SUO: Brain scans during meditation
There is a report on BBC News about recent work on brain scans
of Buddhist monks and Franciscan nuns during meditation:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/sci/tech/newsid_1847000/1847442.stm
It essentially confirms the subjective reports of many mystics over
the centuries by showing what areas of the brain are correlated
with the experiences. Following is a quotation from the article:
The scans provided remarkable clues about what goes on in the brain
during meditation. "There was an increase in activity in the front
part of the brain, the area that is activated when anyone focuses
attention on a particular task," Dr Newberg explained.
In addition, a notable decrease in activity in the back part of the
brain, or parietal lobe, recognised as the area responsible for
orientation, reinforced the general suggestion that meditation leads
to a lack of spatial awareness.
Dr Newberg explained: "During meditation, people have a loss of the
sense of self and frequently experience a sense of no space and time
and that was exactly what we saw."
This kind of evidence is typical of the results provided by current
work in neurophysiology. It confirms the remarkable coincidences in
the kinds of reports by mystics in widely separated traditions, such
as Christian nuns and Buddhist monks. But the brain scans cannot tell
us anything about the details of the religious insights those mystics
have attained.
Bottom line: Current research in neurophysiology can give us some
interesting insights into brain function. But there is still an
enormous gap between the sketchy maps of active areas in the brain
and the vastly more detailed results obtained by logic, linguistics,
philosophy, and artificial intelligence.
John Sowa