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THE THIRD
METRIC
HUFFINGTON
10.06.13
Here are some incredible findings from brain imaging studies
on Buddhist monks that shed light
on the astounding power of the
human mind.
GETTY IMAGES/FLICKR RF
YOU CAN CHANGE THE BRAIN’S
STRUCTURE AND FUNCTIONING.
Neuroscientist Richard J. Davidson’s groundbreaking research on
Tibetan Buddhist monks at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison
has found that years of meditative
practice can dramatically increase
neuroplasticity — the brain’s ability to use new experiences or environments to create structural
changes. For example, it can help
reorganizing itself by creating new
neural connections.
“The findings from studies in
this unusual sample... suggest
that, over the course of meditating for tens of thousands of hours,
the long-term practitioners had
actually altered the structure and
function of their brains,” Davidson wrote in IEEE Signal Processing Magazine in 2008.
YOU CAN ALTER VISUAL
PERCEPTION AND ATTENTION.
In 2005, researchers at the University of Queensland in Australia and University of California
at Berkeley traveled to India to
study 76 Tibetan Buddhist monks,
in order to gain insight into how
mental states can affect conscious
visual experiences — and how we
might be able to gain more control
over the regular fluctuations in
our conscious state.
Their data indicated that years
of meditation training can profoundly affect a phenomenon
known as “perceptual rivalry,”
which takes place when two different images are presented to
each eye — the brain fluctuates, in
a matter of seconds, in the dominant image that is perceived. It
is thought to be related to brain
mechanisms that underly attention and awareness. When the
Research
on Tibetan
Buddhist
monks has
revealed
that years of
meditative
practice can
dramatically
increase the
brain’s ability
to