Judson A. Brewer | |
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Born | Judson Alyn Brewer 1974 |
Citizenship | American |
Known for |
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Academic background | |
Alma mater | Princeton University Washington University in St. Louis Yale University |
Thesis | The Role of Glucocorticoids in Immune System Development |
Academic work | |
Institutions | Brown University School of Public Health University of Massachusetts Medical School Yale University School of Medicine |
Website | https://www.drjud.com/ |
Judson Alyn Brewer (born 1974) is an American psychiatrist,neuroscientist and author. He studies the neural mechanisms of mindfulness using standard and real-time fMRI,and has translated research findings into programs to treat addictions. Brewer founded MindSciences,Inc. (now known as DrJud),an app-based digital therapeutic treatment program for anxiety,overeating,and smoking. He is director of research and innovation at Brown University's Mindfulness Center and associate professor in behavioral and social sciences in the Brown School of Public Health,and in psychiatry at Brown's Warren Alpert Medical School.
Judson Brewer is the son of Victor and Alice Brewer. [1] As a boy he delivered papers for the Indianapolis News and received a college scholarship sponsored by that newspaper in 1992. He attended Brebeuf Preparatory in Indianapolis [2] and earned an A.B. in chemistry in 1996 at Princeton University. He earned his M.D. in 2004 from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis,where in 2002 he had also earned his Ph.D. in immunology,working in the laboratory of Louis J. Muglia. [3] His dissertation was titled The Role of Glucocorticoids in Immune System Development. [4]
Between 2005 and 2007 Brewer worked in the post-doctoral Neuroscience Research Training Program at the Yale School of Medicine. He was chief resident in 2007 at the Clinical Neuroscience Research Unit of the Connecticut Mental Health Center,and he had a research training fellowship in substance abuse at Yale. In 2008 Brewer completed his residency in psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine. [3] In 2009 he earned board certification in psychiatry from the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology. [5]
In Brewer's early career he was an assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at Yale University School of Medicine,and also a research affiliate in the Department of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He served as director of research at the Center for Mindfulness of the University of Massachusetts Medical School prior to joining the faculty at the Mindfulness Center of Brown University as director of research and innovation. [3]
Brewer began meditating to deal with stress while a graduate student at Washington University School of Medicine. In 2011 he and colleagues published a study reporting,"the brains of experienced meditators—those who have been meditating for at least 10 years—showed decreased activity in the areas linked to attention lapses,anxiety,attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder,schizophrenia,autism,and plaque buildup in Alzheimer disease. This effect was seen regardless of the type of meditation practiced. The areas in question comprise the default mode network,which consists of the medial prefrontal and posterior cingulate cortices." [6]
Michael Pollan wrote that in 2012,Brewer,"using fMRI to study the brains of experienced meditators,noticed that their default-mode networks had also been quieted relative to those of novice meditators. It appears that,with the ego temporarily out of commission,the boundaries between self and world,subject and object,all dissolve. These are hallmarks of the mystical experience." [7]
By 2013 Brewer's focus was on "neurobiological mechanisms underlying the interface between stress,mindfulness and the addictive process,and in developing effective means for the modulation of these processes to better treat substance use disorders." [8] He was also developing measurements of mindfulness practice,using functional MRI methods with real-time feedback to examine effects of mindfulness-training on brain function and mental health. [8]
In 2012,Brewer founded MindSciences,Inc. to create app-based digital therapeutics programs based on the mindfulness training and research he pursued in his lab at Yale University. The company's apps are built on his research and the experiences of thousands of users both in clinical trials and real-world use. The apps include:"Unwinding Anxiety" for anxiety and stress reduction,"Eat Right Now" for dysfunctional eating and "Craving To Quit" for smoking cessation. Clinical research from 2017 showed a 40% decrease in craving-related eating after two months of using the "Eat Right Now" app. [9] A study on the "Craving To Quit" app found a mechanistic link between reductions in brain reactivity to smoking cues and reductions in cigarette smoking that were specific only to mindfulness training,compared to the National Cancer Institute's QuitGuide app. [10] A single arm study of Unwinding Anxiety published in 2020 found a 57% reduction in anxiety in anxious physicians. [11] A randomized controlled trial of Unwinding Anxiety published in 2021 found a 67% reduction in anxiety in people with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (vs. 14% with usual clinical care). [12] In 2019,MindSciences launched a portal. In 2019 and 2020,MindSciences won the "Health Value Award in Behavioral Health Management",an award "to recognize outstanding services,products,and programs across 34 categories spanning the healthcare industry". [13] Mindsciences was acquired by Sharecare Inc. (Nasdaq SHCR) in 2020. [14]
Brewer uses Pandita's quote to illustrate the difference between dopamine secretions and joy:"In their quest for happiness,people mistake excitement of the mind for real happiness." [15] He advises using curiosity as a hack to move the brain's attention away from anxiety and cravings. [16]
Markham Heid of Time quoted Brewer's explanation of his research findings in 2014:"Basically,meditation helps your brain get out of its own way... It's mostly about being aware of your thoughts and not running after them in your mind." [17] Brewer also had begun to focus on "how mindfulness practice can affect learning processes leading to positive habit change",translating research findings into clinical use,specifically with clinical trials of smoking cessation using neurofeedback with mindfulness. [18] Sandra Gray of UMass Boston wrote of "the striking impact of mindfulness on people trying to quit smoking",describing his interview with Meghna Chakrabarti on WBUR's Radio Boston. [19] Brewer had said,"It seems that in experienced meditators some of these regions [associated with the brain's default mode network] get pretty quiet when they are meditating. There's an activity change in the brain. There's a lot more work to be done,but it's probably letting go of some of these pathways that are laid down each time someone uses." [19]
On 60 Minutes,Anderson Cooper featured his own experiences at a mindfulness meditation retreat [20] and visited Brewer "to learn more about the cutting-edge brain imaging research he is conducting to confirm that mindfulness can be an effective treatment for addictions to everything from food to tobacco to opioids—even to electronic devices like cell phones." [21]
In addition,Farrah Jarral of Al Jazeera noted in 2016 that traditional addiction treatments have a relapse rate of 70 percent,and she featured Brewer's research,describing him as "a psychiatrist who is using the power of the mind to overcome addiction". [22] Fran Smith wrote in 2017,"In a head-to-head comparison,Brewer showed that mindfulness training was twice as effective as the gold-standard behavioral antismoking program." [23]
Smith added:
Mindfulness trains people to pay attention to cravings without reacting to them. The idea is to ride out the wave of intense desire. Mindfulness also encourages people to notice why they feel pulled to indulge. Brewer and others have shown that meditation quiets the posterior cingulate cortex, the neural space involved in the kind of rumination that can lead to a loop of obsession.
— Fran Smith, National Geographic
When Amanda Lang of Bloomberg TV Canada asked Brewer why employers are interested in mindfulness, he said if employees can develop the wisdom to understand how they and their co-workers' minds work, it could help all work together in a much more seamless manner. When asked about the possible downsides, he did not offer any negatives associated with such a change, but he did mention the importance of working with a teacher or facilitator. [24] Responding to a question from Kevin Kruse of Forbes about the "reward-based learning" model and the role of dopamine in the brain, Brewer said, "Dopamine, it seems, is there to help us learn things. So for example, when something novel happens, we get a spritz of dopamine in our nucleus accumbens. And when this process starts, we get habituated when we have the same thing happen over and over and over." [25] He then described the practice of mindfulness:
Mindfulness is really about paying attention to all aspects of our experience, but in particular we can pay attention to the push and pull of cravings. So if there is something pleasant and we want more of it, we kind of hold on to it or we move toward it and try to get it. If there is something unpleasant we want it to go away as quickly as possible. So there is also movement there. There is the push and pull. Mindfulness is really about noticing that push and pull and not getting caught up in that movement. So just being with whatever is, in a way that's curious, more than driven.
— Judson Brewer, Forbes interview, 2017
Charlotte Liebman quoted Brewer's explanation of counter-productive self-criticism: "When we get caught up in self-referential thinking — the type that happens with rumination, worry, guilt or self-judgment — it activates self-referential brain networks... When we let go of that mental chatter and go easy on ourselves, these same brain regions quiet down." [26] To achieve self-compassion, Brewer recommended using "any practice that helps us stay in the moment and notice what it feels like to get caught up. See how painful that is compared to being kind to ourselves." [26] Brewer has also addressed the "empty your mind" misconception about meditation: "Meditation is not about emptying our minds or stopping our thoughts, which is impossible... It's about changing our relationships to our thoughts." [27]
The subject of Brewer's 2015 TED Talk was "A simple way to break a bad habit". [28] It was the fourth most popular TED talk of the year and as of 2019 had been viewed more than 19 million times. [29]
Brewer and his wife Mahri reside in Massachusetts. [30]
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: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)Meditation is a practice of mindfulness, or focusing the mind on a particular object, thought, or activity to train attention and awareness, and achieve a mentally clear and emotionally calm and stable state.
Mind–body interventions (MBI) or mind-body training (MBT) are health and fitness interventions that are intended to work on a physical and mental level such as yoga, tai chi, and Pilates.
Mindfulness is the cognitive skill, usually developed through meditation, of sustaining meta-awareness of the contents of one's own mind in the present moment.
The insular cortex is a portion of the cerebral cortex folded deep within the lateral sulcus within each hemisphere of the mammalian brain.
Sensitization is a non-associative learning process in which repeated administration of a stimulus results in the progressive amplification of a response. Sensitization often is characterized by an enhancement of response to a whole class of stimuli in addition to the one that is repeated. For example, repetition of a painful stimulus may make one more responsive to a loud noise.
Richard J. Davidson is an American psychologist and professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison as well as founder and chair of the Center for Healthy Minds and the affiliated non-profit Healthy Minds Innovations.
Meditation music is music performed to aid in the practice of meditation. It can have a specific religious content, but also more recently has been associated with modern composers who use meditation techniques in their process of composition, or who compose such music with no particular religious group as a focus. The concept also includes music performed as an act of meditation.
Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) is an approach to psychotherapy that uses cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) methods in conjunction with mindfulness meditative practices and similar psychological strategies. The origins to its conception and creation can be traced back to the traditional approaches from East Asian formative and functional medicine, philosophy and spirituality, birthed from the basic underlying tenets from classical Taoist, Buddhist and Traditional Chinese medical texts, doctrine and teachings.
Nicotine withdrawal is a group of symptoms that occur in the first few weeks after stopping or decreasing use of nicotine. Symptoms include intense cravings for nicotine, anger or irritability, anxiety, depression, impatience, trouble sleeping, restlessness, hunger or weight gain, and difficulty concentrating. Withdrawal symptoms make it harder to quit nicotine products, and most methods for quitting smoking involve reducing nicotine withdrawal. Quit smoking programs can make it easier to quit. Nicotine withdrawal is recognized in both the American Psychiatric Association Diagnostic and Statistical Manual and the WHO International Classification of Diseases.
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Nicotine dependence is a state of dependence upon nicotine. Nicotine dependence is a chronic, relapsing disease defined as a compulsive craving to use the drug, despite social consequences, loss of control over drug intake, and emergence of withdrawal symptoms. Tolerance is another component of drug dependence. Nicotine dependence develops over time as a person continues to use nicotine. The most commonly used tobacco product is cigarettes, but all forms of tobacco use and e-cigarette use can cause dependence. Nicotine dependence is a serious public health problem because it leads to continued tobacco use, which is one of the leading preventable causes of death worldwide, causing more than 8 million deaths per year.
Cocaine dependence is a neurological disorder that is characterized by withdrawal symptoms upon cessation from cocaine use. It also often coincides with cocaine addiction which is a biopsychosocial disorder characterized by persistent use of cocaine and/or crack despite substantial harm and adverse consequences. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, classifies problematic cocaine use as a "Stimulant use disorder". The International Classification of Diseases, includes "Cocaine dependence" as a classification (diagnosis) under "Disorders due to use of cocaine".
Mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) is an eight-week evidence-based program that offers secular, intensive mindfulness training to assist people with stress, anxiety, depression and pain. Developed at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center in the 1970s by Professor Jon Kabat-Zinn, MBSR uses a combination of mindfulness meditation, body awareness, yoga and exploration of patterns of behaviour, thinking, feeling and action. Mindfulness can be understood as the non-judgmental acceptance and investigation of present experience, including body sensations, internal mental states, thoughts, emotions, impulses and memories, in order to reduce suffering or distress and to increase well-being. Mindfulness meditation is a method by which attention skills are cultivated, emotional regulation is developed, and rumination and worry are significantly reduced. During the past decades, mindfulness meditation has been the subject of more controlled clinical research, which suggests its potential beneficial effects for mental health, as well as physical health. While MBSR has its roots in wisdom teachings of Zen Buddhism, Hatha Yoga, Vipassana and Advaita Vedanta, the program itself is secular. The MBSR program is described in detail in Kabat-Zinn's 1990 book Full Catastrophe Living.
Attentional control, colloquially referred to as concentration, refers to an individual's capacity to choose what they pay attention to and what they ignore. It is also known as endogenous attention or executive attention. In lay terms, attentional control can be described as an individual's ability to concentrate. Primarily mediated by the frontal areas of the brain including the anterior cingulate cortex, attentional control is thought to be closely related to other executive functions such as working memory.
Mindfulness has been defined in modern psychological terms as "paying attention to relevant aspects of experience in a nonjudgmental manner", and maintaining attention on present moment experience with an attitude of openness and acceptance. Meditation is a platform used to achieve mindfulness. Both practices, mindfulness and meditation, have been "directly inspired from the Buddhist tradition" and have been widely promoted by Jon Kabat-Zinn. Mindfulness meditation has been shown to have a positive impact on several psychiatric problems such as depression and therefore has formed the basis of mindfulness programs such as mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, mindfulness-based stress reduction and mindfulness-based pain management. The applications of mindfulness meditation are well established, however the mechanisms that underlie this practice are yet to be fully understood. Many tests and studies on soldiers with PTSD have shown tremendous positive results in decreasing stress levels and being able to cope with problems of the past, paving the way for more tests and studies to normalize and accept mindful based meditation and research, not only for soldiers with PTSD, but numerous mental inabilities or disabilities.
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The scriptures say that when the mind indulges in sensual objects, it becomes agitated. This is the usual state of affairs in the world, as we can observe. In their quest for happiness, people mistake excitement of the mind for real happiness. They never have the chance to experience the greater joy that comes with peace and tranquillity.