Emory-Tibet science project rolls out bridges to inner and outer worlds

Emory psychology professor Philippe Rochat, left, sparks a connection with the Dalai Lama during a panel discussion on ethics, as religion professor Wendy Farley looks on. Emory Photo/Video.

By Carol Clark

If you want to make a significant contribution for a better world, “take care of both the brain and the heart.” That was the overriding message of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, Emory’s Presidential Distinguished Professor, during his recent visit to campus.

The Robert A. Paul Emory-Tibet Science Initiative (ETSI) is one way the Dalai Lama would like to incorporate that message into education. He presided over a luncheon celebrating the full implementation phase of the ETSI, an initiative started in 2007 to exchange knowledge between modern scientists and Tibetan monastics trained in ancient, contemplative methods of developing empathy, compassion and other beneficial mental states.

“The ETSI bridges two worlds that are too often separate: Science and the inner world of human values, beliefs and emotions,” said Robin Forman, dean of Emory College of Arts and Sciences. “His Holiness realizes that both hold great value.”

Emory faculty and Tibetan scholars collaborated to develop introductory Tibetan-English science textbooks in neuroscience, biology and physics, and to lead classes for Tibetan monastics. Nearly 100 monks and nuns have participated in the development phase of the ETSI. Last May, six Tibetan monks completed a three-year science instruction program at Emory, and they will now lead the teaching efforts back in India, the seat of the Tibetan diaspora, with the continued support of Emory science faculty. With funding from the Dalai Lama Trust and Emory College, 36 more monastic teachers will be trained at Emory over the next 10 years.

The first group of Tibetan monks to compete a three-year science-teaching program at Emory poses at commencement with Dean Robin Forman (standing, center), and Geshe Lobsang Tenzin Negi, director of the ETSI (in business suit). Emory Photo/Video.

“What a joyful experience it has been,” Forman said of the ETSI. He noted that the Tibetan monastics see a comprehensive science curriculum not as a threat to their Buddhist tradition, but as “a way of protecting, preserving, enhancing and even energizing their unique culture and civilization.”

The Dalai Lama called the large-scale implementation of the curriculum, set for 2014, as “the most critical phase.” The roll-out will include: The development of 19 high-level bilingual science textbooks; annual six-week intensives taught by international science faculty in three major monastic institutions in south India, with a total student body of more than 10,000; and year-round distance learning classes for monasteries and nunneries.

The ETSI grew out of the Emory Tibet Partnership, founded by Robert Paul, an Emory professor of anthropology and interdisciplinary studies, and Geshe Lobsang Tenzin Negi, a senior lecturer in Emory’s Department of Religion and director of the ETSI. Watch the video, below, to learn more about the ETSI formation:


So far, the ETSI has hosted five International Conferences on Science Translation into Tibetan and coined more than 2,500 new science terms for the language.

“Translation is one of the most important sources of knowledge for every evolving civilization,” said Tsondue Samphel, a member of the ETSI translation team. Samphel trained as a novice monk in Dharamsala, India, before returning to secular life and earning a physics degree from Emory in 2006.

Samphel described how translators played a role in bringing Buddhism from other countries to Tibet, and in helping the religion evolve into a form of Buddhism unique to the Himalayan kingdom.

“Now, more than 1,000 years later, another historic event is taking place,” Samphel said of the effort to promote the cross-fertilization of ancient Tibetan wisdom and modern scientific understanding. “This could advance the welfare of all humanity to a higher level."

Emory biologist Arri Eisen, center, says helping Tibetan monastics gain a scientific view of the world has made him a better teacher.

The cross-fertilization is already contributing to science discoveries at Emory. For instance, Cognitively Based Compassion Training, a secular meditation protocol based on Tibetan traditions, has demonstrated significant beneficial effects on immune and hormonal response to psychosocial stress among Emory undergraduate students. These promising research results led to an ongoing NIH-funded study on the health benefits of compassion training.

The ETSI “changed my life,” said Arri Eisen, a professor of biology, who is among the Emory faculty who has spent summers in India teaching the monastics. He said the experience of engaging in intense discussions with the monastics made him a better teacher.

Most of his Tibetan students do not have a goal of becoming a scientist. “They are learning science to help them understand Buddhism better, to make them better Buddhists, and to become more enriched citizens,” Eisen said.

“I’m representing just a small piece of the power of this thing,” he said. “This project has transformed me, it’s transformed many monks and nuns, and I think that’s just the beginning.”

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The growing role of farming and nitrous oxide in climate change

A farmer fertilizes his field in India, where consumption of nitrogen from fertilizer has shot up by 50 percent during the past 10 years.

By Carol Clark

Most people know nitrous oxide as laughing gas, used as a mild anesthetic for dental patients. What’s less well-known is that nitrous oxide is the leading cause of the depletion of the protective layer of ozone in the Earth’s atmosphere, and the third-largest greenhouse gas, after carbon dioxide and methane.

“Not many people know about the impact of nitrous oxide, and very few people are studying the nitrogen cycle,” says Eri Saikawa, an assistant professor in Emory’s Department of Environmental Studies.

Nitrous oxide is released naturally from the soil, as part of the process of microbes breaking down nitrogen. However, human activity, especially agriculture, has boosted the emission levels in recent decades. Livestock manure and fertilizers containing nitrates, ammonia or urea all generate nitrous oxide as they decompose.

“Nitrous oxide emissions stay in the atmosphere for 125 years, similar to carbon dioxide. So it’s very important that we take action now,” Saikawa says.

Saikawa, whose research is focused on emissions linked to air pollution, ozone depletion and global warming, will give an overview of her work on nitrous oxide as part of Environmental Studies’ fall lecture series. Her talk, “Laughing Gas: No Laughing Matter for Climate Change and the Environment,” is set for 4 pm on Monday, October 21 in the Math and Science Center, room N306.

Over-fertilization can degrade soil quality.

Until fairly recently, the United States was the main nitrogen consumer from fertilizers. Since 2000, however, U.S. consumption has declined about 9 percent, according to data from the International Fertilizer Industry Association.

Meanwhile, China’s nitrogen consumption from fertilizers has shot up 40 percent during the past 10 years, making it the number one consumer. And India has moved into the number two spot, with a 50 percent increase.

As the two most populous nations rapidly industrialize, they are also using more fertilizer, in an attempt to boost yields, Saikawa says. “Actually, over-fertilization wastes money and can sometimes degrade soil quality, while also creating more nitrous oxide emissions.”

In her previous position with MIT’s Center for Global Change Science, Saikawa developed a computer model, based on local soil temperatures and moisture content, to estimate global nitrous oxide emissions from natural sources in different regions of the world, from 1975 to 2008. The simulation was checked against the few available actual nitrous oxide measurements, including 25 locations in the Amazon, North and Central America, Asia, Africa and Europe.

The results, verifying the simulation model’s accuracy, were recently published in the journal Global Biogeochemical Cycles, and are highlighted in this month’s issue of Nature Geoscience.

Watch a data visualization of the findings, below:



“We wanted to see if we could reproduce natural soil emissions first,” Saikawa says. “Our next step is to include the agricultural components, so we can understand more about how much nitrous oxide is coming from the activities of people. We can then use the model to simulate possible future scenarios.”

Saikawa is continuing to collaborate with her former colleagues from MIT for the research into the impact of nitrous oxide on climate change and the stratosphere, which is funded by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

Her computer simulation revealed that El Niño weather events decrease nitrous oxide emissions in tropical South Asia, while the opposing weather pattern, La Niña, causes a spike. This variation is likely due to the change in the rainfall associated with El Niño and La Niña, and the fact that warm, wet soil boosts emission levels, Saikawa says.

The simulation also showed that in temperate regions, snow cover appears to have an effect on emissions.

“There are so many variables, and things that we don’t know about nitrous oxide emissions,” Saikawa says. “We have to get as many measurements as possible to refine and validate our model, and to determine if there are optimal agricultural practices and other ways to potentially minimize emissions. Without more knowledge, it’s difficult to make recommendations, or to regulate the emissions.”

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Photos: iStockphoto.com 

Fertilizer runoff and the Gulf Dead Zone

Dead Zone graphic by NOAA.

Kristopher Hite, a post-doctoral fellow in biology at Emory, wrote about the “Dead Zone” in a guest blog post for Scientific American. Below is an excerpt:

“Each summer, after the famers of the American Midwest spread manure or spray anhydrous ammonia over their emerging crops, summer rains (usually) come and carry much of that fertilizer down a massive web of tributaries into the mighty Mississippi River. The annual spike in nutrient (mostly nitrogen, phosphorous, and potassium – NPK) causes massive algal blooms. As the algae decompose bacteria feast on the detritus only to die when there is no more food taking with them dissolved oxygen. The resultant area of low oxygen or hypoxia is eerily named the ‘Dead Zone.’ This is a slight misnomer as the area is not completely dead although the lower oxygen levels do threaten large portions of the aquatic food web. In addition to oxygen deprivation a small percentage of the blooming algae also produce lethal toxins to fish, birds, and mammals. The size of the Dead Zone varies summer to summer from about the size of Delaware to New Hampshire depending on the amount of rainfall. …

“It varies. The American Midwest experienced two straight years of drought in 2011 and 2012. Less rain meant less nutrient run-off. Though the Dead Zone was smaller than predicted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in 2012, the increased rains throughout the Mississippi watershed in 2013 resulted in a Dead Zone twice as big as last year’s. Fertilizer accumulated during the drought was released with vengeance during the heavy summer rainfall this year. I am curious to see if the horrific flooding we’ve seen recently in Colorado will have any latent effect on the Gulf’s Dead Zone this fall.”

Read the whole article at Scientific American.

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Neuroscientist explores how dogs love us

“The heart of my interest is the dog-human relationship,” says Emory neuroeconomist Gregory Berns, director of the university's Center for Neuropolicy. His latest research involves training dogs to enter a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner (fMRI) and hold perfectly still, so that he can scan their brain activity.

Berns' research began with his own pet, Callie, adopted from an animal shelter, and has expanded to include a dozen “MRI-certified” canines. Only positive training methods are used on the dogs. They remain awake and unrestrained in the fMRI as they respond to stimuli like hand signals indicating food and smells of familiar humans.

The results Berns has gathered so far are the subject of his new book, “How Dogs Love Us: A Neuroscientist and His Adopted Dog Decode the Canine Brain.”

“The idea behind the book is essentially my deep-seated desire to know what my dogs are thinking, and whether they love us for something more than food,” Berns says. “I think the answer is definitely, yes. They love us for things far beyond food, basically the same things that humans love us for. Things like social comfort and social bonds.”

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Celebrating 50 years of psychology at Emory

The old psychology building on the Quad, which served as headquarters for the department for decades.

By Carol Clark

In 387 BC, Plato proclaimed that the brain is the seat of mental processes. In 335 BC, Aristotle countered that all emotions originate in the heart, opening classical debates about the human mind and behavior.

“And the conversation continues,” said Marshall Duke, Candler Professor of Psychology.

Nowhere is that conversation livelier than Emory’s Department of Psychology, which recently celebrated its 50th year in its modern form with presentations on its evolution. Clinical work and research into depression, schizophrenia, autism-spectrum disorders, early childhood development, the mental health of families and the origins of human morality — those are a few of the areas in which Emory has, and continues, to make major contributions.

Duke, who joined the Emory faculty in 1970, kicked things off with a talk that sped through centuries of science.

During the 1830s, as German physician Ernst Weber laid a foundation for experimental psychology with his law of “just notable differences,” Emory College was founded.

Diagram of Phineas Gage's injury.

During the 1840s, Emory handed out its first diplomas and “Phineas Gage got impaled and his personality changed,” said Duke. Gage was a Vermont railroad worker, whose horrific injury revealed how damage to a specific area of the brain changes behavior.

Fast-forward to the 1860s, when Emory temporarily closed to serve as a Civil War barracks and hospital. Keep moving through the decades as scientists in Europe identified the Broca and Wernicke areas of the brain, data-based psychology began, Freud published his “Interpretation of Dreams” and Pavlov experimented with his dogs.

In 1911, a “professor of mental science” joined the Emory faculty, and in 1919, the college moved from Oxford, Georgia, to Atlanta.

Goodrich C. White, a native Georgian who graduated from Emory in 1908, returned as Emory’s first professor of psychology in 1927. “He ultimately became the dean of psychology and later the president of the university,” Duke said. “He transformed this place.”

Under White’s leadership, the college grew into a university. Emory launched graduate degree programs (psychology’s began in 1957) and acquired what is now called the Yerkes National Primate Research Center.

Goodrich C. White

Meanwhile, clinical psychology came of age in the aftermath of World War II. Long before the term post-traumatic stress disorder was coined, the Veteran’s Administration recognized it needed help offering mental health care to returning soldiers and began investing in university’s that offered applied, clinical programs.

During the 1960s, Irwin Jay Knopf was named Emory’s chair of psychology, charged with establishing a department of the first rank. The newly formed department established the basis of three programs that are today known as Clinical Psychology, Neuroscience and Animal Behavior and Cognition and Development.

“The modern era began,” Duke said.

Stephen Nowicki, Emeritus and Candler Professor of Psychology, joined the clinical program in 1969. “The history of the clinical program is also my history. I lived it,” Nowicki said in his presentation. “I have met and worked with all of the people who have ever been on the faculty then or are on it now. We have much to be proud of in the clinical psychology program. We have built a tradition of excellence that rivals any program in the country.”

Over the years, the faculty has published more than 1,000 studies and dozens of books. More than 300 of their students have completed their clinical PhDs and have gone on to impact all aspects of clinical psychology, spread over 40 states and five foreign countries.

Polaroid snaps from 1975 show long-time friends and colleagues Duke and Nowicki, left, and faculty and students in front of the old psychology building.

But it wasn’t all work, Nowicki recalled. Early in the department’s formation many members of the psychology faculty were not much older than their students. “I think we had more fun, or at least we did different things for fun than faculty and students do now,” he said.

Among his most vivid memories was the clinical program’s annual gong show. “I remember a faculty member dancing in a tutu, an ugly dog named Pepper who supposedly was dressed as Linda Lovelace form the pornographic movie “Deep Throat,” and my all-time favorite, the Egg Man. He put his egg cartons down, took off his tie, and then proceeded to take one egg at a time and crush it against his body to the cheers of the audience.”

Darryl Neill, Goodrich C. White Professor of Psychology, talked about how he studied “biopsychology” at the University of Chicago, to become what was then known as a “physiological psychologist.”

When Neill joined the budding Neuroscience and Animal Behavior program at Emory in 1971, he recalled that the department had much less emphasis on biology and animal research. The NAB program has since grown to comprise about 30 percent of the department’s research, Neill said.

Last spring, the department opened the Facility for Education and Research in Neuroscience, housing a Siemens Trio 3-Telsa functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) machine. Known as FERN, the facility is geared for using fMRI to explore the neural mechanisms of thoughts and behaviors, while also training students and faculty in the technology.

“We’ve made it,” Neill said of the burgeoning field of neuroscience. “We’re so successful, that the backlash is under way.”

He noted that Emory psychology professor Scott Lilienfeld is among the neuro-critics. Lilienfeld recently co-authored “Brainwashed: The Seductive Appeal of Mindless Neuroscience.” The book acknowledges the promise of brain imaging technology, while cautioning that it should be used in conjunction with other experimental techniques and face-to-face evaluations of people.

“It’s a thoughtful read, I recommend it,” Neill said.

Robyn Fivush, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor of Psychology, joined the department in 1984. She talked about how the early years of what is now called the Cognition and Development program were greatly influenced by two faculty: Boyd McCandless and Dick Neisser.

McCandless had written “Children, Behavior and Development,” which Fivush described as “the seminal textbook that defined the field of developmental psychology.” He also founded the journal Developmental Psychology.

At Emory, he strived “to establish a program that approached educational and social issues in a truly scientific way,” Fivush said. “This was while Jay Knopf was establishing an accredited clinical program.”

In 1983, Dick Neisser joined the department. “Dick wrote the book that gave our field its name, ‘Cognitive Psychology,’ in 1966,” Fivush said. “Dick’s vision allowed us to create an amazing intellectual community of faculty from multiple departments, especially philosophy and English, and graduate students, to come together over important issues in cognition, most centrally memory and self.”

Another pivotal figure was Mike Tomasello, who started his career at Emory in 1980 before eventually leaving to become the director of the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig. “Mike was one of the first developmental psychologists to scientifically study relations between human and non-human primate development in controlled studies,” Fivush said. “He also was instrumental in creating more interaction between our programs in Cognition and Development and Neuroscience and Animal Behavior, something that we continue today.”

The names of many Emory psychology faculty are synonymous with cutting-edge specialties that they helped pioneer, Fivush said, as she flashed a few dozen examples across the screen.

The state-of-the-art Psychology and Interdisciplinary Studies building (PAIS) was completed in 2009.

“I knew that our department was rich in research, but I didn’t realize how rich,” said Cory Inman, one of several graduate students of psychology who gave presentations.

Among the highlights of his varied Emory experience is assisting with patients undergoing deep-brain stimulation for severe depression. “I’ve worked with 11 patients so far and it’s incredible,” Inman said. “I get to literally witness miracles. It’s influencing what I want to do with my future.”

Inman’s talk focused on networks, both neural and social ones. “Psychology and science in general are becoming more collaborative,” he said. “Innovations stem from connections. New niches bubble up and we gain new knowledge.”

So why has Emory forged such strong connections? “I think it’s about caring for one another more than you do your research,” Inman said. “My Emory network has shaped me in countless ways. When I come back for the 70th anniversary (of the psychology department), I hope to see continued commitment to working with and helping others succeed.”

Visit the department's web site to listen to podcasts with more details about the history of Emory psychology. 

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