The Dalai Lama, whose teachings emphasise the training of the mind and the interaction between mind and body, will meet this week with scientists who are studying the physical state of happiness and the effects of meditation on the brain.
The Tibetan leader on Monday and Tuesday will visit the University of Wisconsin to attend the ninth international Mind and Life Conference, a collaboration among the Dalai Lama and Western philosophers and scientists who conduct research on emotions and the brain.
He will tour the university's new US$10 million (HK$77.8 million) W.M. Keck Laboratory for Functional Brain Imaging and Behaviour, which uses advanced, noninvasive equipment to track biochemicals in the brain and observe how different parts of the brain respond to various emotions.
The facility is one of the few in the world that combines key technologies for studying neurological changes, including functional magnetic resonance imaging and positron emission tomography.
The MRI scanner, powered by a 16-ton magnet, shows different parts of the brain as it processes emotions and external information. PET measures chemical activity in the brain, using radioactive tracers created in the laboratory's own accelerator.
''These are tools that allow us for the first time, with unprecedented precision, to look inside the brain with a level of detail that's really quite extraordinary,'' said Richard Davidson, the lab's director, who invited the Dalai Lama to see the facility at the last Mind and Life Conference in India.
Dr Davidson's research has shown that people who describe themselves as happy and enthusiastic have more activity in the left side of their prefrontal cortex, which is located just behind the forehead. People who are more withdrawn tend to have more activity in their right side of their prefrontal cortex.
The research on emotion led Dr Davidson to study the effects of meditation, predicting it would provoke the same neurological reactions as happiness. Scientists at the Keck Laboratory are testing the theory that people can train their minds to be happy, just as athletes can make their bodies perform better.
At this week's conference, scientists will use the lab's capabilities to scan the brain of French molecular biologist and Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard to see whether years of rigorous meditation can be detected in his brain and to observe what happens as he is meditating.
The Dalai Lama, who fled Tibet in 1959 following a failed uprising against Chinese rule, has expressed interest in Western science and technology since he was a child.
''He believes that science and Buddhism share a common objective, which is to serve humanity and create a better understanding of the world,'' said his translator, Thupten Jimpa.
The conference, cosponsored by the HealthEmotions Research Institute of UW-Madison's Medical School and the Mind and Life Institute of Boulder, Colorado, is closed to the public.