Dalai Lama talks about meditation and neuroscience

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Neuroscience professor Richard Davidson says his results suggest that meditating actually alters the structure and function of some monks' brains. The Dalai Lama is speaking at the Society for Neuroscience's annual meeting.

Original source:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/14.02/dalai.html

Summary:

• The 14th incarnation of the Living Buddha of Compassion approaches the podium, clears his throat, and blows his nose loudly.
• The Dalai Lama is here to give a speech titled "The Neuroscience of Meditation."
• Over the past few years, he has supplied about a dozen Tibetan Buddhist monks to Richard Davidson, a prominent neuroscience professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
• Davidson's research created a stir among brain scientists when his results suggested that, in the course of meditating for tens of thousands of hours, the monks had actually altered the structure and function of their brains.
• The professor thought the Dalai Lama would make an interesting guest speaker at the Society for Neuroscience's annual meeting, and the program committee jumped at the chance.
• The speech also gives the Tibetan leader an opportunity to promote one of his cherished goals: an alliance between Buddhism and science.
• "His Holiness' cold is a manifestation of the opposition of some scientists to his coming to the conference," a young Chinese Buddhist explains to me.
• A French-born monk from the Shechen Monastery in Katmandu, Ricard had racked up more than of 10,000 hours of meditation.
• He immediately noticed powerful gamma activity - brain waves oscillating at roughly 40 cycles per second - indicating intensely focused thought.
• Worried that something might be wrong with their equipment or methods, they brought in more monks, as well as a control group of college students inexperienced in meditation.
• The monks produced gamma waves that were 30 times as strong as the students'.
• In addition, larger areas of the meditators' brains were active, particularly in the left prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for positive emotions.
• If so, then maybe compassion could be exercised like a muscle; with the right training, people could bulk up their empathy.

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