Buddha on the Brain
A five-year study by Richard Davidson a professor of Neuroscience at the University of Wisconsin has revealed that Buddhist Monks in the course of meditating for tens of thousands of hours have altered the structure and function of their brains.
This started in 2k2 when an assistant of Davidson Antonie Lutz positioned 128 electrodes on French Born Monk Mattieu Ricard.
Ricard was told to mediate on unconditional loving – kindness and compassion. Lutz noticed powerful gamma activity, as Richard’s brain waves were oscillating at 40 cycles per second indicating intensely focused thought. Gamma waves are usually weak and difficult to see but Ricard’s were easily visible even in Raw EEG output.
The oscillating from various parts of the cortex were synchronized this normally happens with patients are under anesthesia.
Initially faulty equipment was blamed for the results so more monks as well as students were brought in and the monks produced gamma waves 30x as strong as the students in addition larger areas of the monks brain were active especially the left prefrontal cortex which is responsible for positive emotions.
Implications of this are the ability to change brain function through training in the traditional view the brain becomes froze at the onset of adulthood only a few new connections form but this shows intensive training can make a difference.
The monks generated remarkable waves by mediating on compassion indicating that the meditators had an intensely compassionate state of mind meaning compassion could be exercised like a muscle with training and if this works for everyone it could enhance the brains ability to produce attention and effective processes it could modify emotional responses like depression.
More and more people are beginning to see the light when it comes to mediation, though Professor Davidson results are being challenge by few of his colleagues. Hopefully one day all of us will be able to benefit on the joy of mediating on unconditional love. In a world becoming more and more violent with every breath it is needed.
This started in 2k2 when an assistant of Davidson Antonie Lutz positioned 128 electrodes on French Born Monk Mattieu Ricard.
Ricard was told to mediate on unconditional loving – kindness and compassion. Lutz noticed powerful gamma activity, as Richard’s brain waves were oscillating at 40 cycles per second indicating intensely focused thought. Gamma waves are usually weak and difficult to see but Ricard’s were easily visible even in Raw EEG output.
The oscillating from various parts of the cortex were synchronized this normally happens with patients are under anesthesia.
Initially faulty equipment was blamed for the results so more monks as well as students were brought in and the monks produced gamma waves 30x as strong as the students in addition larger areas of the monks brain were active especially the left prefrontal cortex which is responsible for positive emotions.
Implications of this are the ability to change brain function through training in the traditional view the brain becomes froze at the onset of adulthood only a few new connections form but this shows intensive training can make a difference.
The monks generated remarkable waves by mediating on compassion indicating that the meditators had an intensely compassionate state of mind meaning compassion could be exercised like a muscle with training and if this works for everyone it could enhance the brains ability to produce attention and effective processes it could modify emotional responses like depression.
More and more people are beginning to see the light when it comes to mediation, though Professor Davidson results are being challenge by few of his colleagues. Hopefully one day all of us will be able to benefit on the joy of mediating on unconditional love. In a world becoming more and more violent with every breath it is needed.
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