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SCIENCE & SPIRITUALITY
Dr. Jeffrey Schwartz: Fundamentals of Mind-Brain Interaction - P2/2
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I really pursued
in a more scientifically
rigorous way,
“What does happen
when you change the focus
of your attention and,
do things
to modulate, moderate,
the quality of attention
that you are using?
How does this
change your brain?
How does that all work?”
Welcome, beloved viewers,
to Science and Spirituality
on Supreme Master
Television.
Today’s program
features Part 2 of our interview with neurobiologist
and researcher
Dr. Jeffrey M. Schwartz
of the University of
California, Los Angeles
School of Medicine, USA.
Dr. Schwartz, who
graduated with honors
in philosophy from the
University of Rochester,
USA, has published
nearly a hundred
academic articles in the
fields of neuroscience
and psychiatry
as well as several books,
and is well versed
in Buddhist philosophy,
specializing in the
concept of mindfulness
or conscious awareness.
He studies the influence
of mindfulness
on brain function and is
an expert in self-directed
neuroplasticity
or the mind’s ability to
purposefully reorganize
neural pathways
in the brain.
Dr. Schwartz is
best known for
his four-step method
of treating
obsessive-compulsive
disorder (OCD),
a condition characterized
by unwanted thoughts
or obsessions
and repetitive behaviors.
For example, some OCD
sufferers fear germs
so much that
they engage in constant,
excessive hand washing.
What originally got you
interested in obsessive-
compulsive disorder and
the science of the brain?
We actually stumbled
on the study of
obsessive-compulsive
disorder way
back in the 1980s
when it was thought to be
a very rare condition,
and we just thought
it was interesting.
And it turned out that
it was a lot more common
than we thought,
and then as I've described
in some of my writings,
when I started to see
how obsessive-compulsive
disorder manifested itself
in people who suffer
from it, by which
I specifically mean
they're getting these urges
to watch and check.
They're getting
these terrible feelings;
they're getting these
intrusive, bothersome
thoughts telling them
that they're no good,
telling them terrible things
that they know
do not make sense,
that they know are not true.
I realized that this
gave me an opportunity
to study this interface
between the mind
and the brain, because
we had done these positron
emission tomography
brain imaging studies
that show there was
something going on
in the brain.
And specifically
in the bottom
of the front of the brain,
right above the eye sockets,
a part of the brain called
the “orbital frontal cortex”
and this is basically,
among other things,
an error-detection circuitry
in the brain
and it's overactive.
So we were seeing
that people who had
obsessive-compulsive
disorder had an overactive
error-detection circuitry,
but they realized
that the way they were
thinking and feeling
didn't make sense
so this enabled me to say,
“Well, the reason
why you're feeling
like everything is wrong
is because
your brain is sending you
a false message.”
And because of
the nature of the condition,
not every condition
leaves the people
who suffer from it with
as clear an awareness
as obsessive-compulsive
disorder does,
but most people with
obsessive-compulsive
disorder can go,
“Yes, I can see
how that makes sense.
My brain is sending me
a false message.”
And when I saw that
people could really take
that, use it, work with it,
it gave me
a tremendous opportunity
to study the relationship
between attention
or the mind and the brain
and then we were
fortunate to be able to show
that when people did that
it changed
how their brain worked,
and that enabled us
to basically have a whole
lot of scientific work
going forward and
write books about it, etc.
The Book of Proverbs
in the Hebrew Bible
or Tanakh, also known
as the Old Testament
of the Holy Bible, states,
“As a man thinks, so is he.”
Similarly, Dr. Schwartz
says that paying attention
to our thoughts
and purposely
focusing our minds
can lead to
great transformations.
These techniques
of mindfully refocusing
your brain, can you give us
some examples of
how the average person
can use this?
In the work that I did
with Leonardo DiCaprio
in the movie
“The Aviator,”
trying to help an actor
portray a person with
obsessive-compulsive
disorder, you can
actually do it in reverse.
And, of course, that’s
relevant to any person,
which is that you form
an image in your mind
of a way you’re wanting
to portray yourself and then
focus your attention
in ways that are consistent
with achieving the goal
of presenting yourself
in that way.
That principal obviously
applies to regular people,
to any person.
If you form an image
in your mind
of how you want to behave,
you can become that, and
on top of that the science
that we’ve done has shown
that you change your brain
in the process
of doing that, so that
the brain actually evolves
to become the image
that you’re portraying.
And in Leo DiCaprio’s case,
in becoming a person
with obsessive-compulsive
disorder, it took months
for him to fully
get out of it, because
it took months for him to
sort of develop the process
of getting into it.
So this kind of
focus of attention
in some significant way
changes who you are,
changes your
inner chemistry;
so it's powerful stuff.
When Science and
Spirituality returns,
Dr. Schwartz will discuss
his spiritual journey and
how it has informed him
in developing pioneering
psychiatric theories.
Please stay tuned
to Supreme Master
Television.
Welcome back to
Science and Spirituality,
where we’ve been speaking
with neurobiologist
Dr. Jeffrey M. Schwartz
from the US
about consciously using
the mind’s power
to transform our brains
and ourselves.
Dr. Schwartz
now discusses how
his spiritual life informs
his scientific work.
I was a person of faith
from the very beginning.
To quote
the great gospel singer,
Dorothy Love Coats,
“I got my religion
when I was very young.”
I'm a Jewish person
and I was orthodox.
I was very serious about it.
But then
in my later adolescence,
I started to sort of fall away
as adolescents do,
but then in my early 20's,
I became
very, very interested
in classical Buddhism.
So for 30 years,
I was a very, very
serious practitioner
of classical Buddhism
in what's called
the “Theravada,”
which means
“the teaching of the elders.”
So from that,
I learned a lot about
the practice of mindfulness
and the practice
of “Vipassana,”
which tends to be
translated as the word,
“insight,” the very word
we were using before
about helping people
with OCD,
and that turns out
to have been a clue
for me about
how to do this therapy.
According to
Nyanaponika Thera,
a Buddhist monk
of the Theravada school,
a key element
of Insight Meditation
is directness of vision
or “bare attention,”
meaning gaining
direct knowledge
through meditation,
which is different from
the inferential knowledge
obtained through study
and reflection.
In developing insight
through meditation,
practitioners view
their physical and mental
processes directly,
independent of
abstract concepts
or emotional evaluations,
thus allowing them
to reach “reality.”
So I practiced very
seriously what's called
“Insight Meditation”
for three decades and then
in the last couple of years,
for a lot of reasons,
a lot of which I think
have to do with
the influence of God
on a person
through their life,
I really did come to see
Jesus Christ
as a critical part of my life
and became baptized.
To quote
another philosopher,
who I’m very, very
involved in studying
for the last few years,
Soren Kierkegaard
the great Danish
Christian existentialist,
what we’re really trying
to do is become the people
God wants us to be.
What we are trying
to focus our attention on
and the self that
we are trying to become
is the self that through
God’s effect on us
we come to know that’s
where we want to go.
And you can see
that everything
we were saying here about
how focused attention
changes your brain
is very compatible with that,
because you’re basically
forming a view of the self,
you are, through prayer
and meditation,
coming to see
what God wants you to be.
You are focusing on it.
Epigenetics is the study
of how our environment
and lifestyle
can transform the way
our genes are expressed,
and Dr. Schwartz says that
evidence from this field
further indicates that
we’re beings whose lives
are not solely dictated
by the physical structure
of our brains.
You have genetically
inherited patterns
of brain activity, there is
no question about that.
That is completely
non-controversial,
but even with your
genetically inherited
patterns of brain activity,
and no question left
to their own devices,
those genetically
inherited patterns
of brain activity
are going to have
very, very large effects
on how you live your life.
However, if you realize
that you can transcend,
you can go beyond those
patterns of brain activity
through the power
of your attention, and
through focusing your
attention more wisely,
you can change the
expression of those genes.
So your patterns
of genetic inheritance
don’t determine
what you are,
because how you live,
the cultural environments
you immerse yourself in,
the beliefs of the people
around you, how you
interact with those people,
the degree of your faith,
the philosophers
that you read
and expose yourself to,
all of these things lead to
differences in the way
you focus your attention,
which have direct effects
on how your genes
express themselves.
There’s a whole new field
that has grown up
in the last few years
called epigenetics, which
to a significant degree
is about these
environmental effects on
how the genes are expressed
inside of an organism.
So, these kinds of
cultural environmental
belief-related effects
that influence how we
focus our attention,
have very large potential
effects on how your genes
express themselves, and
that is going to influence
how proteins
get synthesized and
how enzymes act and
how your neurochemicals
are basically working
together and
the take-home message is,
“If you believe that
you don’t have the power
to do any of that,
you are not going to do it.”
So we need to have a
culture where people are
encouraged to realize,
“You have a lot of power
over what you can do
with your biology.”
We sincerely thank
Dr. Jeffrey M. Schwartz
for offering his insights
on the biology of the brain
and how it interacts
powerfully with mindfulness
to shape our lives.
We wish him the very best
in his future research
in this field and
in developing therapies
for his patients.
For more details on
Dr. Jeffrey M. Schwartz,
please visit
Books by Dr. Schwartz
are available at
Coming up next is
Words of Wisdom
after Noteworthy News
here on
Supreme Master Television.
May your life be blessed
with God’s love, comfort
and light.
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