Lab Director and Primary Investigator
Willoughby Britton
Willoughby Britton received a B.A. in Neuroscience from Colgate University, a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Arizona, and completed her clinical internship at Brown Medical School. She received sleep/EEG technician training at Harvard Medical School and was a Research Fellow at the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA/NIH) and at Andrew Weil’s Program in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona. She spent several years in Asia studying meditative techniques in India, Nepal and Thailand. She includes Achaan Poh, Shinzen Young, Richard Bootzin, Al Kaszniak, Joan Halifax, Greg Bender, Eric Kolvig, Anne Klein, Harvey Aronson, Sharon Salzburg, and Mitchell Levy among her teachers and mentors. She received her mindfulness (MBSR) instructor certification training at the Center for Mindfulness at the UMASS Medical School with Jon Kabat-Zinn, Saki Santorelli, Melissa Blacker, and Florence Meyer and her MBCT training with Zindel Segal and Ferris Urbanowski.
Dr. Britton is a clinical psychologist and clinical research scientist at Brown University Medical School’s Department of Psychiatry and Human Behavior. Dr. Britton’s clinical research includes sleep, and novel treatment/prevention strategies for emotional disturbances. She recently completed a 3-year NIH-funded clinical trial on the neurophysiological effects of mindfulness meditation in depression, and continues to examine the link between sleep, affective disturbance and emotional regulation strategies. Two current research projects aim to examine the effects of meditation practices in 6th graders and college students. She is currently on the Steering Committee of Brown’s Contemplative Studies Initiative and is a clinical and research mentor to Scholarly Concentrators in Contemplative Studies. She co-teaches a course in the Medical School entitled “Mindfulness in Clinical Practice” with other Contemplative Studies faculty. She developed Cheetah House to serve a central hub to integrate contemplative practice, research, community and social engagement.
Britton- autobiographical statement
Co-Investigator – “Dismantling MBCT”
Jake Davis
Jake H. Davis works at the intersection of philosophical psychology, moral psychology, and Buddhist philosophy. He is currently a doctoral student in Philosophy and Cognitive Science at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, a Visiting Scholar with the Psychiatry Department at Brown University, and holds a master’s in Philosophy from the University of Hawai’i at Mānoa. Having trained in the Pāli Buddhist texts and in intensive meditation practice, he has worked for over a decade as an interpreter for Burmese meditation masters.
Lab Manager
Pete Hitchcock
Pete graduated from the University of Miami in December, 2008. He had the good fortune to spend some of the intervening time globe-trotting and also worked for a year at the Georgetown Center on Health and Education doing research on maternal health disparities.
Pete is an avid meditation practitioner and fascinated by most things that fit under the umbrella of mindfulness research. He is particularly interested in interventions for anxiety and depression that draw from multiple theoretical models, and tailoring group-based meditation interventions to specific clinical groups. Pete is the lab manager at the Britton Lab for the 2011-2012 school year and is currently applying to Clinical Psychology programs for Fall 2012 entry.
Team Leaders
Evan Winget – “Team Dark Night”
Evan Winget is an undergraduate at Brown (class of ’12) concentrating in Neuroscience. He is interested specifically in neuropharmacology and neurochemistry with a long term goal of entering the research field.
Evan has been working in the Britton Lab since February 2011. He is working on Dr. Britton’s Dark Night study on the adverse effects of meditation and difficult stages on the contemplative path.
Outside of the lab he is a leader of the Brown Meditation Community, coordinator of the Brown Folk Festival and enjoys reading, backpacking, cycling, rock climbing, and a number of other outdoor activities.
Chris Kaplan – “Team Dark Night”
Chris Kaplan received a BA in cultural anthropology from the College of William and Mary in 2008. After various forays in the nonprofit world and grassroots social justice activism, in Spring 2011 he completed a Master’s in the Social Sciences at the University of Chicago, writing his thesis on Buddhist modernism and global social movements.
Chris has been working in the Britton Lab since June 2011. He focuses on the Dark Night study, which investigates the difficult stages and adverse effects that may arise on the contemplative path. He is also interested in the similarities and complementarities between different contemplative practices, as well as in the larger parallels between various traditions’ maps of spiritual development.
Outside the lab, Chris enjoys meditation, yoga, qi gong & taijiquan, reading, and hiking in the forest.
Ellie Hastings – “Team Fatigue”
Ellie is a member of the class of 2012 at Brown University and is pursuing an Sc.B. in Psychology. She has wanted to be a psychologist for as long as she can remember, and she joined the Britton Lab in 2011 out of a personal interest in meditative practice and its effects on the brain. Her research interests include body image, depression, the psychology of chronic disease and medically unexplained illnesses, and the mind-body connection. She is currently working on a project investigating the impact of meditation on sleep and fatigue. Outside the lab, Ellie enjoys meditation, yoga, fiction writing, and reading anything she can get her hands on.
Anne-Catharine Brown – “Team Empathy”
Anne-Catharine Brown, or Annie, is an undergraduate student with an independent concentration in Contemplative Cognition, which explores the intersection between Eastern contemplative practice and Western neuroscience and psychology. Annie has been working in the Britton Lab since Fall 2009 and is particularly interested in meditation’s relationship with compassion, emotional awareness, and emotional and physical wellbeing. Annie has been working with previous lab manager Gina Silverstein on a project exploring the effects of meditation on bodily awareness and self-compassion in females and the possible application of meditation for the treatment of female sexual dysfunction. Annie co-authored a manuscript of this project, which is currently in press.
Most recently, she has begun a project exploring the interaction between loneliness, social connection, and health. She is interested in the effect of a meditation intervention on perceived social support and sense of belonging. Sparked from an inspiring lecture on the role of vulnerability in connection and some pretty horrifying stats on how loneliness affects physical wellbeing, this project combines traditional research methods with practice-focus groups which explore working with vulnerability in community.
Annie grew up in Atlanta, GA, and has a wonderful family that is very important to her. Outside of the lab, Annie works with the prison outreach creative arts program, SPACE. She also enjoys cooking, singing, jazz, and poetry.
Julia Bond – “Team Sustained Attention in Kids”
Julia Bond is an undergraduate at Brown University, class of 2012. Her concentration is Human Biology with an emphasis on the Brain and Behavior. Julia has been a member of Britton Lab since fall 2009. She is interested in connection between the inhibitory properties of the prefrontal cortex and their effect on emotion regulation and social connection. Her current work focuses on the relationship between attention and social behavior in the Moses Brown study on middle school students. Outside of Britton Lab, Julia dances and explores movement with Brown’s New Work/World Traditions dance company. Her passions include Ashtanga Yoga, travel, creative writing, nutrition and photography.
Current Lab Members
Steven Edwards
Steven graduated from Wright State University in 2008 with a B.S. in Psychology. He has spent the last 2 years working on alcohol and nicotine pharmacotherapy clinical trials at the Center for Alcohol and Addiction Studies at Brown University. He came to the lab in early 2011 to examine the relationship between addiction and mindfulness. He is leaving in the Fall to attend the PhD program in Clinical Psychology at the University of Nebraska.
Nathan Fisher
Nathan holds a B.A. in Religious Studies from Vanderbilt University and as an undergraduate specialized in comparative mysticism and the phenomenology of religious experience, particularly in medieval and contemporary Sufi traditions. He was also a student member of the Contemplative Pedagogy Working Group at Vanderbilt’s Center for Teaching and wrote his senior thesis on the emerging field of Contemplative Studies. He joined the lab in Spring 2012 and is currently working on the ‘Dark Night Project’. He has also recently taken preliminary steps towards extending the scope of the study to include other religious/ contemplative traditions besides Buddhism. His other research interests include investigating how to safely and responsibly incorporate contemplative practices into higher education and critically evaluating the widely employed (yet untested) working assumption in the cognitive and contemplative sciences that consciousness is an emergent property of the brain. He has been a practitioner of Chen style Taijiquan in the lineage of Grandmaster Chen Xiaowang for 4 years and has been studying Torah with Rabbi Alan Ullman for 10 years. He also enjoys surfing, soccer, skiing, dreamwork, and funk music.
Tana Frank
Tana Frank is an undergraduate at Brown in the class of 2013, concentrating in Ethnic Studies and Literary Arts. She began working in the lab in January 2011.
In recent years, she has continued to develop her meditation practice on her own and has become an active member in the Brown Meditation Community. Last semester, Tana was a collaborator in the development of practice-focus groups which were designed to work with vulnerability in community, as part of a project on loneliness and social connection. She is currently working on the Dark Night project and serving as the Britton Lab’s social chair. Outside of the lab, Tana enjoys writing, all kinds of music-making, running and going for adventures.
Roberta Goldman
Roberta Goldman is an undergraduate student at Brown Univeristy, class of 2013. She is pursuing a Sc.B in Cognitive Neuroscience with a focus in higher level processing (thinking, emotion, conciousness). Roberta’s other passion is food access and sustainibility. After Brown, Roberta hopes to pursure a career in the common good that will integrate her love for people, the mind, and food (justice), and perhaps a degree in Clinical Psychology.
Roberta joined the Britton lab in Fall 2011, after taking a course on the Neuroscience of Meditation with Willoughby. She is still figuring out what project will be her focus, but is really into the idea of empathy. (Go Team Love!).
Maya Manning
Maya is a member of the class of 2014 at Brown University and is concentrating in Cognitive Neuroscience. Her interests in this realm are varied but she is particularly excited to investigate the differences between people as pertains to higher cognitive functions (emotions, learning, thought patterns). She began working in the Britton Lab during the fall of 2011. At the Britton Lab she is a member of the Dark Night team, co-director of the faculty dinner series, and webmaster. Outside of the lab Maya pursues her interests in literature and creativity, dance, foreign languages and travel, environmental sustainability particularly in relation to food, and creating a new economy of socially and environmentally beneficial businesses.
Faye McKenna
Faye graduated from Connecticut College in December, 2011 with a degree in Behavioral Neuroscience. She was drawn to the Britton Lab after participating in Brown’s contemplative studies summer intensive. Her personal experience with meditation practice has convinced her that contemporary Neuroscience could benefit from the subjective perspective developed from contemplative studies. She studied Tibetan practice with Tibetan exiles in Nepal, and continues to work with those Tibetans who are committed to preserving their contemplative tradition. She is especially interested in the benefits of meditation for caregivers who frequently experience burn out, and the neurological underpinnings of meditation practices.
Outside of the lab, Faye enjoys fun times, endurance sports and her cat, Sophie.
Halsey Niles
Halsey is a student of East Asian Studies and Psychology, and has been working in the Britton Lab since Summer 2010. His particular interests in the lab are in mindfulness-based treatments for clinical populations, as well as the differential effects of various forms of meditation in treating mental distress. Halsey received a Solsbery Research Fellowship to work on the Moses Brown Project, where he studied gender differences in anxiety reductions in response to a meditation intervention for sixth grade students. He is currently working on two publications for this project, which are forthcoming. Halsey works on the Dark Night team, which investigates phenomenology and narratives of difficult stages of the contemplative path. He is especially interested in the effectiveness of various therapies and forms of meditative practice in dealing with meditation-induced adversity.
Halsey is currently working on the Dismantling Mindfulness Project, for which he is conducting an independent project to assist in the development of Focused Attention (shamatha) and Open Monitoring (vipassana) 8-week treatment models for depression. He is excited to learn whether the therapeutic benefits of mindfulness therapy will be more pronounced after training in one practice, or whether a combination of techniques is more effective.
Halsey is interested to learn more about mindfulness-based therapies for diverse clinical populations, and hopes to pursue a degree in Clinical Psychology. Outside of the lab he enjoys cooking, eating luxurious breakfasts, biking, and is involved with the Meditation Community on campus.
Okezie Nwoka
Okezie Nwoka is an undergraduate at Brown University. He concentrates in Africana Studies and is also a pre-medical student. Okezie joined the Britton Lab in the fall of 2011. He is interested in researching the positive impacts that meditation can have on persons with mental illnesses. He also seeks to investigate the connections between spirituality and health in the clinical setting. His long terms goals include becoming a psychiatrist and a novelist. Outside of the the lab, Okezie leads the Africana Studies DUG, writes for the Triple Helix, co-directs a gospel choir, and writes.
Chris Oates
Chris is a Religious Studies concentrator at Brown whose current work in the lab revolves around the project on adverse effects of meditation. He has been fascinated by meditation/Buddhism since first taking a class in contemplative studies freshman year, and since then has explored a variety of meditation traditions (Theravada, Zen, Tibetan), gone on several retreats, and kept up a daily meditation practice. In the fall of 2010, Chris lived in Bodh Gaya India, where he studied anthropology, Tibetan, Buddhist theory and practice, and I ordained as a novice monk in the Theravadan tradition. Other interests of mine are in art/film and in psychology.
Rahil Rojiani
Bio coming soon!
Mandy Xi
Mandy Xi is an undergraduate at Brown University, class of 2013 and PLME class of 2017. Her concentration is in International Relations with a focus on security and society. She believes strongly that contemplative practices can lead to greater social harmony. Her research interests include studying the effects of meditation on empathy, loneliness and depression. Although she is new to contemplative practices, she believes that they will greatly help her in becoming a compassionate future physician. Outside of lab, Mandy is part of Strait Talk, a conflict resolutions program that encourages dialogue between youth and intellectuals from both sides of the Taiwan Strait and the United States. She also enjoys swimming, cooking and reading medical writing.
