Study: Compassion can be learned

MADISON, Wis., March 27 (UPI) -- Compassion can be learned in much the same way as playing a musical instrument or being proficient in a sport, U.S. researchers said.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison found that brain circuits used to detect emotions and feelings were dramatically changed in subjects who had extensive experience practicing compassion meditation.

Study director Richard Davidson Antoine Lutz said 16 experience mediators were age-matched to 16 controls with no previous mediation training and taught the fundamentals of compassion meditation.

The study subjects were placed in the fMRI and asked to either begin compassion meditation or refrain from mediation as they were exposed to negative and positive human vocalizations.

The scans revealed significant activity in the insula -- part of the brain that plays a key role in emotion -- when the long-term meditators were generating compassion and exposed to emotional vocalizations. Activity also increased in the temporal parietal juncture -- important in processing empathy.

"Both of these areas have been linked to emotion sharing and empathy," Davidson said in a statement. "The combination of these two effects, which was much more noticeable in the expert meditators as opposed to the novices, was very powerful."

The findings were published in Public Library of Science One.