Wisconsin Public Television
Transcript: "In Wisconsin" #810
Original Airdate: 7 January 2010
 

Patty Loew:
Welcome to "In Wisconsin." I'm Patty Loew. This week we start the new year with a scientific
look at meditation. 

Man:
You can think of these people as the Olympic athletes of meditation. 

Patty Loew:
Unlocking the key to love and compassion at the University of Wisconsin. Also, where to find
these ghosts of the forest. 

Man:
Visually they're so unusual and so startling. 

Patty Loew:
Wisconsin's white deer herd is an internet and international sensation. And Wisconsin's
phenomenal young musicians compete. A preview next on "In Wisconsin." 

Announcer:
Major funding for "In Wisconsin" is provided by the people of Alliant Energy, who bring safe,
reliable and environmentally friendly energy to keep homes, neighborhoods and life in Wisconsin
running smoothly. Alliant Energy, we're on for you. And the Animal Dentistry and Oral Surgery
Specialists of Milwaukee and Oshkosh, a veterinary team working with pet owners and family
veterinarians throughout Wisconsin, providing care for oral disease and dental problems of small
companion animals. With additional funding provided by Bike Wisconsin. 

Patty Loew:
We begin with research that could train your brain to feel more positive. Using hi-tech tools, a
University of Wisconsin neuroscientist is peering inside the human brain to unlock secrets. As
"In Wisconsin's" Liz Koerner reports it could lead to some very positive discoveries in Madison. 

Liz Koerner:
There is a place on the UW-Madison campus where the spiritualism of the east meets the
scientific inquiry of the west in the laboratory of Richard Davidson. Davidson is searching for
something we all want to own, the key to happiness. And along the way, he's attracted a lot of
media attention. From Madison Magazine to TIME magazine. Even Oprah. Davidson is a
neuroscientist and the director of the Waisman laboratory for brain imaging and behavior at the
University of Wisconsin. He's been looking into the brain for decades studying how we create
and process emotions, especially happiness. In the year 2000 Davidson began a branch of
research with an unusual group of subjects. He calls them long-term practitioners. What they
practice is meditation. And all of them have devoted more than 10,000 hours to this mental
discipline. Mathieu Ricard has traveled from Nepal five times to participate in Davidson's
research and also helped design these studies. During this experiment he meditates on positive
emotions like love and compassion. 

Mathieu Ricard:
If we can show some evidence that altruistic love, compassion, attention, emotion and balance is
a skill that can be trained you can imagine this is a conservation to society. 

Man:
We're ready for the next scan, seven minutes long. 

Richard Davidson:
The study as a long term practitioner is important because these are individuals who have spent a
significant portion of their life in formal, intensive practice learning to train their mind. You can
think of these people as the Olympic athletes of meditation. 

Researcher:
Also have here to here. 

Liz Koerner:
Davidson and his team wanted the find out if the brains of long-term practitioners were different
both in structure and how they function especially when processing emotion. Antoine Lutz is a
principal investigator. 

Antoine Lutz:
We know that if you are a juggler or a violinist, your brain is going to be affected by your
training. 

Liz Koerner:
To study the brain, Davidson's researchers use a pair of high-tech tools, one is a head net of
electrical sensors wired to a computer. It creates what's called an EEG. 

Antoine Lutz:
What we're measuring here is electrical activity on the surface of the skull. 

Liz Koerner:
The electrical activity reflects the intensity of brain waves produced during meditation. 

Researcher:
That's the end of that block. I'm going to quickly reset things up and we'll move into the next
block. 

Liz Koerner:
The researchers also use functional MRI to learn more about how the brain works. This test
measures oxygen consumption showing which areas of the brain are active, while the subject
meditates on feelings like compassion for others, the researchers play sounds that provoke an
emotional response. Both the EEG and the functional MRI data show that compared to novices
the long-term practitioners have much more brain activity especially when meditating about
compassion. 

Antoine Lutz:
There is an indication that maybe the training that the meditation has produced some long term
change in brain function, in particular the emotions. 

Liz Koerner:
Further research indicates these brain changes last beyond the meditation session. 

Richard Davidson:
The practices that these meditation practitioners do are really only good if they produce changes
that are enduring. If they simply produce a change during the meditation period itself it would
really be no different than taking a drink of alcohol. 

Liz Koerner:
Davidson knew that there was a possibility that the long-term practitioners were born with this
ability, that it wasn't a result of their mental training. So the researchers set out to study people
who are new to meditation. They measure their brain activity before they learn to meditate and
then after they've put in some practice. 

Woman:
Of course, making any adjustments that you need to make to help yourself feel that balance. 

Richard Davidson:
In fact, we have some new -- very new evidence that just a half hour of training a day for two
weeks produces demonstrable changes that we can measure in the brain. 

Liz Koerner:
These research results appear to be good news for people who want to create more happiness in
their lives by practicing meditation. 

Richard Davidson:
All the evidence that we now have on the topic of happiness indicates that one of the best and
most enduring ways to promote one's happiness is to express compassion toward others and that
actually improves our own well-being. 

Patty Loew:
Richard Davidson's center for investigating healthy minds is set to open in August. Besides the
neuroscience behind compassion and forgiveness they'll also focus on meditation research with
children including those with autism or attention deficit disorder. Last winter we brought you a
report about Wisconsin's elusive white deer herd. It is still attracting millions of views on the
internet so we thought it was worth another look. "In Wisconsin" reporter Jo Garrett shows you
these ghosts of the forest near Boulder Junction. 

Jeff Richter:
Visually they're so unusual and so startling. It looks like a ghost at times just kind of drifting
through the woods.

Jo Garrett:
Jeff Richter is a nature photographer based in Mercer. Some ten years ago Richter took his
camera and went to track down a mystery. Local stories of a band of white deer near Boulder
Junction. He saw a flash of white. 

Jeff Richter:
And so I stopped and got out of the car and had my cameras with me so I eased over there and all
of a sudden the deer popped its head up and I looked eye-to-eye with this white deer and was just
instantly hooked by them. 

Jo Garrett:
So began a decade-long quest that has resulted in Richter's recent book, "White Deer." 

John Bates:
Our headlights flash onto a white doe standing right by the road. We were going slow anyway but
oh, the intake of breath and oh my gosh. 

Jo Garrett:
John Bates of Manitowish is a well-known Northwoods naturalist and the author of the text of
Richter's book. He researched the science and history of these deer in Wisconsin. He discovered
that they seem to have been here for ages. They're the subject of Native American legends and
they are mentioned in the journals of European explorers. 

John Bates:
There is a pocket here in this area and there are individuals around the state. There seems to be
an unusual concentration here in north central Wisconsin. Why, I have absolutely no idea. 

Jo Garrett:
Why the white deer came to flourish in these places no one knows. But there are at least two
reasons why they're thriving now. 

John Bates:
Local people protect these deer and feed these deer and we have laws now that prevent people, at
least it costs you dearly if you wish to shoot one in Wisconsin, you'll pay. 

Jo Garrett:
They're protected by state law and cherished by the local communities. And yes, they really are
albino. Pink eyes are not required according to Bates' research. I've always been told that albino
deer had to have pink eyes so I eventually contacted a professor of genetic studies at the
University of Minnesota who tried his best to educate me and the bottom line is he said there are
many forms of albinism and pink eyes are a strong likelihood but not a necessity. 

Jo Garrett:
So what will you see in Wisconsin's white deer? 

John Bates:
Pink ears. Their noses will be pink and the eye of an albino deer will be either pink or light blue
or gray. The eyes almost look like eyes of a goat. Very different looking so you would have this
brilliant white animal with these pink characteristics, ears, nose and hooves. 

Jo Garrett:
So how many of these white deer do we have in Wisconsin? 

John Bates:
If we ran the numbers, we have 1.5 million more or less deer and if we have a one in 20,000
chance of having albinos, 20,000 in the 1.5 million -- where is my calculator? I don't know. It's
not a very big number. 

Jo Garrett:
That rough number, that roll of the genetic dice, doesn't say how many animals will actually
survive. Bates, the naturalist, speculates. 

John Bates:
In the summer they'll be far more obvious to a natural predator, but during the winter they would
have the advantage. Five months versus seven months, maybe it's a tradeoff. 

Jo Garrett:
You can see that roll of the genetic dice played out in individual families. 

Jeff Richter:
I've seen albino does with both brown and white fawns and brown does with albino and brown
fawns as well, so they can have both. They seem to not be ostracized from the other deer. At
times they seem to be the dominant animal and other times they seem to be a more submissive
animal. They just seem to be regular deer as far as the deer are concerned. 

Jo Garrett:
Regular in behavior. Remarkable in appearance. 

Jeff Richter:
We actually have had a couple of stories where clerks overheard people had picked up the book
and looking at it and said boy, this is really neat. If only they were real. 

Jo Garrett:
Oh, they're real all right. 

Jeff Richter:
They just at times look kind of funny out there, honestly, particularly like summertime where
they are sort of sneaking around in the woods and you can see them 100 yards away. They stick
out like a sore thumb and doing their usual kind of deer sneaking and it is kind of, you chuckle to
yourself. But there is something, just a little different about them and special about them.

Patty Loew:
Photographer Jeff Richter's pictures are featured in his book, "White Deer, Ghosts of the Forest."
So far more than 14 million people have viewed our white deer video online. You never know
what you'll experience when you explore Wisconsin's Northwoods. This week videographer
Frank Boll takes you for a trek on a portion of the Ice Age national scenic trail. You're about to
see how his plans for a spring hike quickly turned into a winter adventure on the New Wood trail
segment in Lincoln County. 

Frank Boll:
This is pretty late in the year. This is April. We got about three inches of snow last night on a
base of eight to ten inches of old snow that was wet. Skiing did not work very well today. It was
right around freezing all day. The snow would stick to the bottom of the skis. And then you
would go through the new snow and bog down in the snow that was underneath that was still
wet. It didn't freeze so it was kind of like slushy underneath. I didn't make very good time and the
sled was pretty heavy with the camera equipment. I camped here and skied over to the pine and
took some pictures over there. It takes longer in winter to do anything. I think it took two hours
to set up camp here. Once I found a spot, I leveled it off and I tied the fly off the branches off to
the side because the ground is still frozen so you can't get stakes in the ground. You have to get
off the trail for camping and find a place where it's kind of out of the way. And you aren't
supposed to build campfires. You are supposed to have a backpacking stove. Don't cut any trees.
Don't cut any branches. They don't want you to do that. They want you to use a gas stove. There
is a small creek down here and it has got metal flakes, as a ford. That was underwater when I got
here, and I looked at it an hour later and the water was even higher. Tomorrow morning it might
be completely under water. One nice thing about winter camping you don't have any mosquitoes
to worry about. I don't know how the night is going to go. It's supposed to get about 25 tonight. I
have a down sleeping bag, a pad underneath. I think I'm pretty tired. I'll have to see how that
goes. Reminds me of a speech I taped once for Governor Dreyfus. He said, at my age a little
backpacking goes a long way. I think I know what he meant. One problem with winter camping
that I forgot about. I took off my pants because it was so wet last night and there is only so much
you can take in the sleeping bag. I put the boot inserts inside. They're dry this morning. The pants
are frozen shut and I had to open them up to get the leg in and my boots are also frozen shut and I
had a hard time getting my inserts in but I finally did after breathing in the boots for a while.
Looks like it is a beautiful day. Blue sky, sun is already up. I slept pretty good. Woke up about
four times and I couldn't believe morning was here already. It was about three or four inches
under water yesterday. This morning it was a foot, foot and a half or more of water over it and I
couldn't walk through without getting my packs wet. I took off the liners and some of the socks,
put the boots back on and put these garbage bags that I had around my sleeping bag on. I thought
it would help me keep from getting wet. I came across with the tripod and backpack. It worked
good. Then I got the camera, the most expensive part of all this gear. I didn't want to see that
float down the creek. I went back. Got my skis across and I brought this across and I thought for
sure as I was coming across there would be a boat effect that would try to pull me off the
walkway but it followed me pretty good. I got out with just a little wet feet. Not too bad. It could
have been a lot worse. It's been 24 hours since I skied in here to the New Wood segment of the
Ice Age trail pulling a 90 pound pack. 45 pounds of camera, tripod and extra batteries. I haven't
done this for about 20 years, and I found out I'm not in as good a shape as I thought it was.
Fortunately, I had dropped trail mix and a bottle of water on the trail. I loaded the pack and I
figured it must have fallen out. So I left the camera here and all the gear and I went back almost
to the creek again. I found these items and then I came back. And it truly was delightful. A
beautiful day. I had a very good experience on this trail. It is a great trail and I would love to ski
it without camera equipment.

Patty Loew:
You can check out other reports about the Ice Age national scenic trail by going to our website at
wpt.org. Then click on "In Wisconsin." You'll find reports about the trail's designer and the most
urban section of the Ice Age trail. For the past three years, Wisconsin Public Television has
featured gifted teen musicians in the statewide Boltz Young Artist competition. This week we
bring you Joel Weng, who not only performs on several instruments, but also composes music
for an entire orchestra. He is only 14 and lives in Madison.

Reporter:
Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" gives Joel Weng ample opportunity to show his range as a
pianist. 

Joel Weng:
It is fun to listen to and play and I really like this piece myself. 

Woman:
He loved that piece. He said I would like to work on this piece. 

Reporter:
And he has for over a year. 

Woman:
He can play in his sleep. 

Reporter:
Piano is only the beginning of Joel's musicianship. He also plays the violin, the flute and as a
composer writes music for many more. 

Joel Weng:
I moved up to two instruments and then four, then six and then 12 and then finally 16, full
orchestra. 

Reporter:
A full orchestra like the Wisconsin Youth Symphony where Joel plays violin. He brought his
composition to the music director James Smith. 

James Smith:
I liked it. I thought, this is a good piece to include and he's done a good job. We can tweak it here
and there and have something that would be very nice for the audience. 

Reporter:
This season they performed a movement of Joel's Symphony No. 1.

Joel Weng:
I've been composing for quite a while. I always want to take it to the next step with each thing I
write and I didn't really expect them to perform it right away. 

Reporter:
But they did with Joel in the violin section. 

James Smith:
We had Carlos Chavez, we had Schubert and we had Joel. All the other composers that we were
playing were dead, so I couldn't consult them but Joel was kind enough to give me pointers on
the piece. 

Joel Weng:
To be able to hear my own piece getting performed is just really exciting.

Patty Loew:
Wow. That report was produced by Andy Soth and narrated by Wisconsin Public Radio's Lori
Skelton. Three other high school age students will compete against Joel Weng. They'll play with
the Madison Symphony Orchestra in a show called "Wisconsin Young Artists Compete: The
Final Forte." The competition airs live on Wisconsin Public Radio January 12 at 7:00 p.m. It airs
on Wisconsin Public Television January 16th at 7:00 p.m. with a repeat on January 20th at 9:00.
Next week we profile another competitor. It is just one of the reports we're working on for the
next edition of "In Wisconsin." 

Liz Koerner:
This is Liz Koerner. You'll meet a 17-year-old who performs magic on the marimba. 

Greg Riss:
I feel like if I were in some other field I would wish I were in music. 

Liz Koerner:
Greg Riss and his mallets are music to the ears. 

Andy Soth:
I'm Andy Soth. The recession may be hard on industry but it can be good for education. 

Woman:
We happen to have those critical majors for the future in technology, in forensic investigation, in
engineering, in industrial technology. 

Art Hackett:
This is "In Wisconsin" reporter Art Hackett with a snapshot of our state's environmental future
frozen in time. 

Man:
Climate is changing rapidly at the present time. 

Art Hackett:
We'll take a closer look at lake ice research in Vilas County. 

Patty Loew:
Those reports next Thursday on "In Wisconsin." Finally this week the largest deployment of
Wisconsin national guard troops since World War II is coming to an end. This is Tuesday's
welcome home for the first of more than 3,200 soldiers from across Wisconsin. They are part of
the 32nd brigade combat team which spent the last ten months in Iraq. Approximately 115
members greeted loved ones at Volk Field. The remaining units return over the next few weeks.
That's our show for this week. We leave you with a look at Blue Mound state park in Iowa
County. It is located about 25 miles west of Madison. The 1,100 acre park is a popular place to
find peace and solitude. Have a great week "In Wisconsin." 

Announcer:
Major funding for "In Wisconsin" is provided by the people of Alliant Energy, who bring safe,
reliable and environmentally friendly energy to keep homes, neighborhoods and life in Wisconsin
running smoothly. Alliant Energy, we're on for you. And the Animal Dentistry and Oral Surgery
Specialists of Milwaukee and Oshkosh, a veterinary team working with pet owners and family
veterinarians throughout Wisconsin, providing care for oral disease and dental problems of small
companion animals. With additional funding provided by Bike Wisconsin. 

Patty Loew:
On the next edition of "In Wisconsin," we chronicle the comeback of whooping cranes for nearly
a decade. 

Woman:
We were watching history in the making. 

Patty Loew:
Now two major setbacks. See what it means for this endangered species. Plus a snapshot of our
environmental future frozen in time. And a young Wisconsin musician makes magic on the
marimba. Thursday at 7:00 on "In Wisconsin."