Center for Healthy Minds

Center scientists are evaluating and comparing the effectiveness of brief trainings to buffer against the negative effects that acute stress has on behavior and cognitive abilities.

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?

Center researchers seek to unearth how the brain processes emotions differently depending on a person’s awareness of what’s causing that emotion.

Can a mindfulness intervention impact engineering graduate students' creativity and well-being?

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.

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?

Drawing from empathic accuracy tasks and imaging data from an adolescent population, this project explores additional frameworks of empathy ­that more fully examine two components of empathy.

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.

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.

Examining the effectiveness of mindfulness-based interventions across research literature

What are your emotional styles? How does your emotional style influence your well-being?

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.

Is it possible to treat ADHD with Tai Chi, a form of moving meditation?

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

Examining how therapist differences impact client outcomes

Center scientists are exploring the bodily changes associated with a specific type of yoga in individuals on the autism spectrum.

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.

We’re studying an ancient meditation practiced by present-day expert Tibetan Buddhists and how such a practice might offer insight into the death process.

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

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