains. Integration is the funda-mental mechanism of self-regulation.”11

I asked him how meditation couldhelp a soldier returning from Iraq dealwith traumatic experiences. Wouldn’t a

deeply troubled or traumatized personwho tries to sit in meditation feel morepain, even with an effort at “I am here”?He said, “With mindfulness you’re nottrying to get beyond the pain. It’s justthe opposite. You’re trying to deeplyaccept the pain. So the resistance whenyou try to get ‘beyond’ the pain is actu-ally creating more suffering. If pain isthere, your job is to accept it, and therelief from the desire and drive andurgency to get rid of it actually power-fully reduces the suffering, even thoughthe pain remains.”12

“We is what me is!”

OUR NERVOUS SYSTEM has two basicmodes: it fires up or quiets down. Whenwe’re in a reactive state, our brainstemsignals the need for fight or flight. Thismeans we’re unable to open ourselves toanother person, and even neutral com-ments may be taken as fighting words.On the other hand, an attitude of recep-tivity activates a different branch of thebrainstem as it sends messages to relaxthe muscles of the face and vocal chords,

tribution to the benefit of society. Ofcourse, as Buddhists, we always pray forall sentient beings. But we’re onlyhuman beings; the main thing you cando is train your own mind.”4

Relationships

change the brain

I ASKED DR. DANIEL SIEGEL, founder ofthe emerging field of interpersonal neu-robiology: How does the brain change aswe influence each other? He has spentmore than twenty years investigating theprofound influence on us of thosearound us, or what he calls “the neurobi-ology of ‘we.’”5 Siegel is ClinicalProfessor of Psychiatry at the UCLASchool of Medicine, co-director of theMindful Awareness Research Center, and

director of the Mindsight Institute. He’sconvinced that the “we” connection is alittle-understood, but powerful meansfor individual and societal transformationthat should be taught in schools andchurches, and even enter into politics. “Interpersonal neurobiology isn’t a

form of therapy,” he told me, “but aform of integrating a range of scientificresearch into a picture of the nature ofhuman reality. It’s a phrase I invented toaccount for the human effort to under-stand truth. We can define the mind. Wecan define mental health. We can baseeverything on science, but I want to baseit on all the sciences. We’re looking forwhat we call ‘consilience.’ If you think ofthe neuroscientist as a blind man lookingat only one part of an elephant, we aretrying to discover the ‘whole-elephant’view of reality.”6

In a tele-class on Clinical Applicationsof Interpersonal Neurobiology, heexplained that “For a person to change,the mind must change.” He added that“we now know ‘mind’ is coming bothfrom interpersonal processes and frombrain structure or neurobiology. Thebrain is the social organ of the body,where one hundred billion neuronsreach out to other neurons. The releaseof neurotransmitters will excite orinhibit, fire or not fire. It’s the firing pat-terns that lead, in part, to the experienceof mind.”7

Here’s an example he gave of howneural firing leads to mental experienceand how mental experience creates neu-ral firing. When someone says the words,“Eiffel Tower,” you have an immediatevisual experience because when you hearthe word, an electrical current runningthrough the acoustic nerve fires, sendinga message to the left brain, where it isdecoded. A visual image is then created

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The human nervous system

Neuron, 2005

And the mind is an embodied and rela-tional emergent process that regulates theflow of energy and information.”18

“We can be both an ‘I’ and

part of an ‘us’ ”

ONE OF THE MOST EXCITING new dis-coveries in neuroscience is the system ofmirror neurons, which help us connectwith each other. Siegel, who has a talentfor explaining the complex workings ofthe brain and nervous system, tells aboutthem in simple terms for the uninitiated:“Certain neurons can fire when someonecommunicates with you. They dissolvethe border between you and others.These mirror neurons are a hardwiredsystem designed for us to see the mind-state of another person. That means wecan learn easily to dance, but also toempathize with another. They automati-

cally and spontaneously pick up informa-tion about the intentions and feelings ofthose around us, creating emotional res-onance and behavioral imitation as theyconnect our internal state with thosearound us, even without the participa-tion of our conscious mind.”19 And inMINDSIGHT: “Mirror neurons are theantennae that pick up information aboutthe intentions and feelings of others.…Right hemisphere signals (are those) themirror neuron system uses to simulatethe other within ourselves and to con-struct a neural map of our interdepend-ent sense of a ‘self.’ It’s how we can beboth an ‘I’ and part of an ‘us.’”20

So how can we re-shape our brain tobecome more open and receptive to oth-ers? We already know the brain receivesinput from the senses and gives it mean-ing, he points out. That’s how blind peo-ple find ways to take in information and

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and normalizes blood pressure and heartrate. “A receptive state turns on thesocial engagement system that connectsus to others,” Siegel explains in hisrecent book, MINDSIGHT. “Receptivity isour experience of being safe and seen;reactivity is our fight-flight-freeze sur-vival reflex.”13

He describes the brain as part of “anembodied nervous system, a physicalmechanism through which both energyand information flow to influence rela-tionship and the mind.” He defines rela-tionship as “the flow of energy and infor-mation between people.” Mind is “anembodied and relational process thatregulates the flow of energy and informa-tion, consciousness included. Mind isshared between people. It isn’t some-thing you own; we are profoundly inter-connected. We need to make maps of webecause we is what me is!”14

Although some neuroscientists insistthe mind is just the output of the brain,Siegel points out that in the world ofmental health, neither mind nor healthhave been adequately defined: “ ‘Mentalhealth’ for many only means you don’thave any of the symptoms listed in theDSM IV [THE DIAGNOSTIC AND STATISTICAL

MANUAL OF MENTAL DISORDERS], so you mustbe healthy!” he says. “We now know thatintegration leads to health and harmony.We can re-envision the DSM symptomsas examples of syndromes filled withchaos and rigidity, conditions createdwhen integration is impaired. So we candefine mental health as the ability tomonitor ourselves and modify our statesso that we integrate our lives. Thenthings that appeared unchangeable canactually be changed.”15

Integration, the vital connection withall our parts that leads to balance, is com-posed of both differentiation and linkage,

he says, and the absence of either impairsit: “Relationships, mind and brain aren’tdifferent domains of reality—they areeach about energy and information flow.The mechanism is the brain; subjectiveimpressions and consciousness are mind.The regulation of energy and informationflow is a function of mind as an emergentprocess emanating from both relation-ships and brain. Relationships are the waywe share this flow. In this view, the emer-gent process we are calling “mind” islocated in the body (nervous system) andin our relationships. Interpersonal rela-tionships that are attuned promote thegrowth of integrative fibers in the brain.It is these regulatory fibers that enablethe embodied brain to function well andfor the mind to have a deep sense ofcoherence and well-being. Such a statealso creates the possibility of a sense ofbeing connected to a larger world. Thenatural outcome of integration is com-passion, kindness, and resilience.”16

If mind is what flows through themechanism of the brain, does that makeneuroplasticity a process or a fact? “It’s afact of a process,” he told me. “Process isa verb not a noun. It’s not a hypothesis,it’s a fact of science, a real entity, but aprocess—something moving, happening,and dynamic. Take running. It’s a nounbut it’s about a moving process.”17 Hetouched on the same subject at the con-ference: “Everything we experience,memory or emotion or thought, is partof a process, not a place in the brain!Energy is the capacity to do stuff. There’snothing that’s not energy, even ‘mass.’Remember E=MC squared? Informationis literally a swirl of energy in a certainpattern that has a symbolic meaning; itstands for something other than itself.Information should be a verb; mind,too—as in minding or informationing.

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Complete neuron cell diagram,2007

5 Daniel Siegel, MINDSIGHT (New York: Bantam,2010), p. 210.6 Daniel Siegel, interview by P. de Llosa,September 2010.7 Daniel Siegel, “Clinical Applications ofInterpersonal Neurobiology.” Six-hour CD course,November 2003. 8 Ibid.9 Daniel Siegel, “The Mind that Changes theBrain,” Two-day conference, New York, July 2010.10 Ibid.11 MINDSIGHT, p. 215.12 MINDSIGHT, p. 224.

13 Daniel Siegel, THE MINDFUL THERAPIST(New York:W.W. Norton, 2010). For more information, seewww.drdansiegel.com. 14 Siegel, “Mind that Changes.”15 Ibid.16 Ibid.17 Siegel, de Llosa interview.18 “Mind that Changes.”19 Siegel, “Clinical Applications.”20 MINDSIGHT, p. 224.21 “Mind that Changes.”22 Ibid.23 “Mind that Changes.”

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map out their world. According to Siegel,they do this on secondary pathwaysrather than the main highways of thebrain. That’s a major key to how we canbring about change: “You can take anadult brain in whatever state it’s in andchange a person’s life by creating newpathways,” he affirms. “Since the cortexis extremely adaptable and many parts ofthe brain are plastic, we can unmask dor-mant pathways we don’t much use anddevelop them. A neural stem cell is ablob, an undifferentiated cell in the brainthat divides into two every twenty-fourhours. In eight–ten weeks, it will becomeestablished as a specialized neural cell andexist as a part of an interconnected net-work. How we learn has everything to dowith linking wide areas of the brain witheach other.”21

He calls the prefrontal cortex “the por-tal through which interpersonal relationsare established.” He demonstrates, byclosing his hand over his thumb, howthis little tiny piece of us (the last joint ofthe two middle fingers) is especiallyimportant because it touches all threemajor parts of our brain: the cortex, lim-bic area, and brainstem as well as thebody-proper. “It’s the middle prefrontalfibers which map out the internal statesof others,” he adds. “And they do thisnot only within one brain, mine, but alsobetween two brains, mine and yours, and

even among many brains. The brain isexquisitely social, and emotions are itsfundamental language. Through themwe become integrated and develop anemergent resonance with the internalstate of the other.”22

In Siegel’s recent books, MINDSIGHT andTHE MINDFUL THERAPIST, he emphasizes theregulatory role of the mind, which canboth monitor and modify what’s happen-ing. Step by step he explains how the lensof the mind can be trained to see the mindin oneself and others. “Relationship iskey,” he emphasizes. “When we workwith relationship, we work with brainstructure. Relationship stimulates us andis essential in our development. Peoplerarely mention relationship in brain stud-ies, but it provides vital input to the brain.Every form of psychotherapy that works,works because it creates healthier brainfunction and structure.… In approachingour lives, we can ask where do we experi-ence the chaos or rigidity that revealwhere integration is impaired. We canthen use the focus of our attention tointegrate both our brain and our relation-ships. Ultimately we can learn to be openin an authentic way to others, and to our-selves. The outcome of such an integrativepresence is not only a sense of deep well-being and compassion for ourselves andothers, but also an opening of the doorsof awareness to a sense of the interde-pendence of everything. ‘We’ are indeed apart of an interconnected whole.”23

1 Jeffrey M. Schwartz (with Sharon Begley), THE

MIND AND THE BRAIN (New York: HarperCollins,2002), p. 9.2 Ibid, 80.3 Davidson, Richard. 2009. “Transform YourMind, Change Your Brain.” Google PersonalGrowth Series. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7tRdDqXgsJ0&NR=1.4 Goleman, Daniel. 2003. “The Lama in the Lab.”SHAMBHALA SUN (March).

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Prefrontal cortex, 2008

Neuron. Green: microtubules; blue: DNA; red: motors and microtubule associated proteins. Image captured a century after creation of neuron drawing on page 68