Center for Healthy Minds

Our researchers are learning more about how very early experiences influence the developing brain and child well-being.

How does the relationship between mental and physical stress impact well-being?

Are people who are better at controlling their attention, emotion or pain responses in a laboratory setting more successful at carrying that skill into daily life?

Scholars at the Center examine perceptions and experiences related to mindfulness and how they contribute to studying differing practices.

In collaboration with Healthy Minds Innovations, this project strives to learn how to teach and measure well-being to scale

Understanding how the COVID-19 pandemic is affecting educators’ lives and whether a mindfulness-based program buffers against the negative effects of stress.

How do people experience emotions over a period of time and what does that say about their resilience and well-being?

Exploring whether meditation training via mobile technology (e.g., smartphones) could dramatically increase access to potentially beneficial practices.

This study seeks to build upon knowledge from Tibetan medicine through examining well-being data and microbiome measures on a variety of people with varying levels of meditation training who have participated in previous intervention studies to gain a better understanding of what works for whom and why.

Center for Healthy Minds researchers are examining how emotion may play a role in the development of Alzheimer’s Disease.

Is hyperthermia a viable and effective treatment for depression?

The goals of this work are to understand the impact of mindfulness training on police officer well-being and the well-being of people negatively affected by policing.

What impacts does an in-home parent-child mindfulness training program have on children and their families?

Seeking to understand whether large-scale interventions such as the Healthy Minds Program may have a protective effect against stress and mental health challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Center experts are developing assessments and tools that examine ways to cultivate well-being across a variety of people and contexts.

How can researchers improve jail visits for children with incarcerated parents?

What impact does well-being curricula have on educators and the students they serve? The Center for Healthy Minds is teaming up with AtentaMente, a Mexico-based group of multidisciplinary professionals, to find out.

Researchers are broadening the methods to measure mindfulness

How does a cognitive training program impact brain development in 6-year-old children?

Examining the effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions across research literature

Center researchers and collaborators are building new approaches to understand the links between traditional contemplative perspectives and scientific theory to better study the scientific effects of meditation training on the brain, body, mind and behavior.

Center researchers are developing a program to teach scientifically-informed practices and principles that facilitate well-being.

Our scientists examine how individual differences in emotional reactivity and recovery to emotional stimuli, brain structure and patterns of brain activity are related to life experiences, personality, behavior, health and well-being across the adult lifespan in a large national longitudinal sample.

Examining whether experience with mindfulness-based programs and training is helping people cope with daily stress and mental challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic.

What drives moral behavior and greater well-being?

Center researchers are investigating possible ways to prevent teacher burnout in the classroom.

Examining how therapist differences impact client outcomes

Following up with past research participants about the pandemic's impact on their lives and their current psychological outlook.

Determining whether there are protective effects of learning well-being skills on stress during crises.

A global community of field researchers are collaborating on a study of an ancient monastic post-mortem meditative state known as tukdam, practiced by present-day expert Tibetan Buddhists and how such a practice might offer insight into mental, spiritual, and physical well-being during the death process, both for the dying and for their support community.

Center for Healthy Minds researchers, along with partners at Pennsylvania State University and the University of Virginia, are creating and studying the impact of a well-being curriculum for college freshman.

Evaluating how organizations serving veterans impacted mental health treatment engagement

How can Buddhist traditions influence the study and practice of mindfulness today?

How does chronic stress impact a child's social, behavioral and cognitive development?

Center scientists and collaborators examine the impact of well-being training.

Can we use an evolutionary perspective to better understand depression?