Newberg and d’Aquili demonkey feature of this
strated that meditation triggered
first step is a shift
two important changes in brain
in brain activity
activity
from the left to the
right hemisphere,
as attention is predominately a right-hemisphere
results
function. The implications of this
confirm
that
are discussed below. Secondly, the
sustained attention elicits defined
increase in activity in the frontal
changes in the activity of the froncortex drives a decrease in activity
tal cortex that trigger the unfolding
in the parietal cortex. This houses
of the meditative experience. Many
two important association cortices;
meditators also report a dissolvthe orientation association cortex
ing of the boundary between self
and the verbal-conceptual cortex.
and non-self and an expansion of
The former gives rise to our sense
awareness that brings a sense of
of orientation in space and time,
unboundedness and transcendence.
and contains the neural circuitry
This so-called mystical experience
that defines the boundary between
can also be understood in terms of
self and non-self, whereas the latter
changes in brain activity, with mediconfers the ability to relay our expetation switching off the circuitry in
rience in words. A decrease in activthe parietal lobe involved in genity in the parietal cortex therefore
erating our perception of time and
leads to a decreased awareness of
space, and our position within it, as
space and time, as well as an inabilwell as the self/non-self boundary.
ity to describe the experience using
Furthermore, the indescribability of
language [3].
mystical experiences can also be
explained by the reduced activity in
the parietal lobe, as this part of the
The findings of this research therefore
brain also houses the neural circuitmirror our current subjective underry that confers the ability to express
standing of the mystical experiencour experiences in language.
es elicited by meditation. Sustained
attention is pivotal to all types of
meditation, and these experimental
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