NEUROSCIENCE
Mental Floss
Eastern meditation practices examined in UO laboratory.
The obvious connection between exercise and physical fitness propels millions of Americans to the gym each week; but is there an analogous form of mental workout to benefit the brain? Eastern cultures have developed mental exercises over thousands of years, and now Eastern mind-body science is the subject of continuing study at the University of Oregon.
The research involves a control group using a simple relaxation technique and an experimental group practicing a meditation technique known as integrative body-mind training (IBMT). Subjects spend twenty minutes per day using IBMT and, in as few as five days of practice, show measurable improvements in mood and the ability to handle stress in comparison with the control group. The technique, developed by UO visiting professor Yi-Yuan Tang, combines body- and mind-relaxing techniques with breathing exercises and other methods of mental imagery and mindfulness training. The IBMT sessions involve a qualified “trainer” who helps guide subjects away from thought control and toward an optimal, balanced state of mental release and body relaxation.
“When you say ‘meditation,’ you usually think of mind control; you close your eyes, you think quietly, and control your thoughts and concentrate,” Yi-Yuan says. “But if your body doesn’t cooperate with your mind,” the final state of meditative bliss is difficult to achieve.
Difficult yes, but after being introduced to IBMT, thousands of subjects seem to be achieving just that state of contentedness. Research into the technique points to other benefits as well. In one Chinese study, people suffering depression demonstrated dramatic, measurable increases in indicators of brain metabolism that are low in depressed people. In another Chinese study, fifty-four-year-olds were divided into two groups: one exercising their brains with IBMT and one exercising their bodies using traditional physical fitness activities. After a decade of closely following these subjects, Chinese scientists have noted that the IBMT group is now showing better memory and learning ability, as well as increased emotional stability.
But could IBMT practiced in Western society show the same results as the ones in Yi-Yuan’s work at Dalian University of Technology in China? Yi-Yuan came to the University of Oregon to work with Michael Posner and Mary Rothbart, both professors emeriti in the psychology department, to design studies that would explore IBMT’s effectiveness in the United States.
Posner has been involved in studies on attention for decades, and made significant contributions to understanding consciousness, memory, and information processing. A member of both the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, he is a recipient of psychology’s highest honor, the American Psychological Association’s Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award.
Yi-Yuan and Posner collaborated on short-term studies of undergraduates in China last year and a parallel study with undergraduates at the UO earlier this year. Although the trainer’s role with American students required some shifts from the approach used in China, the results were essentially the same: Both sets of students experienced improvements in mood and attention, and decreases in stress.
Study participants start with a pre-session meeting with a trainer for introductions and explanations of the process. This helps the subject begin “adjusting the mind-body state,” Yi-Yuan says. Then comes the three-step training itself. First, there are body relaxation exercises, then breathing practices, and finally the use of mental imagery techniques. A prerecorded CD leads subjects through the three techniques of IBMT, but attempts to have subjects practice the technique with only the CD have failed. The trainer is central to the successful practice of IBMT, at least for beginners. The parallel Yi-Yuan makes is one of a patient and his doctor.
“When a person has a problem, a physical problem, and needs to see a doctor, you don’t just check the Internet and find a drugstore,” Yi-Yuan says. The experience of a professional is important. “When we try to explore your inner world, your private space, you need expert guidance.”
“With meditation, it is not easy to use accurate terms,” Yi-Yuan says. He conveys the experience by saying the state is akin to waking up to a good morning, with the sun shining and birds singing, and there is neither positive nor negative emotion; the body is just there, observing and experiencing from a distance of neutral bliss.
For Yi-Yuan the objective of IBMT is clear: helping practitioners enlarge the perfect moment. And it seems to be working. Tests used to measure attention, mood, and stress in those using IBMT show improved handling of mental conflict and an increased ability to maintain attention. Trainees subjected to three minutes of increasingly more difficult arithmetic—a highly accurate indication of stress—show significantly lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol than members of a control group.
In light of the positive results from the tests already conducted, Yi-Yuan and Posner plan to expand the study by including more subjects. In the new study—beginning in December—a group of 144 undergraduates at the UO will practice IBMT or relaxation along with a companion group of 144 undergraduates in China. The study will continue for six months, a period significantly longer than that of their previous tests. During this time, subjects will undergo four brain scans each to look for measurable differences resulting from IBMT: one to establish a baseline, and one each after five days, four weeks, and six months.
Interestingly, the work will be funded by the John Templeton Foundation. Since its inception in 1987, the foundation has supported inquiry into many of life’s big questions: from research into the laws of nature and the universe to questions on the nature of love, gratitude, forgiveness, and creativity. The legendary Wall Street investor who created the foundation believed that rigorous research and scholarship—even in areas not traditionally studied—is at the very heart of new discoveries and human progress.
Posner expects the upcoming study’s findings to be similar in China and at the UO. These studies may eventually lead to more people trying this amalgam of Chinese body-mind meditation techniques, Posner says. He adds that while a trainer is currently necessary to help a person obtain the state that allows for physiological benefits, he says that might change in the future. “If [IBMT] continues to work and everyone can get these results and they are reproduced by several labs, perhaps the crucial ingredient might be understood.” And once that key element is identified, it might be exploited to allow an individual—or many millions of individuals—to apply the technique, sans trainer, as a workout for a healthier, and possibly even blissful, brain.
—Tracy Ilene Miller, M.S. 06
STUDY ABROAD
The Global Classroom
UO ranked in top-twenty nationally for number of students studying abroad
When Rachel Smith ’06, ’08, left for a community development internship in the West African country of Senegal in 2005, she thought her future was pretty well laid out. With two other study-abroad experiences under her belt, and about to graduate with an international studies degree, Smith felt prepared for a career in international development. But not long into her six-month internship with an organization dedicated to promoting education and sustainable development in Africa, Smith visited rural medical clinics and was shocked by their lack of such basic supplies as clean water and alcohol. “It’s crazy that with the technology we have today, and the resources we have, that there are places where they can’t even get basic antibiotics,” Smith says. She returned to Oregon committed to improving the world—even if it meant changing her career trajectory before it had even started.
Life-altering experiences are common with students who study abroad and could be a reason why the Institute of International Education (IIE), a nonprofit education and training organization, has seen a steady increase in study-abroad participation in the past ten years. But despite growing numbers and the allure of adventure, romance, and stories to tell the folks back home, just over one percent of college students nationwide studied abroad in the 2005–6 academic year. Remarkably, nearly one quarter of UO students do so—a number that recently prompted the IIE to rank the UO in the top twenty public research institutions for the percentage of undergraduates who study abroad.
In the past decade, the UO has nearly doubled the number of its students studying outside the United States—from 574 in 1997–98 to approximately 1,020 last year. From studying renewable energy in Reykjavik, Iceland (recently named the greenest city in the world), to learning about Asian culture and development in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, or critiquing art in Florence, Italy, where museums seem nearly as common as cafés, UO students experience the farthest reaches of the world. That is, unless they want to go to Antarctica—the one continent not currently accessible through the international affairs office.
In addition to traditional study-abroad programs, international internships, like the one Smith participated in, are offered through IE3 Global Internships. Available to juniors, seniors, postbaccalaureate, and graduate students, these internships bridge the gap between academic and real-world experiences: teaching in China, practicing journalism in Chile, promoting sustainable tourism in Scotland. Though interns make up a small percentage of study-abroad participants, that number has been growing since the program began in 1996.
The UO international affairs program traces its roots back to Kenneth Ghent, who became the University’s first international student adviser in 1952. Ghent, hired as a mathematics instructor in 1935, saw the value of international exchanges and worked to ensure that the UO was a welcoming place for international students. After Ghent retired, the Office of International Affairs continued to thrive under the direction of Tom Mills, for whom the Mills International Center in the Erb Memorial Union is named. It was under Mills’ direction that the UO created a centralized study-abroad office.
It was also during Mills’ tenure (1976–2005) that the University saw the high watermark year for international student attendance. That came in 1996, when almost 12 percent of the student body came from foreign countries. Most of the UO’s international students come from East Asia, so when the Asian financial crisis began in 1997, economic factors led to a steady decline in the number of students coming to Eugene. Recently, that number has been climbing again, up to 1,187 last year, accounting for about six percent of the student body.
The UO again proved its dedication to study abroad in 2004 when it united with AHA International, an organization that has been coordinating study abroad for university students and faculty members since 1957. Though an academic program of the UO, AHA International provides infrastructure and networking assistance for public and private universities throughout the country; each year, approximately two-thirds of the participants in AHA International programs are from other universities.
As the study-abroad and international student programs have expanded, the UO has maintained a tradition of providing scholarships to support these endeavors. Some support comes in the form of merit-based scholarships, other aid comes from endowments to encourage international study, including generous portions of the $93 million raised for scholarships so far in the University’s current fundraising push, Campaign Oregon: Transforming Lives.
Study abroad certainly transformed Rachel Smith’s life. Since her return from Senegal, she completed a degree in general sciences, participated in an IE3 medical internship in India, and began applying to medical schools. None of that would have happened, she says, were it not for the opportunities she had to expand her horizons through study abroad.
— Kate Griesmann
IN BRIEF
Professors Named to Endowed Chairs
UO chemistry professor James Hutchison ’86 is the first occupant of the Lokey-Harrington Endowed Chair in Pure and Applied Chemistry, which recognizes a UO faculty member for outstanding research contributions in materials science. Nationally known for his work in nanotechnology, Hutchison also developed one of the first green-chemistry laboratory courses in the United States, which has become a model for other institutions.
Three faculty members from the UO School of Architecture and Allied Arts recently received Philip H. Knight Professorships recognizing achievements in research, teaching, and international leadership. Professor of architecture G. Z. “Charlie” Brown is the founding director of the UO Energy Studies in Buildings Laboratory and a nationally recognized expert on daylighting and energy use in buildings. Professor of landscape architecture Kenneth Helphand is among the world’s top landscape theorists and historians. A professor in both the Departments of Classics and of Art History, Jeffrey Hurwit is a leading scholar of the archaic and classical periods in Greek art and has published major books on Greek art, architecture, and archaeology.
Ink in Their Veins
Each year the School of Journalism and Communication honors the distinguished careers of former journalism school students and faculty members by adding their names to the SOJC Hall of Achievement. This year’s inductees are Butch Alford ’60, editor and publisher of the Lewiston Tribune; Doug Bates ’68, Pulitzer Prize–winning reporter for The Oregonian; and Ken Metzler ’51, professor emeritus and former Old Oregon editor.
Kudos for Entrepreneurs
The UO’s Lundquist Center for Entrepreneurship has been honored as one of the top fifty programs by Entrepreneur magazine and the Prince-
ton Review, taking twenty-third in the survey’s graduate category. For five of the past six years, Entrepreneur has ranked the Lundquist Center in the top 4 percent of the more than 1,000 entrepreneurship programs evaluated.
Of Particular Note
Physics professor Davison Soper has been chosen as a corecipient of the American Physical Society’s 2009 J. J. Sakurai Prize for Theoretical Particle Physics for his work in quantum chromodynamics, including applications to problems pivotal to the interpretation of high-energy particle collisions.
LINGUISTICS
Speaking in Native Tongues
In June 2008, President Dave Frohnmayer presented eighty-six-year-old Virginia Beavert with the University’s Distinguished Service Award for her work in preserving Yakama culture and language. Now she’s working on her doctoral degree in linguistics.
It was nearly dinnertime on the last day of August 2008 when Yakama elder Virginia Beavert finally decided to enroll at the University of Oregon as a Ph.D. candidate, having spent the previous twenty hours praying for spiritual guidance in a fire-lit tepee. Fifty singers from tribes in Canada, Montana, and the eastern United States packed the sixteen-foot white canvas tent from sundown to sunup to help pray for clarity.
They sat in a circle in front of a half-moon altar, smoking Indian tobacco, chanting. “I spoke in my own language—talking to the Creator about why we were there,” Beavert says. “Just as we got started, a young man with long braids walked in. It was my nephew, and he sang the most beautiful songs. Tears were running down my face.”
After the ceremony, participants gathered for dinner. A woman approached Beavert. Taking her hands, she said, “Everything will be good for you.” And that’s when the octogenarian decided to begin her doctorate in linguistics.
Beavert is one of a handful of people who speak Sahaptin—an Indian language with thirteen dialects traditionally spoken along the Columbia River. It’s been her lifelong mission to encourage young Yakama Indians to speak their native language. In 1974, she published The Way It Was, a book of Yakama legends she collected from Sahaptin-speaking elders and translated into English. In 1975, she published a Saphatin-to-English dictionary.
Beavert is currently working on an expanded version, which will include nearly 7,000 words, phrases, and sentences translated from English to Sahaptin and Sahaptin to English, with CDs of her pronouncing them. For her Ph.D. thesis, she will write her memoir in Sahaptin.
“I was born in a bear cave in the Blue Mountains of Oregon,” she says. “My father was half Yakama and half Umatilla. He had hunting privileges in Oregon. He formed a party to go hunting over there, and there was a real bad storm. All of the horses died. They ran out of food. They ended up in a bear cave, and that’s where I was born.”
Beavert was raised in an Indian village, where no one spoke English, by her great-grandfather, a shaman-doctor, and her great-grandmother, an herbalist-doctor. “They were healers, and we had people coming to our village to see them speaking different dialects. I learned them . . . . I had lots of uncles who spoke many dialects. Nez Perce was my first language.”
During the Second World War, seventeen-year-old Beavert served in the U.S. Army as a wireless radio operator. “I had to memorize secret codes,” she says. She also spoke only English. “At the end of the war, coming home from the Army, I was stranded in Pendleton,” she says. “There was no transportation, and I called home to see if anyone could come and get me. My mother started rattling off in Indian, and I could not understand a word she was saying. It was surprising to me that I forgot my own language.”
After the war, Beavert worked as a medical transcriber and stenographer in Seattle. She loved the job because it was language-driven. But her stepfather, Alexander Saluskin, encouraged her to pursue a different career. Speaking three different Indian languages, he traveled to Indian reservations with linguists recording elders speaking their native tongue. “He got too old, too sick,” she says. “Before he died he told me to go to school. But I told him I was too old.” But she followed in his footsteps nonetheless. She realized her stepfather’s dream by publishing the Yakima Language Practical Dictionary in 1975 and receiving a B.A. degree in anthropology from Central Washington University.
After graduation, Beavert became the first woman elected to the Yakama general council. She served for fourteen years, until her ninety-year-old mother fell ill. “I took care of her during the day and taught Sahaptin at night.” After her mother died, she registered for summer courses for native language teachers at the University of Arizona in Tucson. “Southwestern tribes were talking in their old language but writing it in a linguistic language. I thought, ‘I could do the same in Sahaptin.’” And that’s exactly what she did to earn an M.A. in bilingual, bicultural education in 1997.
Returning to Seattle, Beavert began work on an expanded Sahaptin dictionary with a linguist at the University of Washington. At the time, the UO was forming the Northwest Indian Language Institute, an organization dedicated to preserving the region’s native languages. “I don’t know how they got my name, but they called me, and I ended up teaching Indian students that came to the UO during the summer,” she says. “It was such fun.”
Now she’s begun her doctoral program. Like other grad students, she will take up a graduate teaching fellowship to pay tuition costs. She will live on campus like many of her fellow students, but unlike the decades-younger, computer-savvy classmates, she wasn’t born into the electronic age. To compensate, she’ll need to learn still another language, that of technology.
“It’s going to be hard,” Beavert expects.
She hopes the younger members of the Yakama tribe will follow her lead, not only in speaking Sahaptin, but also in earning university degrees. “There is a path for them in higher education,” she says. “I want them to take it.”
—Michele Taylor, M.S. ’03
PROFile
Susan Verscheure
Instructor in Human Physiology
There are 250 brains sitting on the desks in the anatomy class lecture hall. And no, this isn’t the dissection section. These “brains” aren’t gray matter—they’re reference notebooks crammed with text, diagrams, and information about the intricate workings of the human body, each created by an anatomy student and tailored to that student’s individual learning process.
Susan Verscheure, M.S. ’99, Ph.D. ’03, who directs the UO’s Graduate Athletic Training Program, created the External Brain Project for her undergraduate anatomy students. “I try hard not to make it a memorization class, although anatomy’s classically taught that way,” Verscheure says.
Instead of forcing students to memorize how the hip bone’s connected to the leg bone, she cultivates her students’ understanding of the interconnected systems at work within the human form. Students couple these organizing principles with their external brain’s storehouse of details, and apply the powerful combination in their labs, lecture discussions, and even during sections of their exams. Verscheure fills her courses with exercises requiring students to use both their internal and external brains to solve problems that mirror challenges they will face as heath-care professionals.
A former athletic trainer, Verscheure has combined her clinical experience with her love of classroom innovation by designing an interactive online simulation of an athletic training facility. Students meet with virtual “patients,” perform range-of-motion tests on injured body parts (with internal systems clearly visible, thanks to the magic of animation), and use the information they gather to reach diagnoses.
As for all those facts traditionally memorized in anatomy classes, Verscheure says, her students “can’t help but need that information” as they work to identify their patients’ problems. She encourages students to take an active role in their learning process by asking them key questions: How do you know? How can we figure this out? Where can you get the information you need?
Verscheure often receives e-mails from former students training for careers in medicine, who report that they’re still using their external brain in medical school. But even those students who won’t ever take the Hippocratic oath leave her classroom with a deeper internal appreciation for the ways in which minds and bodies work, heal, and grow.
Name: Susan Dawson Verscheure
Education: B.S. ’96 in physical education, York University, Toronto; M.S. ’99 and Ph.D. ’03 in exercise and movement science, University of Oregon.
Teaching experience: Member of the Human Physiology faculty since 2003.
Awards: The UO’s 2008 Ersted Award for Distinguished Teaching.
Off campus: Verscheure spends her free time canoeing, hiking, and backpacking in the Cascades with her husband and their six-year-old son. She also loves telemark skiing and stays busy training for triathlons (she finished her first half Iron Man in August).
Last word: “For a lot of people, being able to see the body uncovered layer by layer is a really exciting journey.”
