Mystics of our brain and mind

Meditation mapped in monks
Scientists investigating the effect of the meditative state on Buddhist monk's brains have found that portions of the organ previously active become quiet, whilst pacified areas become stimulated.
Andrew Newberg, a radiologist at the University of Pennsylvania, US, told BBC World Service's Discovery programme: "I think we are poised at a wonderful time in our history to be able to explore religion and spirituality in a way which was never thought possible."
Using a brain imaging technique, Newberg and his team studied a group of Tibetan Buddhist monks as they meditated for approximately one hour.
When they reached a transcendental high, they were asked to pull a kite string to their right, releasing an injection of a radioactive tracer. By injecting a tiny amount of radioactive marker into the bloodstream of a deep meditator, the scientists soon saw how the dye moved to active parts of the brain.
Sense of space
Later, once the subjects had finished meditating, the regions were imaged and the meditation state compared with the normal waking state.
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."
Prayer power
The complex interaction between different areas of the brain also resembles the pattern of activity that occurs during other so-called spiritual or mystical experiences.


Dr Newberg's earlier studies have involved the brain activity of Franciscan nuns during a type of prayer known as "centring".
As the prayer has a verbal element other parts of the brain are used but Dr Newberg also found that they, "activated the attention area of the brain, and diminished activity in the orientation area."
This is not the first time that scientists have investigated spirituality. In 1998, the healing benefits of prayer were alluded to when a group of scientists in the US studied how patients with heart conditions experienced fewer complications following periods of "intercessory prayer".
Inner world
And at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Boston last month, scientists from Stanford University detailed their research into the positive affects that hypnotherapy can have in helping people cope with long-term illnesses.
Scientific study of both the physical world and the inner world of human experiences are, according to Dr Newberg, equally beneficial.
"When someone has a mystical experience, they perceive that sense of reality to be far greater and far clearer than our usual everyday sense of reality," he said.
He added: "Since the sense of spiritual reality is more powerful and clear, perhaps that sense of reality is more accurate than our scientific everyday sense of reality."












Monks help scientists study brain
Buddhist monks from South Asia have been giving scientists an insight into the workings of the human brain.
They took part in a conference at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which explored visual perception with the aid of images on a computer screen.
The monks - including the Dalai Lama - were drafted in to help.
The scientists were trying to find out if concentrating intently on an image had any effect on brain patterns.
The monks, as experts in meditation techniques, were seen as perfect subjects for the tests.
"What science and Buddhism really share is the goal of understanding the nature of reality," Adam Ingle of the MindLife Institute, who organised the experiment, told BBC World Service's Reporting Religion programme.
"The difference is that science uses the scientific method and a lot of technology and objectives - it starts from the outside and probes the nature of reality.
"Buddhism uses the human mind, reformed through meditation, starting from the inside, looking at the same questions."
Hypothesis
The conference was part of an ongoing experimental project.
"Our hypothesis has been that a collaboration - a genuine collaboration between the two - in investigating the mind would be very helpful and beneficial," Dr Ingle explained.

These practices actually lead to better states of well-being

Although some may see a contradiction between science, which measures and verifies, and Buddhism, which is experiential, Dr Ingle added that he felt Buddhism had a great deal to offer in attempting to understand the brain.
"If you're a Western scientist investigating the mind, does it make any sense to you to have what we're calling the Olympic athletes of mental training on your research team?" he pointed out.
"The brain imaging technologies that have been developed are enabling the scientists to objectively verify what these guys are saying."
Scientists recently announced that experiments suggested that Buddhists, who try to focus on achieving inner peace, really did seem to enjoy life more.
Dr Ingle said part of what he was doing would try to find how and why this was happening.
"At this level what's happening is that we're trying to find out whether these mental practices that these monks have been doing are creating brain changes - actual structural changes in the brain - over a period of time," he said.
"If so, where do those changes reside and what are the possible effects of them?
"On a longer-term basis, it may well be very true and that seems to suggest that these practices actually lead to better states of well-being, better states of health - and in some of the experiments, it's shown to increase the immune function."