For more than a decade, CCARE has advanced compassion as a rigorous, evidence-based field. Drawing on neuroscience and related disciplines, we study compassion as a measurable capacity that helps people lead more effectively, work together more efficiently, and create healthier learning and care environments.
Better collaboration, clearer decisions, and healthier teams depend on the quality of human interaction. The science of compassion demonstrates how listening, trust, and stress regulation directly influence performance, resilience, and outcomes in complex systems.
CCARE brings together neuroscience, psychology, health, engineering, and organizational science to understand compassion at the individual, interpersonal, and systems levels. Our research examines how compassion shapes attention, judgment, coordination, and collective problem-solving. These insights translate into practical approaches that help organizations strengthen trust, reduce friction, and sustain high performance.
The return on investment is tangible: clearer judgment, stronger teamwork, healthier cultures, and reduced costs associated with burnout, conflict, and miscommunication. As these approaches scale, benefits extend from individuals to teams and entire institutions.
We partner across research, health care, education, technology, industry, sport, and public leadership to help meet complexity with skill and humanity.
To explore research partnerships and practical applications, contact Dr. Stephanie Balters, Director of Research | balters@stanford.edu
Featured Research: Dual-Brain Neuroscience in Real-World Teams
As part of our ongoing work, CCARE is advancing dual-brain (inter-brain) neuroscience to study how compassion and coordination unfold in real time during high-stakes interaction. Using portable brain imaging, we examine how teams communicate, align, and perform under pressure.
We are actively seeking collaborators interested in piloting and testing these methods within clinical, educational, organizational, or leadership teams.
