Catherine Kerr, PhD - Using Qualitative Methods in Mindfulness Studies to Contextualize Brain Data.

Part 8 of 12. This talk by Catherine Kerr, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Family Medicine (Research), Assistant Professor of Medicine (Research), Brown Medical School, Brown University, was given as part of the 2015 UC Davis Center for Mind and Brain research summit "Perspectives on Mindfulness: the Complex Role of Scientific Research" on May 21, 2015.

The playlist for the full conference is at:    • 2015 UC Davis CMB Research Summit: Perspec...  

See http://cmbmindfulnesssummit.faculty.u... for full conference program and http://mindbrain.ucdavis.edu for information about the Center for Mind and Brain at UC Davis.

Talk Abstract: In this presentation, I will describe how we have used our qualitative investigations of mindfulness and mind-body therapies to situate and contextualize our understandings of neurophysiological data related to body awareness. Specifically, we have used methods and constructs derived from medical anthropology (e.g., illness narrative, explanatory model, embodiment, phenomenological/therapeutic process) to understand how participants process and describe their experiences with mindfulness and mind-body therapies; resultant qualitative data has provided critical information for constructing rich, phenomenologically informed models of how mindfulness training affects brain dynamics. More generally, we propose that ethnographically informed qualitative investigation has the potential to demystify studies of mindfulness and the brain and to help scholars and a larger public reflect on the ways in which we privilege brain data above other sources of information.

Catherine Kerr, PhD is director of translational neuroscience at the Contemplative Studies Initiative at Brown University. Her neuroscience research focuses on neural dynamics underlying embodied attention and the sense of touch. Her team was the first to publish results showing how embodied attention changes cortical rhythms in the “touch cortex” (primary somatosensory cortex) and how mindfulness is associated with enhanced modulation of these embodied attentional rhythms. In addition to these neurophysiological studies, she has drawn on her background as a qualitative researcher and investigator of placebo effects to pioneer methods for linking quantitative, neural studies with qualitative studies of patient experience. She is likely the only first author to have been published in Journal of Neuroscience, Brain Research Bulletin and Culture Medicine and Psychiatry (a medical anthropology journal). Central to her approach is a consideration of descriptions of embodied experience in contemplative practice found in patient narratives and contemplative texts. Her current research focuses on isolating neurophysiological, immunological and experiential mechanisms underlying cancer survivors' reports of “energy” and vitality in contemplative practice.

Conference Organizing Committee: Clifford Saron, Ph.D., Chair; Catherine Kerr, Ph.D.; David Meyer, Ph.D.; & Evan Thompson, Ph.D. Dr. Kerr is introduced by Clifford Saron.

Videography by George Rosenfeld of Sylvan Video -http://sylvanvideo.com/