EXPLORING MYSTICAL EXPERIENCES
ELICITED BY MEDITATION
The investigation of
artificially evoked brain
events is clearly far
from ideal. This fact led
the researchers Andrew
Newberg and Eugene
d’Aquili to attempt to
study mystical experiences elicited by meditation in the laboratory.
Experienced Buddhist
dent or peak moment
of meditation – they
were asked to pull on
a string. Radioactive
tracer was then injected into the meditator,
through an in-dwelling
catheter, and the binding of this tracer in the
brain visualised using
SPECT (single photon
emission computed tomography).
Active regions of
the brain have
a greater blood
supply and can
therefore
be
expected to bind
more
of
the
radioactive tracer. In this manner, information
about the activity
in the meditator’s brain
at this transcendent
moment was captured
and visualised.
meditators were asked to
meditate and, when they
felt they were accessing an altered or mystical state of awareness
From these pivotal
– sometimes referred
to as the transcen- experiments, Newberg
8
and d’Aquili demonstrated that meditation
triggered two important changes in brain
activity. Firstly, there is
an increase in activity
in the frontal cortex,
in the area of the brain
known to be involved
in sustained attention –
referred to as the attention association cortex.
Increased activity in
this association cortex leads to decreased
activity in the surroundin ??????????????????)???????????????)??????????????????)??????????Q???????)??????????????????)????????????????????)????????????????)????????????????)???????????????????)??????????????????)???????????Q??????)???????????????????)??????????????????????????????????????????????????Q??((0