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We are interested in both risk and resilience - why are some individuals particularly vulnerable in response to negative life events, while others appear to be relatively resilient? And how can we promote enhanced resilience? As a part of the latter work, we study interventions designed to cultivate more positive affective styles. One such intervention that we have extensively studied over the past decade is meditation. In addition to the research on normal affective function, we also study a range of psychopathologies, all of which involve abnormalities in different aspects of emotion processing. Included among the disorders we have recently studied are adult mood and anxiety disorders, and autism, fragile X and Williams syndrome in children. Some of our current research involves: Voluntary and automatic emotion regulation. Resilience in aging. Interactions between emotion and cognitive function, particularly working memory and attention. Temperament in children, in hopes of determining early signs of vulnerability to psychopathology. Social and emotional processing differences in children and adults with autism and fragile X. Mood and anxiety disorders. The impact of pharmaco-therapy and psychotherapy on brain function in patients with mood and anxiety disorders. The effects of meditation on brain function in adept practitioners and novices. Relations between neural mechanisms of emotion and peripheral measures of inflammation and lung function in asthma.

But the biggest message is that our education system is not necessarily offering children what their developing brains need. We know for certain what good teachers have often said: learning is more profound when it is active rather than passive, and that is that it is vital for education to be tailored to individual pupils' needs.

The other key message, he says, is that motivation and a positive attitude are crucial for learning - it is now possible to measure how fear and discomfort can impair a child's ability to learn. It is also possible to see the different neural circuits the brain uses for "extrinsic" learning - which is motivated by a concrete goal such as a good mark - and "intrinsic" learning, which brings its own reward.

One of our problems in education is that we constantly have to balance our images of traditional success with the possibilities in our evolving knowledge of scientific development," he said.

So how did he get that way? Apparently, the same way you get to Carnegie Hall. Practice.

One flavor of happiness at which Rinpoche seems to excel has been well-studied by scientists specializing in how emotions operate in our brains.

who heads the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin, has found one distinct brain profile for happiness. As Davidson’s laboratory has reported, when we are in distress, the brain shows high activation levels in the right prefrontal area and the amygdala. But when we are in an upbeat mood, the right side quiets and the left prefrontal area stirs. When showing this brain pattern, people report feeling, as Davidson put it to me, “positively engaged, goal-directed, enthusiastic, and energetic.”