Meditation & Neuroscience

The underlying anatomical correlates of long-term meditation: larger hippocampal and frontal volumes of gray matter. 

Neuroimage. 2009 Apr 15;45(3):672-8:  Luders E, Toga AW, Lepore N, Gaser C. Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, Department of Neurology, UCLA School of Medicine, Los Angeles, CA 90095-7334, USA. 

Although the systematic study of meditation is still in its infancy, research has provided evidence for meditation-induced improvements in psychological and physiological well-being. Moreover, meditation practice has been shown not only to benefit higher-order cognitive functions but also to alter brain activity. Nevertheless, little is known about possible links to brain structure. Using high-resolution MRI data of 44 subjects, we set out to examine the underlying anatomical correlates of long-term meditation with different regional specificity (i.e., global, regional, and local). For this purpose, we applied voxel-based morphometry in association with a recently validated automated parcellation approach. We detected significantly larger gray matter volumes in meditators in the right orbito-frontal cortex (as well as in the right thalamus and left inferior temporal gyrus when co-varying for age and/or lowering applied statistical thresholds). In addition, meditators showed significantly larger volumes of the right hippocampus. Both orbito-frontal and hippocampal regions have been implicated in emotional regulation and response control. Thus, larger volumes in these regions might account for meditators' singular abilities and habits to cultivate positive emotions, retain emotional stability, and engage in mindful behavior. We further suggest that these regional alterations in brain structures constitute part of the underlying neurological correlate of long-term meditation independent of a specific style and practice. Future longitudinal analyses are necessary to establish the presence and direction of a causal link between meditation practice and brain anatomy.
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Long-term meditation is associated with increased gray matter density in the brain stem. 

Neuroreport. 2009 Jan 28;20(2):170-4: Vestergaard-Poulsen P, van Beek M, Skewes J, Bjarkam CR, Stubberup M, Bertelsen J, Roepstorff A. Center for Functionally Integrative Neuroscience, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark. peterv@pet.auh.dk 

Extensive practice involving sustained attention can lead to changes in brain structure. Here, we report evidence of structural differences in the lower brainstem of participants engaged in the long-term practice of meditation. Using magnetic resonance imaging, we observed higher gray matter density in lower brain stem regions of experienced meditators compared with age-matched nonmeditators. Our findings show that long-term practitioners of meditation have structural differences in brainstem regions concerned with cardiorespiratory control. This could account for some of the cardiorespiratory parasympathetic effects and traits, as well as the cognitive, emotional, and immunoreactive impact reported in several studies of different meditation practices.  

Re: Meditation & Neuroscience

“Most of the neurological phenomena associated with religious experience involve some form of over-activation of the limbic system, and corresponding intensified experiences. Conversely, Alzheimer’s disease is associated with a deteriorization of the limbic system and those afflicted tend to lose interest in religion, even those who have exhibited a lifelong interest”

Skeptical Inquirer, 2006 Sep/Oct (Vol 30:Issue 5), p35-38. M. Spinella is an associate professor of psychology at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, USA. O. Wain is a graduate student in biomedical sciences at the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, USA
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The second study above makes a direct reference to the brainstem. All of the brain structures in the first study relate to the limbic system. Here’s an intro to this system from about.com:

The limbic system is a set of evolutionarily primitive brain structures located on top of the brainstem and buried under the cortex. Limbic system structures are involved in many of our emotions and motivations, particularly those that are related to survival. Such emotions include fear, anger, and emotions related to sexual behavior. The limbic system is also involved in feelings of pleasure that are related to our survival, such as those experienced from eating and sex.

Certain structures of the limbic system are involved in memory as well. Two large limbic system structures, the amygdala and hippocampus play important roles in memory. The amygdala is responsible for determining what memories are stored and where the memories are stored in the brain. It is thought that this determination is based on how huge an emotional response an event invokes. The hippocampus sends memories out to the appropriate part of the cerebral hemisphere for long-term storage and retrieves them when necessary. Damage to this area of the brain may result in an inability to form new memories.

Part of the forebrain known as the diencephalon is also included in the limbic system. The diencephalon is located beneath the cerebral hemispheres and contains the thalamus and hypothalamus. The thalamus is involved in sensory perception and regulation of motor functions (i.e., movement). It connects areas of the cerebral cortex that are involved in sensory perception and movement with other parts of the brain and spinal cord that also have a role in sensation and movement. The hypothalamus is a very small but important component of the diencephalon. It plays a major role in regulating hormones, the pituitary gland, body temperature, the adrenal glands, and many other vital activities.
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Here’s more info on it from wikipedia:

The limbic system is embryologically older than other parts of the brain. It developed to manage 'fight' or 'flight' chemicals and is an evolutionary necessity for reptiles as well as humans.

The limbic system (or Paleomammalian brain) is a set of brain structures including the hippocampus, amygdala, anterior thalamic nuclei, and limbic cortex, which support a variety of functions including emotion, behavior, long term memory, and olfaction.

The limbic system includes many structures in the cerebral cortex and sub-cortex of the brain.

The following structures are, or have been considered to be, part of the limbic system:

    * Amygdala: Involved in signaling the cortex of motivationally significant stimuli such as those related to reward and fear in addition to social functions such as mating.
    * Hippocampus: Required for the formation of long-term memories and implicated in maintenance of cognitive maps for navigation.
    * Parahippocampal gyrus:Plays a role in the formation of spatial memory
    * Cingulate gyrus: Autonomic functions regulating heart rate, blood pressure and cognitive and attentional processing
    * Fornix: carries signals from the hippocampus to the mammillary bodies and septal nuclei.
    * Hypothalamus: Regulates the autonomic nervous system via hormone production and release. Affects and regulates blood pressure, heart rate, hunger, thirst, sexual arousal, and the sleep/wake cycle
    * Thalamus: The “relay station” to the cerebral cortex

In addition, these structures are sometimes also considered to be part of the limbic system:

    * Mammillary body: Important for the formation of memory
    * Pituitary gland: secretes hormones regulating homeostasis
    * Dentate gyrus: thought to contribute to new memories and to regulate happiness.
    * Entorhinal cortex and piriform cortex: Receive smell input in the olfactory system.
    * Fornicate gyrus: Region encompassing the cingulate, hippocampus, and parahippocampal gyrus
    * Olfactory bulb: Olfactory sensory input
    * Nucleus accumbens: Involved in reward, pleasure, and addiction
    * Orbitofrontal cortex: Required for decision making

Re: Meditation & Neuroscience

We’ve seen (e.g, in the “status of states 2” thread) how in the process of meditation one moves from beta to alpha waves, then to theta and finally to delta. Here’s what the wikipedia entries say on the waves and related brain structures:

The theta rhythm is an oscillatory EEG pattern that can be observed in the hippocampus and other brain structures in numerous species of mammals including rodents, rabbits, dogs, cats, bats, and marsupials—theta rhythmicity is most easily observed in the hippocampal formation, but can also be detected in numerous other brain structures, including the medial and lateral septum, entorhinal cortex, retrosplenial cortex, prefrontal cortex, amygdala, nucleus accumbens, several nuclei of the hypothalamus and thalamus, and parts of the brainstem reticular formation.

A delta wave is a high amplitude brain wave with a frequency of 1–4 Hertz which can be recorded with an electroencephalogram[1] (EEG) and is usually associated with slow-wave sleep. Delta wave activity occurs most frequently during stage 4 slow-wave sleep (SWS) accounting for 50% or more of the EEG record during this stage. These waves are created by the thalamus in coordination with the Reticular Afferent System. (RAS) [2]

Re: Meditation & Neuroscience

Here is some more recent research. Note that the anterior insula is also part of the limbic system.

Investigation of mindfulness meditation practitioners with voxel-based morphometry.

Hölzel BK, Ott U, Gard T, Hempel H, Weygandt M, Morgen K, Vaitl D.

Bender Institute of Neuroimaging, Justus-Liebig-University, 35394
Giessen, Germany . Britta.K.Hoelzel@psychol.uni-giessen.de

Mindfulness meditators practice the non-judgmental observation of the ongoing stream of internal experiences as they arise. Using voxel-based morphometry, this study investigated MRI brain images of 20 mindfulness (Vipassana) meditators (mean practice 8.6 years; 2 h daily) and compared the regional gray matter concentration to that of non-meditators matched for sex, age, education and handedness. Meditators were predicted to show greater gray matter concentration in regions that are typically activated during meditation. Results confirmed greater gray matter concentration for meditators in the right anterior insula, which is involved in interoceptive awareness. This group difference presumably reflects the training of bodily awareness during mindfulness meditation. Furthermore, meditators had greater gray matter concentration in the left inferior temporal gyrus and right hippocampus. Both regions have previously been found to be involved in meditation. The mean value of gray matter concentration in the left inferior temporal gyrus was predictable by the amount of meditation training, corroborating the assumption of a causal impact of meditation training on gray matter concentration in this region. Results suggest that meditation practice is associated with structural differences in regions that are typically activated during meditation and in regions that are relevant for the task of meditation.

Re: Meditation & Neuroscience

Here’s what a sahaja yoga page says on the limbic system:

Sahaja Yoga is a revival of ancient Yoga techniques that teaches how to enter into this joyful fourth state of consciousness that is thoughtless awareness. This state has a significantly relaxing effect on body and mind.

At a physiological level, the state of thoughtless awareness has been shown to have numerous beneficial effects, especially on the parasympathetic and limbic systems. According to traditional yoga, there are seven energy centres in the body called Chakras, which correspond to the seven nerve plexuses: the pelvic autonomic plexus (Mooladhara Chakra), the aortic plexus (Swadhistana Chakra), the coeliac plexus (Nabhi Chakra), the cardiac plexus (Heart Chakra), the cervical plexus (Vishuddhi Chakra), and the optic chiasma (Agnya Chakra). The seventh energy centre is the limbic system of the brain, which consists of seven nerve nuclei which contains and integrates the control centers of the other six energy centers. In the limbic system all of the six Chakras form this final integrative Chakra, the Sahasrara Chakra.

During a Sahaja Yoga meditation, a spiritual energy called the Kundalini, a coiled energy that resides at the base of the spine, raises through all the six centers of the body and enters the seventh center, the Sahasrara located within the limbic system. This energetic process of ascent activates and nourishes the parasympathetic nervous system, which in turn relaxes our bodily functions. It also gently nourishes the limbic system, the emotional and motivational center of the brain, which again relaxes the brain by reducing thinking functions. This parasympathetic-limbic activation is the underlying neurophysiological substrate of the enrichment of body and mind in Sahaja Yoga meditation.

The electro-physiological activity of the brain changes through prolonged practice of Sahaja yoga mediation from typical fast waves during normal consciousness to a state of slow waves, similar but not identical to the sleep state (Matsuoka et al., 1990, Aftanas et al., 2001). The slow waves (the so called theta waves) are thought to be formed by the limbic system, which it is believed is activated during Sahaja Yoga meditation. Likewise, studies using high resolution brain imaging have shown that during meditation, activity in the frontal and other cortical brain regions (thought to be the areas that originate thought processes) are reduced, while activity in the limbic brain areas increases, especially in the hippocampus (Lou et al., 1999, Lazar et al., 2000), an area associated with the stress hormone cortisol.

Re: Meditation & Neuroscience

One of the things I find interesting is that you don’t see this more recent research used in integral circles. It’s as if, because it doesn’t support the traditional interpretations of meditative states, it’s ignored or called reductionistic. For example, there a new edition of Shapiro & Walsh’s Meditation, Classic and Contemporary Perspectives (Aldine Transaction, 2008). Roger Walsh is  one of the apologists for Wilber and I-I, so it’s not surprising that, for example, the references in Chapter 27, “the physiology of meditation and mystical states of consciousness” are all dated from the 50s-70s, back when the only ones involved in this research were meditators trying to prove their traditional interpretations and hence coloring the results. Even Section IV, “Additional developments in clinical and research aspects of meditation,” the sources are from the same period, over 30 years old. 

And these are “contemporary” perspectives? If we take current research we are led in the interpretative direction I suggest, which really does gut the remnants of the metaphysics still inherent in early American Buddhist research. The latter still desperately clings to tradition and refuses to acknowledge both contemporary research and its obvious implications.

Re: Meditation & Neuroscience

Yeah, I think that's interesting.  It will be interesting to see what studies are referenced in the upcoming new edition of Transformations of Consciousness.

Re: Meditation & Neuroscience

A new edition of Transformations of Consciousness? I wonder what that will look like. Washburn's contribution to that volume is SO BAD. His hermeneutics and philology, if one call it that, is akin to a kind of gematria. For example, he takes some of Patanjali's metaphysical definitions and postulates as referring to kinds of yogic “experiences,” and takes the order in which the sutras appear in the Yoga Sutra as referring to an order in which certain yoga states and stages occur! As scholarship, this kind of thing is laughable. :-)

Re: Meditation & Neuroscience

Hi Ed,
Have you read Itzhak Bentov's speculative interpretation of what happens during certain forms of meditation, particularly that found in the sahajiya traditions (ie “kundalini” etc.)? I used to find it rather suggestive, and it might jibe with what you are offering here. Da, too, used to go on about the role of the ventricles.

There is some interesting work done by Ramachandra and Persinger on the role of the temporal lobe in religious experience. I find their work suggestive but also problematic. (Ramachandran could some philosophical sophistication, and Persinger tends to oversimplify by rolling several different phenomena into one.)  A scandinavian researcher has studied the role that a 5meo-dmt receptor might have in certain forms of experiences, particularly “NDE”s. I think all of these pursuits are worthy of consideration.

On another note, I think that one reason that some may be antagonistic toward neuroscience is that there is a metaphysical bias built into most traditions of “spirituality”, viz, that “consciousness” or “spirit” is radically, ontologically distinct from “matter.” The concern over the possibility that the two are not distinct, is, for me, related to the dread (for some people) of the possibility that when our bodies die, we die. Hence, for example, we find so much interest in things like the “hard problem of consciousness” among people interested in the relation between both science/philosophy and “spirituality,” ie, transpersonalists, e.g. Given this bias, some might balk at the suggestion that the “witness consciousness” is linked to any brain state, since the “witness” is supposed to be pure, transcendent consciousness, itself.

Re: Meditation & Neuroscience

Thanks for the lead kela. Here’s an excerpt from Bentov’s book A Brief Tour of Higher Consciousness (Inner Traditions, 2000) which seems more than a bit magically metaphysical to me: 

At first, the material dealing with our planetary existence is experienced….then gradually one progresses toward higher spiritual levels. 

Let me point out that the emerging realities are nonphysical in nature. In Stalking the Wild Pendulum we talked about the nonphysical subtle bodies as interpenetrating and extending away from the physical body. They could be described as higher harmonics of the physical body. Similarly, as consciousness unfolds, revealing to itself the different realities it contains, we find these realities also to be a hierarchy of higher harmonics of our physical reality. The lower ones resemble our own physical level, but as we rise through these levels, the experiences become more and more rarefied, resembling less and less our physical, planetary reality. 

These abstract realities…contain the seed of much that eventually occurs in our reality, since events trickle down from higher to lower levels. Therefore, by dealing with those realities we can substantially influence events at our level (4).

Re: Meditation & Neuroscience

Ya, he gets into rocks having consciousness and toruses and such things. The kundalini hypothesis appears at the end of Lee Sinella's book Kundalini: Psychosis or Transcendence?

Re: Meditation & Neuroscience

Google books doesn't have a preview of that one. Could you provide an excerpt or summary of the referenced section?

Re: Meditation & Neuroscience

I can provide a summary from memory if you like. I am able to do that sort of thing,but I thought if you read it first hand you might find it interesting. Let me have a look around first.

Re: Meditation & Neuroscience

Donald Lopez has a new book out titled Buddhism & Science: A Guide for the Perplexed.

In the chapter titled “The Meaning of Meditation” he discusses ”the attempt to assess the validity of Buddhist meditation through neuroligical research.”

He says, “[T]his form of research is predicated on the assumption - one that has long lain at the heart of many claims regarding Buddhism and Science - that Buddhist doctrine is the product of Buddhist insight, that the chief constituents of Buddhist philosophy are the articulations of someone's (usually the Buddha's) experience in meditation. However, it can equally be argued that it is not meditation that produced doctrine but doctrine that produces meditation.”

Re: Meditation & Neuroscience

“However, it can equally be argued that it is not meditation that produced doctrine but doctrine that produces meditation.”
:-)

Re: Meditation & Neuroscience

One exception is the Integral Options Café blog, which posted this on 4/25/09: Meditation and the Neuroscience of Consciousness.  It’s a reference to a chapter entry in the latest Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness, which I’ve quoted from before in other threads, and which research led me down my current path. The blog has a link to the chapter (Thompson is one of the authors) and you can find this chapter in the 2007 edition of the book at Google books.

Re: Meditation & Neuroscience

Thanks for that, Edward.  I was just doing a search this morning for research on Tummo practices and was taken to that essay.  I've been skimming it and it seems to be an interesting, balanced study.

Re: Meditation & Neuroscience

Pons de Leon discovers fountain of enlightenment!

From Zen-brain Reflections by James Austin (MIT Press, 2006): 

Zen monks who had trained for many years often progressed through the following sequence of EEG changes when they meditated: (1) organized alpha waves appeared initially, even though the monk’s eyes were open; (2) alpha increased in amplitutde; (3) alpha frequency slowed; (4) rhythmic theta trains occurred even though the monks were not particularly sleepy at that time (51-2). 

Surface EEGs show that theta rhythms increase as meditation deepens.…theta activities…arise in deeper brain regions…. The oral nucleus down in the pons is one source for theta activities. Then, higher in the hypothalamus, the supramammillary nucleus helps drive theta bursts at faster frequencies. Discharges from this nucleus then rise up to stimulate the various “pacemaker” cells, chiefly in the medial septal nucleus. These discharges prompt high amplitutde theta rhythms in the hippocampal formation. These theta waves arise in the hippocampal CA-2 cells and in the dentate gyrus. 

Other cells back in the posterior hypothalamus generate the more tonic theta discharges. These impulses take a different course, relaying up through the midline of the thalamus. From here, in its nucleus reuniens, stimulation can also develop theta rhythms in several other regions, such as the hippocampal CA1 cells, the subiculum, entorhinal cortex, and the orbitomedial prefrontal cortex. 

Finally, the theta rhythms that emerge from the hippocampus can relay down to the mammillary nucleus of the hypothalamus. From there they speed up to the anterior thalamic nucleus through the mammillothalamic tract. From this anterior nucleus, messages take only a short step up to reach the cingulate cortex (106).

Re: Meditation & Neuroscience

Apparently kriya yogins sometimes show “beta” spiking when they do their kriya pranayam. Can't remember where I read that, and don't know what it means.

Re: Meditation & Neuroscience

Yes, and compassion meditation exhibits predominantly gamma waves. Different meditation techniques activate different parts of the brain. The type that goes into theta and possibly delta are more of the “fusion” variety, into pre-reflective and nonconceptual awareness. I am focusing on the latter to recontextualize the “meaning” of such states based on brain function for those areas. I.e., I'm trying to “free the paradigm by limiting it” per Wilber's IMP postulates.

Re: Meditation & Neuroscience

Austin (cited above):

I’m led to believe that our human brain is the organ of our mind. Indeed, before brains came to exist on this planet, there were no minds either…. I just can’t find much personal motivation in the notion that some kind of purposive, but incomprehensible, “Big Mind” is out there “in the ether” (xxiv –v).

Re: Meditation & Neuroscience

Austin, in the same interview, seems to still adhere to traditional interpretations of satori and the myth of the given, despite the brain research. Apparently he hasn’t yet discovered intersubjectivity.

Q. What is a mystical experience? Is it necessarily religious?

A: The book suggests that when a person takes up the mystical path in a more formal manner, there is a sense of engagement in an ongoing practice which reestablishes, by the deepest of insights, some kind of direct relationship with the Ultimate Reality principle (however this may be defined).

Re: Meditation & Neuroscience

The Ultimate Reality Principle

Re: Meditation & Neuroscience

The Psychology of Religion by Bernard Spika et al. (Guilford Press, 2003):

On meditative stages and regression:

“Maupin…found that those most adept at zazen…were able to take advantage of what, in psychoanalytic terms, were regressive experiences. Maupin noted that if meditation is considered to foster such regression, each stage of meditation [as measured by beta to alpha to theta waves], successfully mastered, permits further adaptive regression” (261).

On the interpretation of meditative states in two groups of test subjects:

“The conclusion we may draw from this research is that the actual practice of meditation elicits a specifically religious response only for those with a religious frame of reference. If we assume equivalent meditative states in both groups (e.g., achievement of alpha states), the meaningfulness of such a state is dependent upon the interpretative frame one brings to the experience” (262).

Re: Meditation & Neuroscience

At this point I’d like to reflect back to the “status of states 2” thread to contexualize the brain research. For example, here’s my post of 3/2/09, 9:34 pm:

“I think my ideas about the states being at base more fundamental, earlier, developmental levels of consciousness/brain-individual/cultural complexity goes a long way to contexualizing states postmetaphysically. And preserves the WC lattice but would require more of a figure 8 design. The earlier base state-structures  of sub- and unconsciousness are literally “reflected” and integrated by the ego-witness as the subtle and causal. This also preserves Wilber’s original intuition of their inverse relationship. All dependently arisen, all empty of inherent existence, and no metaphysically ontological emptiness. And the nondual IS this postformal, postmetaphysical, embodied, enacted “perspective” with a kosmic address after all.”

Also remember the idea that meditative state-stages progress in an inverse order in which these prior brain structure were evolved, from neo-cortex to limbic to brainstem. Yet this regression is not simply a return to the primitive, associated states of consciousness laid down at the time but an integration of them by the highest structure-stage of both brain and consciousness. For example see this post discussing Goddard’s ideas and the ensuing discussion.

Yet meditative traditions themselves, without benefit of contemporary neuroscience and postmodern intersubjective hermeneutics, still interpret such states as “ultimate realties.” A postmeta IMP demands a better contextualizaton, freeing the meditative paradigm by limiting it, without reducing it and still honoring its many benefits.

Re: Meditation & Neuroscience

These themes are being discussed in the Reading Room of Integral World in a series of articles: David Lane’s “Is My I-Phone Conscious?”; Elliott Benjamin’s “The Boundaries of Science”; and Lane’s “Tangled Phone Lines.” This, e.g., from the last article:

“I clearly believe that mysticism can be studied scientifically.… if a mystic is serious about studying the subject scientifically it means that he or she may have to radically revise their understandings and prior theological dogmas about what is actually happening when they undergo a transformation of consciousness.

“If there is going to be a rigorous science of mysticism, one of the first casualties will be the superstructure (as Frits Staal, my old professor at U.C. Berkeley, termed it) around it. In other words, the more science is allowed to understand and explain mysticism the less mysterious and metaphysical it will appear.”

Needless to say, integralites are coming out of the woodwork, foaming at the mouth and claiming “reductioinism” left and right. One will discover though in Lane's first piece that he studied/practiced meditation in a traditional context and “enacted the paradigm,” thereby challenging such charges by bewildered Wilberries.

Re: Meditation & Neuroscience

Hi theurj, I've read the articles you mention. When you say that integralites are coming out of the woodwork and claming “reductionism” left and right, is there someplace online such as a forum where this is happening?

“Reductionism” is one of the most misused and abused terms around. I think Wilber has done a major disservice to his readers by repeatedly using the word “reductionism” as a term of abuse.

Lane is a meditator as you note. He describes himself as a “lifelong meditator.” German philosopher Thomas Metzinger is also a meditator. In his new book The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self (which Lane refers to in his latest article at Integral World), Metzinger comments about fear of reductionism:

We have learned how great the fear of reductionism is, in the humanities as well as among the general public, and how immense is the market for mysterianism. The straightforward philosophical answer to the widespread fear that philosophers or scientists will “reduce consciousness” is that reductionism is a relationship between theories, not phenomena. No serious empirical researcher and no philosopher wants to “reduce consciousness”; at best, one theory about how the contents of conscious experience arose can be reduced to another theory. Our theories about phenomena change, but the phenomena stay the same. A beautiful rainbow continues to be a beautiful rainbow even after it has been explained in terms of electromagnetic radiation.

Re: Meditation & Neuroscience

Edward, thank you for the ongoing breadcrumb trail you're leaving.  Lots of interesting reading.

Picking up the “reductionism” crumb emerging in this discussion as an invitation to hop in a different direction, I want to highlight this languishing thread in the Book Club of this forum:

From Reductionism to Creativity

Re: Meditation & Neuroscience

Hi Balder. I starting reading books by Herbert Guenther in the 70's and I always appreciated his contributions to modern understanding of Buddhism.

I started reading the “From Reduction to Creativity” essay by him that you posted when you first posted it, and I stopped reading it when I got to the line in the first paragraph where he refers to “'analytical' philosophy” (actually, it's “analytic”) as the “anemic revival” of logical positivism. In one breath he dismisses thousands of contemporary philosophers by lumping them together under a pejorative label. (What happened to “right speech”?) Maybe there's something of value in the essay, but I'm just sick of the “negative campaigning” style of persuasive rhetoric, whether it comes from politicians, Ken Wilber, Richard Dawkins, or Herbert Guenther.

Re: Meditation & Neuroscience

I understand that sentiment, Jim.  I share it.  But it seems that dismissing a whole essay because of one sentence is perhaps a similar movement, on a smaller scale.  In any event, I do find something of value in the essay, despite some of the rhetorical maneuvering.

Re: Meditation & Neuroscience

I didn't dismiss the essay, I just didn't feel like reading it after seeing Guenther equate analytic philosophy with logical positivism. But my interest in the essay is piqued and I'll revisit it this week.

Re: Meditation & Neuroscience

While Guenther points out reductionism in 3rd person science he fails to point out 1st person reductionism in his Buddhist phenomenology. It goes both ways. Just because we have an “experience” doesn't mean the meaning we attach to it should be off limits. Even Wilber's AQAL IMP it an “outside” map. And according to Wilber 1st person interior experiences, of themselves, have no access to the levels of structuralism and hence often fall prey to the myth of the given due to this lack of reference. Guenther is guilty of another form of reductionism, despite his rhetoric to the contrary, that of dividing the subject/object, interior/exterior into unreconcilable methodologies. Whereas an IMP sees not only that each methodology has its own enative paradigm but how they relate, and it is in this relation that we can indeed come up with better interpretations for the “experience.” And also, that the interpretation itself will affect the very nature of said experience.

Re: Meditation & Neuroscience

Balder is continuing this subtext in a new thread: From Reductionism to Creativity.

Re: Meditation & Neuroscience

Jim,
You asked: When you say that integralites are coming out of the woodwork and
claming “reductionism” left and right, is there someplace online such
as a forum where this is happening?

And I have to answer yes. It is right over there at Open Source Integral where less than 24 hours ago I was called out for writing something that was “awful reductionist” by some young man who just doesn't want to have any fun at all.

It just so happens that this occurred on a thread where there is a discussion going on about David Lane's latest piece in the ongoing exchange on Integral World.

Re: Meditation & Neuroscience

Thanks for the link, Steven. I'm goin to check out the discussion now.

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Oh Jeez, I feel a little sick now… I read the thread including of course your astute contributions to it, and at this moment the last post in the thread is by someone who replies to you by telling you not only that what you wrote was “awful reductionistic” but that it “has its place in integral.”

Don't Wilberians get that when they say such things they sound no different than someone who says that something has its place in Christianity or Scientology or Marxism or “my pet worldview”? Can't they discuss things on their own merits without referring to “integral”-the-noun as if it's the gold standard? Sheesh.

Re: Meditation & Neuroscience

Jim,
Thanks for your kind word re: my contribution.

You wrote: Can't they discuss things on their own merits without referring to “integral”-the-noun as if it's the gold standard? Sheesh.

Exactly! I'm thinking that any one who writes something that does not include a full Four Quad, lines, levels, stages and states, IPM analysis, will be considered a reductionist. It is one of those “Us and Them” ploys that I think those of us in the I Province but outside the I-I fold can dismiss as a minor annoyance.

Re: Meditation & Neuroscience

Christian inclusivism: “hate the sin, but love the sinner”
Leninist inclusivism: “useful idiots”
Wilberian inclusivism: “You'll wake up to the uber-truth of AQAL some day. In the meantime, we still accept you as you are. There's a seat for you on I-I Airways, and a room for you in the AQAL hotel, with a little pat on the head to go along with both.”
:-)

Re: Meditation & Neuroscience

is there someplace online such as a forum where this is happening?

The Open Source Integral discussion is one place. Another is the local integral salon, where a few folks said I was a flatlander by making these correlations.

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“Im so happy cause…Ive found god.” –Nirvana 
 
Speaking of recontextualizing nirvana, I came to the band Nirvana late, just this year. Late because I think Kurt Cobain, lead singer, died in 1994? Nonetheless, see this link to hear them perform the song from which the above lyrics come, Lithium. This is nirvana…yeah, yeah.