DAVE VAGO shares his (MIND) BOARD

Death is

Aboard ha ha. Yes, rains, definitely aboard an writing.

And here is Dave Vago. This is his board. Now, who are you. No one really no one, I mean? What's interesting probably about this board is?

Just represents some persons thoughts from the past year or 2 that you know sort of gives you a sort of an external scratchpad in which to sort of put your all your thoughts into one place. Sometimes it's nice. It's easier to put it, there, then keep it in here right.

So what you're seeing is yes, exactly that it's things that have happened in my sort of head for a long time. But we really just start here. But this quote appear is happiness is unintended side effect of ones personal dedication to of course, greater than oneself. That sort of. I think being on the Top sort of fuels. The inspiration and then so let's see we can start anywhere really what is mindfulness.

This is something that I've always asking myself if you got a few different versions of what other People have said it is either self regulation and Prince present centered awareness. Other People have said Oh it's well. It's actually intention attention and awareness and so using that I've tried to build upon them come up with my own ideas, which are in different areas that didn't fit on the board have been put in different parts of this room, but they sort of relate to this, if we go to what's happening in the mind when?

No one is meditating for example, these are just two modalities that you can sort of a rise in people's minds is really talking about what happens if you start to understand how objects of one's attention, either visual or auditory arise.

We're going in and instead of a usual time usually goes in that sort of linear horizontal plane. But here we're doing a vertical plane so.

Time is really going.

Down in this direction.

So something arises a visual object that mental sort of image there rises and then it passes and so you're able, it once you're able to refine your meditation techniques. You can start to really notice. The change between arising and passing and then eventually you get to a point where you can see, things gone, or Banish and this can all be actually related to flow flow sort of.

Can be experience flow flow sort of the dynamic changes of seeing things moving and Rippling in time throughout the entire process. So it's not static. It's not there's a constant change going on and actually so really this is a dynamic board to this change, so it's just changed. It's really rest were started airing this flows.

Relates to this whole.

Sort of process can be in flow, but you can actually wants something banishes. Then you can actually rest and observe what's happening at rest and then if something all disappears. Then you can have cessation? Which is sort of the road dot so the real true gone. The Big G gone. Big tease that would put versus Little G, which is just the absence of that thing being there anymore. But the big G is something that's like complete absence of self and all the strands that make up everything.

And consciousness, but

The other thing really, that's worth saying about this is that also relates to what we're going to sort of define as to what is mindfulness and then I guess we consider it sort of move this way again this part of the brain is probably one of the most critical pieces. We think for what's happening here because what you don't see here you see see and hear but there's also a sort of semantic or viscerosomatic, an aspect of of what's happening.

And that this was a matics sensation of what's happening inside put in like a feeling in the body for all motion comes from this structure here.

This is called the insula. It's located sort of deep within the folds of your brain so if you just open up prop here is the brain, a brain so if you open up the fold here. Actually, it's probably better for you this way. Open up default. Here's the lateral fissure. I mean, just open it up. You'll see this and so that's the insula. What's so cool about it is that it represents sort of the whole internal sort of feeling states.

From very primary sort of sensory sort of information represents things like homeostatic motor function going on in the more posterior aspects and then as you move more interior you get these environmental sort of things going on in the body and then you start moving through the more human like things that are very unique to humans in the interior portion and this portion here is actually 35% larger and humans than it is in macaque monkeys.

So there must be something special about it mechanic monkeys, actually only have this posterior and mid portion of it and it's actually that whole post your name in portion is just extended throughout the entire length of insulin attack monkeys. There's also something really interesting about this anterior portion. It's more important for he donnick conditions like motivational social cognitive feelings of other an yourself and how you relate to the world. This sort of more emotional types of states.

That parts here, OK, there's also the special neurons here called von Economo. Neurons are very special types of neurons. It's possible that autistic children or adults semen may not even have that type of neuron there, then that may be part of the reason that they don't have those type of connections with others and oneself. So this is a really special part of the brain anterior insula, which may be very important for meditation in developing an understanding of oneself.

And so you may need this and it actually grows in size after only 8 weeks of mentation. How much how much can it go do have permanently growth will it grow and then go back down if you start now we don't know that's a good question so let's see what else we got here, we got focus right here, which is stages of insight, so as you meditate you can go through different various stages and these are sort of described by various People.

This is described instead of sitting manga path to liberation traditional Buddhist texts. Other People have described it, who are just more modern sort of boost.

Geeks I guess you can call him, like Daniel Ingram or something like that.

On this sort of describe the stages of thought as a thought.

Cause and effect impermanence suffering in those self realizing that those types of things. This won't stage arising and passing away would be another sort of stage of realization, or just understanding and each hour and permanence.

I'm in a sort of relates back to what this was because remember I told you that you see arising and passing an object space. But this is just sort of a one time thing you may see the arising and passing an object over and over and over again till you realize only got everything is arising and passing including myself and that's sort of what this stage is really referring to.

Dinner so you move the dissolution where everything sort of just dissolves and that can be kind of scary because so you go through these stages, which some People refer to as The Dark Knight would just terror misery and discussed and then once you get past that which some People get through really quickly. Some People take along time in any case, then you can move into some aspect every observation where you read observe what's going on inside your head and you gain equanimity? Which is a powerful sort of way of experiencing the world's sort of like you.

A sturdy mast in a storm does on a sailboat and then you measure stream entry and this may be a little bit overrated, but make sure sure if this is a goal for everybody, but it's a state that People describe is sort of.

You know a selfless state.

Where it's a complete paradigm shift and once you're there, it's not likely that you're going to come out of the string, but it's one of the one of the stages of developing inside.

However, there's going to be arguments about this. Let's see. So where we are now so we can go up here. There's a few brain areas painting. Let's see we can talk about going to make the Labs is really one of the areas that were really interested in how it connects to all these different areas in the frontal lobe. These are the mid.

Medial frontal areas is in those numbers there like the numbers all correspond to different sort of subsystems sub areas of the brain that have been distinguished by the orientation of really just cells, but have also functional differences. Like Area 25 B 825 is what they call subgenual singulate. It's interesting because you can stimulate this area and People who are have intractable forms of depression People who just can't be.

Cured by drugs psychotherapy. ECT you name it. They just can't be cured. They have depression and they're just in the Blues there.

They have a lot of problem problems, but they found is actually if you stimulate this area.

With deep brain stimulation so electrodes deep into the brain goes suddenly like wake up and they're happy so it's really interesting to think that you know, there can be those sort of substrates in the brain where you can stimulate and suddenly People were happy weren't so that's one of the reasons why we do this work is that we can understand like? What areas of the brain are involved with different types of psychopathology and emotion.

And then we can sort of better use these ideas sort of diagnostic tools and then for better targeted therapy.

Then you have DL Pfc which is the Dorsal Lateral Prefrontal Cortex, which is important for working memory and sort of goal directed thinking and sort of concentrations and then this whole area can be considered for the orbital frontal cortex that's OFC and then the ACC which is the answer singlet cortex, which is also one of the most important areas of the brain because you see that area light up for practically everything but the Dorsal Singular.

Is probably one of the parts that are really important for meditation? We seem that it grows also in size like the insula, but has a different functional mechanism. It's more for monitoring so like awareness. Meta ONS Dorsal interesting that seems to be really important for that.

So we can stay somewhere, Let's see we can move over to here.

And we see mindfulness versus CBD so this is sort of just a study that we were thinking of looking at wealth cognitive behavioral therapies happens to be one of the most effective sort of treatments for depression and anxiety and different other forms of psychopathology well. How does it hold up? In a horse race against mindfulness if we even know what my Phone says you can think of it as an 8 week program of learning how to Meditate and doing some hatha yoga.

So the question I guess here is can hold up and reduce some of the aspects of psychopathology.

The symptoms that are related to psychopathology that CBT was intended to target and so CBT was developed by Canyon Aaron Beck and he created this triad of things that are going on in people's world view on his rumination and sort of negative sort of aspects of processing things over and over again and one's head, so very sort of negative self focus, so thinking about oneself in a negative framework was his 1st sort of aspects of his triad.

And the other one was a negative world view towards present, and the future and sore actually all of this together, it creates this triad. So if you're thinking about yourself as negative. The world is negative in the past everything sucked. And in the future. Everything is going to suck that's basically what's happening when you have depression in sort of the back sort of model.

You may agree or disagree with some of the things they say, but this is just a slice of my thinking on the board. That's like it really getting here and so some of the things that you see in these types of People across most psychopathologies emotional reactivity. People who react to emotional stress are in a way that's maladaptive that's for separate if it stays on all day. You can't let it go either. You can avoid things that's also bad emotion. Regulation strategies just either perceptually avoid things you don't even look at the things that sort of.

Bother you or you just choose not to deal with it when you see it.

Suppress emotion sort of it supplanted response also not to view so CBT one year relapse rate is about 25%.

So that's interesting so People who get therapy. That sort of focuses on these aspects of the world. In one year. They will actually only 25% of People will actually relapse back into depression or some form of cycle pathology and that depressant use is 50%.

So clearly drugs are not as effective at least in that sort of context as CBT. Turns out that mindfulness with some CBT is also as effective in preventing relapse for People who have experience at least 3 up, so the depression so that sort of fits into that equation as well. And so we're interested in sort of things like bias or emanation, emotional reactivity and avoid instant? How do we target these things and sort of measure them?

That turns into stickies has more to the story here and so depression. I guess here is augmentation well. Do we augment traditional forms of approaches like CBT and anti depressants with mindfulness. As of augmentation strategy. So we're not just saying no drugs, but we're saying OK will give you some drugs, but we want to augment that strategy with something like mindfulness and that may be more helpful.

And you see some more little I think we're moving along here we get them yellow stickies here, so some of the concepts that I've been thinking about it. I guess for fair mindful. This mind clearly is one of 'em dullness level of Dulles is something we need to understand effort that moves from positive to little meaning no effort mental defilements thing that sort of cloud your mind.

And it

Produce problems thinking negative thoughts.

Distraction is also part of this is actually parts of the came out of the Thangka painting of the path stages of insight sort of just sort of took the pieces out and put on little stickies and so they're all parts of the path that insight. That sort of a rise and you have to deal with them and meta awareness line from the sister says what's the outcome to really call mind stabilized mind and insight into one's mind and this sort of this little Lupe is sort of my.

Way of describing that URS an as you go through this path. You sort of loop around in the spiral and you come out with S Prime something a little different.

And in the back here you see a Chinese Kenji character sort of what may be mindfulness can be described as candy character for presents and we can do character for heart. Together they create mindfulness presents heart may be a good way to think about it and then you know little cheat. Bhavana, a development of mind. Spiritual cultivation, something else seems more sort of little I guess aspect of what we think about.

What else?

So now we can talk about craving.

We talk about craving for example, for cigarettes or even craving for you know from the Buddhist point of view is sort of an abstract concept. It's not so simple as just one area the brain and so, if you look at all. The literature out there and where creating is located in the brain whether it's for cigarettes and in terms of addiction or or craving in terms of even a loved one that you lose so for Los there's different parts of the brain that are involved. So many parts of the brain that it's going to be really hard to try to Localize.

If you look here.

This is the right hemisphere. These are all the areas of the brain by little hash marks that from all the research that we looked at have aspects of involvement in craving so this is just the right side and left side is down here.

So there's a lot of things going on in terms of the brain brain activity for craving.

So it's not so simple if we go here, you can see some of the things we've listed here.

Oh, this actually makes him look at this enough while because this craving.

Termination self regulation emotion regulation attention. These are actually some aspects of how we think.

Aeros I guess are working that mindfulness may be working.

Maybe reducing creating reducing rumination, reducing well, reducing avoidance and reactivity, increasing efficiency of attention improving pro social and ethical development and maybe working unconscious levels.

Heavy and learning so you know sort of associative conditioning facilitating extinction re consolidation, decreasing resource allocation, so improving the efficiency of your whole brain.

And then let's see what else OK. There's two more things on this board. If you can imagine. I think we've talked enough, but

That's great we got schizophrenia. Oh kind of **** Tiffany schizophrenia is right up here so it turns out that.

We have multiple paradigms that we test schizophrenics on and one of them is an emotional memory tasks. We give schizophrenics bunch of bunch of words that could be thought provoking or disturbing Tuas Clinic.

And.

The show increases in all these brain areas in the parapet. Campbell areas and they make the law in the insula medial prefrontal and Dorsal Lateral Prefrontal Cortex and So what does it all mean? Well, you create a story out of it? I'm not going to go into the whole story but essentially you have all these areas that sort of come online related to emotional memory, which makes sense and compare it. We always compare these brain areas activation to a normal subject so.

Increases in

The insular activity, maybe some sort of emotional sort of reactivity.

An evaluative.

Type of thing going on as well.

Decreased PCC which may represent some sort of decreased representation of self are autobiographical nature of oneself. So we don't know exactly how tall pieces together you have to read the paper to get the sense sense of really how it all fits together or else you just see a bunch of arrows.

But then there's another paradigm read the paper what paper paper will probably come out schizophrenia and.

We did a CBT intervention with them, actually and so it turns out schizophrenics can respond to CBT number CD. Yeah, thank you. 80. That means anticipated threat. We looked at how schizophrenic sort of anticipate threat.

And so it turns out that they have these really interesting increases in activity in Visual Association areas or does that mean it could be that there really processing threat at a very sort of sort of primary level of sensory processing much more activity going on there than normal individual would and that could also facilitate how one processes threat if there's increased.

Sensory processing and that could also lead to increased interpretation of threat.

And the Mecula and hippocampus go up to. That means that there is also increases in sort of autonomic reactivity to the threat.

And then when they're in safety when they know that they can be safe and that there is no threat. There's still increased processing and this sort of the visceral sort of activities going on, some precuneus activity as well. So what does that mean I mean, we don't not sure for sure, but there's definitely some extra processing going on? That's probably unnecessary trying to interpret what's happening.

OK so there's one last thing here that we can really sort of focus on I guess for this board.

Um.

I think it's probably this little board thing here.

This is the.

The default mode network, we hate the default mode network because it's confusing who hate it. I hate it because it represents. What happens to your mind when it's wondering and stimulus independent thought So what you do when you're thinking when you're not really doing anything else cold directed. It's very passive. But when it's passive. It's actually doing a lot of things itself, reflecting about the past or the future.

And Randy Buckner's group is sort of.

Parse depart the sort of used very highly advanced statistical modeling techniques to say that there's actually 2 subsystems within the default mode network, one could be a DM Pfc network to the dorsal medial prefrontal cortex network.

And that involves the TPJ temporal junction also very interesting area, even if you're bored already. This is an area that stimulated you would have an antibody experience. It's very dissociative area. So TJ is actually quite interesting and the lateral temporal cortex in the temporal pole. That's one network and the other one would be the medial temporal lobe network, which involves ventromedial prefrontal cortex and what's so cool about this value driven nature sense that whenever you evaluate anything.

Ventromedial Prefrontal Cortex comes at night.

But it also involves post here in Europe right lobe hippocampal formation, so areas that are more related to memory then autobiographical memory.

And it turns out that that subsystem is more important for may be thinking about oneself in the future or as this network is more important for thinking about oneself in the present weather. It's oneself or other can you see these different networks when you look at the brain? Yeah, exactly so we do it separately so that's we're hoping to sort of disambiguate them from what People are doing when they're doing nothing. It's not sort of a default mode. Everyone has different things that they think about when they're not thinking about anything.

And meditators happen to have a problem thinking about or wandering really far so that they're going to look very different from a lot of People, especially the People ruminate but they look very different.

There's also this little area here, which actually is 2. Nodes of the default mode network that are shared between these 2 subsystems as the anterior medial prefrontal cortex and the posterior seems like cortex.

They just happened to be the connections for the whole default mode network.

OK, well. Thank you for coming. Thank you very much that was great and sort of pause here.