- Apr
- 12
- 2021
Promoting Health and Well-being through Mindfulness and Compassion-Based Practice
Description: This talk will focus on the mechanisms and applications of short-term mindfulness and compassion-based practice using randomized controlled trials (RCTs). Dr. Tang will discuss the shared mental processes of mindfulness and compassion such as three components of enhanced self-control: attention control, emotion regulation, and self-awareness. He will use one form of mindfulness - integrative body-mind training (IBMT) as an example to explore mindfulness effects in healthy adults (e.g., stress reduction) and patients (e.g., addiction and mood disorders) and demonstrate how to cultivate mindfulness and compassion effectively through autonomic and central nervous system interaction.
About Speaker
Dr. Yi-Yuan Tang, PhD, is a neuroscientist and psychologist. He is now the Presidential Endowed Chair in Neuroscience and Professor at Department of Psychological Sciences and Internal Medicine at Texas Tech University.
Dr. Tang’s basic research focuses on how environment or experience (stress, learning, training or culture) affects behavior (e.g., attention, emotion, self-control, health and wellbeing), physiology (e.g., cortisol, HRV) and brain plasticity over the lifespan using psychosocial, physiological, neuroimaging and genetic methods. His translational research focuses on the development and implementation of evidence-based prevention and intervention for behavioral problems and mental disorders such as stress related disorders, mood disorders, addictions, cognitive decline and AD. He developed a novel Integrative Body-Mind Training (IBMT) and has studied its mechanisms and effects in randomized clinical trials in healthy and patient populations since 1990s. A series of RCTs have shown that few hours of IBMT can significantly reduce stress hormone, improve immune function, cognitive performance and brain plasticity.
Dr. Tang has published 9 books, such as The Neuroscience of Mindfulness Meditation: How the Body and Mind Work Together to Change Our Behavior, Brain-Based Learning and Education: Principles and Practice, and over 300 peer-reviewed articles including Nature Reviews Neuroscience, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Trends in Cognitive Sciences. These findings are reported in the scientific journals such as Nature, Science, Nature Review Neuroscience, Neuron, PNAS, and popular media including BBC, The Press Association, Reuters, TIME, New York Times and NPR. He has received multiple awards including NIH Cutting-Edge Basic Research Awards and NIH Phased Innovation Award. More information on www.imcenter.net