Meditation And The Neuroscience Of Consciousness

It feels very strange to comment on two readings as distant as "Peaceful piggy meditation" and  the Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness on almost the same day... but well, that is what I have been reading. 

 

Actually, of the latter I only read "Meditation And The Neuroscience Of Consciousness: An Introduction" by Antoine Lutz, John D. Dunne, And Richard J. Davidson.

This chapter reviews defines meditation by analyzing some of the techniques common to all Buddhist traditions, then it explores where Buddhism and Neuroscience intersect, describing how Buddhism as an exploratory field of study can contribute to the neuroscience of emotions and mind-body interactions. The chapter  concludes with a section discussing the neuroimaging and neuroelectric research that reviews some of the correlates between both. With 120 pages the chapter goes pretty deep.

The authors, from the University of Wisconsin, are working with a number of very experienced meditators, monks from the Tibetan tradition, including Matthieu Ricard.  

  

 

Mind Science - a news report

The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. It should transcend personal God and avoid dogma and theology. Covering both the natural and the spiritual, it should be based on a religious sense arising from the experience of all things natural and spiritual as a meaningful unity. Buddhism answers this description. If there is any religion that could cope with modern scientific needs it would be Buddhism. (Albert Einstein)

A number of scientists have started looking at Buddhism as a source of information on how the brain works. This is a news report of the research produced at the Lab for Affective Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin, led by Prof Richard Davidson.

The Dan Rather news report starts with a section on the impact of meditation on well-being, with interviews to the Dalai Lama and a number of scientists. Then there is a discussion of medical research on how the increased understanding of neuroplasticity is helping people suffering the consequences of stroke. I found the interview to Eric Kandel, nobel prize winner, particularly entretaining.

Interesting books

I am trying to learn about what Neuroscience has to say with respect to emotions, a very hot field of scientific research. I just ordered three books that seemed promising. They are not Buddhist at all, but I hope to find they have something interesting to say:

Cognitive Neuroscience of Emotion - Richard D. Lane;

The Emotion Machine: Commonsense Thinking, Artificial Intelligence, and the Future of the Human Mind - Marvin Minsky

Affective Computing - Rosalind W. Picard

Matthieu Ricard talks about happiness

I recently started reading Matthiew Ricard's new book: "Happiness: A guide to developing life's most important skill".

The book is fantastic, as this scientist, who became a Buddist monk.
Riccard has been working with scientists in uncovering the meaning of happiness from the neurophysiological point of view.

This short video is an interesting lecture that summarizes the book's first chapters.

Meditation and the Neuroscience of Consciousness

For a long time I've had an interest in Neuroscience.
I recently found an article by Antoine Lutz and others that looks very promising, even just because Antoine was a PhD student of Francisco Varela.

Meditation and the Neuroscience of Consciousness. Antoine Lutz, John D. Dunne, Richard J. Davidson. In press in Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness edited by Zelazo P., Moscovitch M. and Thompson E.

The paper is a review of the current research around finding evidence of links between meditation and its neural impact. This paper is a review such research.
In the first section, the authors provide an operational definition of meditation, trying to narrow down the wide spread of meanings.

This narrower definition is important to study “the Intersection of Neuroscience and
Meditation", the second section of the paper. Here the authors discuss what ismotivating neuroscientists to examine meditation and its impact on the mind-body interaction. It also addresses the issue of appropriate methodologies, something that Varela explored in a lot of his work.

The last section Neuroelectric and Neuroimaging Correlates of Meditation,” reviews neuroelectric and neuroimaging research.