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Kindness can be learnt in the same way as playing a musical instrument, scientists claimed yesterday.
A new study involving Tibetan monks shows that studying meditation, even for a short time, can help people become more compassionate.
Researchers found that when people meditated, responses in the part of their brains which processed other's emotions became stronger.
The longer a person had practised meditation, the more intense their reactions were, according to the findings, published in the Public Library of Science (PLoS) online journal yesterday.
Symptoms of depression
The team who carried out the study, from the University of Wisconsin, believe the results could help relieve the symptoms of depression, estimated to affect one in six people in the UK at some point in their lives.
Richard Davidson, who led the study, said the reactions among both group had been "very powerful".
The study offered proof that emotional reactions could be changed over time with practice, in the same way as people learn to play a musical instrument or become skilled in a sport.
"People are not just stuck at their respective set points," he said.
"We can take advantage of our brain's plasticity and train it to enhance these qualities."
To test the theory that cultivating feelings of compassion and kindness towards others could affect the regions of the brain that control empathy, the researchers taught 16 volunteers the basics of meditation for two weeks.
Their training involved first being asked to concentrate on an image of a loved one and to feel warmth towards them.
Later, as the training increased, the novices were asked to imagine the same thoughts without applying them to a specific person.
Compassion
Brain scans were then used to assess the effect of practising compassionate meditation on the brain and compared to the same tests on 16 Tibetan monks and lay practitioners, all of whom had meditated for a minimum of 10,000 hours.
The study found that, whenever they began to meditate, both groups showed significant activity in a part of their brain linked to empathy.
The ability to create compassionate feelings could be useful in preventing those susceptible to depression from developing the condition.
The team also believes teaching meditation to young people, particularly teenagers, could help prevent bullying.
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