Plasticity of the Social Brain
As our brains are malleable, we are interested in investigating the trainability of social capacities such as empathy, compassion and perspective taking and its effect on brain plasticity. Inspired by both meditation techniques from the East and Western psychological approaches, we develop mental training programs to increase mindfulness, compassion, mental and physical health as well as prosocial behavior. Hereby, we test both naive participants as well as meditation experts such as Buddhist monks.