Science: inside the meditating brain (video)

Big Think, 9/13/18; Dhr. Seven and Amber Larson (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

X-ray of Otzi's brain in skull, Iceman found in situ in Alps, frozen for five thousand years.

The 14th Dalai Lama with Rajneesh Kasturirangan, Geshe Thupten Jinpa, and American neuroscientist Dr. Richard Davidson at the Mind and Life Institute XXVI conference in 2013.

Superhumans: The remarkable brain waves of high-level meditators | Big Think

Meditation science: American Neuroscientist Richard J. Davidson (richardjdavidson.com)

.

(Big Think) People [such as Buddhist monastics] who have meditated for thousands of hours exhibit a remarkable difference in their brainwaves.

Psychologist Dr. Daniel Goleman says we can actually see what happens in the heads of those who have achieved "enlightenment," and the results are unprecedented in science.

Author Daniel Goleman (danielgoleman.info)

ABOUT: Dr. Daniel Goleman (info) is an Amherst and Harvard-educated psychologist, lecturer, and science journalist. He has reported on the brain and behavioral sciences for The New York Times for many years. His 1995 book, Emotional Intelligence (Bantam Books) was on The New York Times bestseller list for a year and a half. Dr. Goleman is also the author of Ecological Intelligence: How Knowing the Hidden Impacts of What We Buy Can Change Everything. The book argues that new information technologies will create “radical transparency,” allowing us to know the environmental, health, and social consequences of what we buy. As shoppers use point-of-purchase ecological comparisons to guide their purchases, market share will shift to support steady, incremental upgrades in how products are made -- changing everything for the better. His latest book is Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body, which he co-authored with Dr. Richard Davidson, reveals the science of what meditation can really do for us, as well as exactly how to get the most out of it.

.

TRANSCRIPT

Edited for clarity by Wisdom Quarterly, 9/16/23

Dr. Richard Davidson, U of Wisconsin

DANIEL GOLEMAN: My co-author of the book Altered Traits is neuroscientist Richard Davidson, whose lab is at the University of Wisconsin.

It’s a very large lab with dedicated scanners. He has about 100 people working there, and he was able to do some remarkable research where he flew Olympic-level meditators, who live in Nepal or India [e.g., Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche] typically, some in France [e.g., Matthieu Ricard].

He flew them over to the lab and put them through a protocol in his brain scanners and did state-of-the-art tests. And the results were just astounding. We found, for example, or he found that their brain waves are really different.

Altered Traits (Dan Goleman, Dick Davidson)

Perhaps the most remarkable findings in the Olympic-level meditators has to do with what’s called a gamma [brain] wave.

All of us get gamma for a very short period when we solve a problem we’ve been grappling with, even if it’s something that’s vexed us for months. We get about a half-second of gamma; it’s the strongest wave on the EEG [electro encephalograph] spectrum.

We get it when we bite into an apple or imagine biting into an apple, and for a brief period, a split-second, inputs from taste, sound, smell, vision, all of that come together in that imagined bite into the apple. But that lasts very short period in an ordinary EEG.

What was stunning was that the Olympic-level meditators, these are people who have done up to 62,000 lifetime hours of meditation, their brainwave shows gamma very strong all the time as a lasting trait just no matter what they’re doing.

It’s not a state effect. It’s not during their meditation alone. But it’s just their everyday state of mind. We actually have no idea what that means experientially.

Science has never seen it before. We also find that in these Olympic-level meditators when we asked them, for example, to do a meditation on compassion, their level of gamma jumps 700 to 800 percent in a few seconds. This has also never been seen by science.

So we have to assume that the special state of consciousness that you see in the highest-level meditators is a lot like something described in the classical meditation literatures centuries ago, which is that there is a state of being which is not like our ordinary state.

Sometimes it’s called liberation, enlightenment, awake, whatever the word may be. We suspect there’s really no vocabulary that captures what that might be.

The people that we’ve talked to in this Olympic-level group say it’s very spacious, and you’re wide open, you’re prepared for whatever may come. We just don’t know.

But we do know it’s quite remarkable. More

• Watch the newest video from Big Think: bigth.ink/NewVideo
• Join Big Think+ for exclusive videos: bigthink.com/plus

What does science say about meditation?

A Joyful Mind, 12/19; Amber Larson and Dhr. Seven (eds.), Wisdom Quarterly

Meditation's [biological] impact on the brain | documentary clip

(A Joyful Mind) This is a clip from the feature documentary A Joyful Mind on the neuroscience research of Dr. Richard Davidson.

• Full documentary: Meditation's Impact on the Brain
• For more information, visit: ajoyfulmind.com

Happiness: Sitting Quietly, Doing Something

Text: Daniel Goleman (New York Times, July 16, 2009)

I recently spent an evening with Yongey Mingyur Rimpoche, the Tibetan lama who has been dubbed “the happiest man in the world.” True, that title has been bestowed upon at least a few extremely upbeat individuals in recent times [the title was scientifically validated for the Buddhist monk and scientist Ven. Matthieu Ricard]. But it is no exaggeration to say that Rimpoche is a master of the art of well-being.

Courtesy of Crown Publishers Yongey Mingyur Rimpoche

So how did he get that way? Apparently, the same way you get to Carnegie Hall. Practice. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Rimpoche a bit over the years and always found him in good cheer. This meeting was no different.

When I called him at his Manhattan hotel to arrange to get together before we were to discuss his new book, Joyful Wisdom, at the 92nd St. Y, he told me he was in the middle of a shower – but not in the usual sense.

The shower, he told me, had run out of hot water midway. When he called the front desk, he was told to wait several minutes and there would be more hot water. In this situation, I probably would have been peeved. But as Rimpoche told me this, he was laughing and laughing.

The only momentary glitch I’ve witnessed — a few years back — was slapstick: He sat down in an office chair with a faulty seat that suddenly plunged several inches with a thump. Once when this chair had done the same to me, I cursed and groused about it for a while. But Rimpoche just frowned for a second — and the next moment he was his upbeat self again. Quickness of recovery time from upsets is one way science takes the measure of a happy temperament.

While annoyances like these are hardly life’s greatest tests, handling them gracefully takes a composure that few of us seem to have at our disposal. Mingyur Rimpoche was not born into wealth and comfort. He spent his earliest years in a remote Himalayan village lacking even the most basic amenities. Nor was he a lucky winner in the genetic lottery for moods. In his book he recounts being extremely anxious as a child in Nepal, having had what a Manhattan psychiatrist would likely diagnose as panic attacks, and how he cured himself of this chronic anxiety by making his fears the focus of his meditation. He has had to earn his good cheer.

Rimpoche seems eclectic in studying paths to well-being, including Western recipes. A few years ago, he attended a five-day meeting at the Mind & Life Institute that brought together a group of neuroscientists and the Dalai Lama to discuss ways to overcome destructive emotions. He found that the Western scientific findings on emotions had much in common with his own approach to cultivating well-being.

But when it comes to his own pursuit of happiness, Buddhist theory and practice are Rimpoche’s chosen tools. He has done several years-long meditation retreats, under the tutelage of some of the most renowned Tibetan masters. Of course, what we mean by “happiness” can be elusive, what with the myriad varieties of good feeling running from ecstasy to equanimity. One flavor of happiness at which Rimpoche seems to excel has been well-studied by scientists specializing in how emotions operate in our brains.

Richard Davidson, who heads the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin, has found one distinct brain profile for happiness. As Davidson’s laboratory has reported, when... More>>

LINK: Prof. Richard Davidson - Be Happy Like a Monk (28:58)
Prof. Davidson of the University of Wisconsin Psychology Department has met with the Dalai Lama to discuss the scientific aspects of meditation. He has mapped the brains of Buddhist monks to identify areas of the brain that change with meditation. More»