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Tuesday, October 15, 2013

School Test Scores Can Improve Through Meditation, UCSB Researchers Demonstrate

Mind, Brain, Neurology

Practitioners of mindfulness and proper meditation modalities live the excellencies ensuing from and innate to intuitional science, while parents and guardians of education influenced by Western culture have begun embracing the psychic, intuitional, emotional and transpersonal excellencies innate to proper meditative practices, buoyed further through consistently positive allopathic research results in medical centers and universities around the world.  


Guest article
By Jan Hoffman


Mindfulness meditation, the ancient and flourishing practice that increases awareness of random thoughts and redirects attention to the present moment, has been used to manage stress, depression and even chronic pain.  But can it improve test scores?  
Researchers in the department of psychological and brain sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who have been studying the relationship between mindfulness and mind-wandering, or the tendency to let our minds drift away on “task-unrelated thoughts,” as it is referred to in academic literature, sought to find out.  
Roy Mehta/Getty Images
“We had already found that mind-wandering underlies performance on a variety of tests, including working memory capacity and intelligence,” said Michael D. Mrazek, a graduate student working with Jonathan W. Schooler, a professor of psychology at the university who studies the impacts and implications of mind-wandering and mindfulness.  The higher the working memory, or an individual’s ability to keep in mind chunks of information and also use them, the better students tend to perform on reading comprehension tests.  
Researchers disagree about the extent to which an individual’s working memory capacity can be enhanced.  But in a study [updated May 2013] published in the journal Psychological Science, the Santa Barbara researchers found that after a group of undergraduates went through a two-week intensive mindfulness training program, their mind-wandering decreased and their working memory capacity improved.  They also performed better on a reading comprehension test — a section from the Graduate Record Examination, or G.R.E.  
For the study, the researchers enrolled 48 University of California undergraduates in a study intended, they told them, to improve cognitive performance.  Each student was evaluated for working memory capacity, mind-wandering and performance on a G.R.E. reading comprehension section.  
Then, half the group was randomly assigned to take part in a nutrition program, in which they were educated about healthy eating and asked to keep a daily food diary.  
The others took a training that resembled the standard mindfulness-based stress reduction program, which typically meets once a week for eight sessions.  In the Santa Barbara regimen, students instead met four days a week for two weeks and were not required to devote as much formal practice outside of class.  
But in the main, the class invoked the secular pillars of the practice, including sitting in an upright posture with legs crossed and gaze lowered, breathing exercises and “minimizing the distracting quality of past and future concerns by reframing them as mental projections occurring in the present.”  
After two weeks, the students were re-evaluated for mind-wandering and working memory capacity and given another version of the G.R.E. reading comprehension section. 
The nutrition group’s results did not change.  
The group that took mindfulness training, however, mind-wandered less and performed better on tests of working memory capacity and reading comprehension.  For example, before the training, their average G.R.E. verbal score was 460.  Two weeks later, it was 520.  
Richard J. Davidson, a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who has studied brain function in long-term and novice mindful meditators, offered this analogy: “You can improve the signal-to-noise ratio by reducing the noise.  Decreasing mind-wandering is doing just that.”  
Other professors of cognitive psychology thought the study was well done, although based on a small sample, with results that have yet to be replicated.  
“A type of training that can help one avoid susceptibility to worries, or other sources of mind-wandering, very well could improve performance,” said Nelson Cowan, a professor at the University of Missouri who specializes in the study of working memory capacity and attention, in an e-mail message.  
Daniel T. Willingham, a psychology professor at the University of Virginia and author of “When Can You Trust the Experts? How to Tell Good Science From Bad in Education,” said that “when you see these big effects, it may not be that you’ve really fundamentally changed how the mind works.  But you have removed a stumbling block that was absorbing them.”  

The Santa Barbara researchers have also recently worked with local high school students to see whether the results can be repeated using the SAT.  But psychology professors like David Z. Hambrick of Michigan State University questioned how long the effects of a two-week training program would last.  
Professor Davidson, who has studied Buddhist monks who have practiced meditation for 34,000 hours over the course of their lives, said, “If you have people who are out of shape and then do two weeks of physical exercise, you’ll see some benefit.  But if they stop exercising, the benefits won’t persist.”  
This article originally appeared HERE 

Abrstract of UCSB Study

Mindfulness Training Improves Working Memory Capacity and GRE Performance While Reducing Mind Wandering


Given that the ability to attend to a task without distraction underlies performance in a wide variety of contexts, training one’s ability to stay on task should result in a similarly broad enhancement of performance.  In a randomized controlled investigation, we examined whether a 2-week mindfulness-training course would decrease mind wandering and improve cognitive performance.  Mindfulness training improved both GRE reading-comprehension scores and working memory capacity while simultaneously reducing the occurrence of distracting thoughts during completion of the GRE and the measure of working memory.  Improvements in performance following mindfulness training were mediated by reduced mind wandering among participants who were prone to distraction at pretesting.  Our results suggest that cultivating mindfulness is an effective and efficient technique for improving cognitive function, with wide-reaching consequences.   

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Friday, October 11, 2013

Tantra, Buddhism, and the Embrace of Science


Tantra developed out of human beings’ innate desire to unravel the mystery of this manifest universe, searching for the secret causes underlying both the dreadful and the beautiful aspects of nature. People looked around them at the rivers and streams, the far-flung mountain ranges, the flashes of lightning; they heard the thunder; they listened to the roaring of ferocious animals – and they began to plumb the depths of these mysteries. These endeavors to get at the hidden truth of everything are what has been known, for several thousand years, as Tantra. Since these endeavors were carried on at different times, in different places, and by different groups of individuals, we find some differences in methodology among the various schools of Tantra, the most subtle being the science of the cosmos.

Practitioners of the more-developed Tantra would look upon things from a broad perspective, renouncing all narrow thinking. They would always strive hard to advance the welfare of the masses. Through such selfless service, they would overcome the fetters of the mind, such as hatred and shame. The practitioners of the less-developed Tantra would behave in just the opposite way. They would indulge in sectism; in expressions of untouchability; and in expressions of hatred and envy in relation to other groups.

The overcoming of material bondages signifies the greatest human progress. The word tantra signifies that one “frees oneself from the bondages of crudity”, Sadáshiva being the earliest propounder of such Tantra. He developed specific practices, and thereby ensured all-round progress in the different aspects of human life, including, though not limited to physical health and fitness, psychic health, psycho-transpersonal development, medicine, material science and music practice, with today's seven notes and eight octaves originating from his development. He brought about an optimal system, reviewing and coordinating all branches of Tantra.

There is no such thing as “supernatural” in this world. All sorts of powers lie dormant in human beings. Sometimes we get glimpses of these latent powers. In a more-developed terminology, these glimpses will be called “intellect” or “intuition”. Human beings can develop that which they have glimpsed, eventually attaining extraordinary powers. In the eyes of ordinary people, these powers appear to be supernatural, but actually they are natural. It is a fact that ordinary persons cannot do these extraordinary things, and that is why they look upon these powers as supernatural. The magic of today, made more ubiquitous in society, becomes the science of tomorrow.

By developing both the internal and external subtleties of human life in an ethical manner, greater creativity and beneficience will ensue for society and in persnonal life, with capabilities long dormant in human life unfurled respelendently in human life and society at large.
Guest article

How Buddhism Embraced Science

Blogger Fuketsu at Taste of Chicago Buddhism writes that last month was the 120th anniversary of the World's Parliament of Religions. The parliament, held in Chicago in 1893, was intended to create a worldwide dialogue among religious traditions. And to a large extent, it succeeded.

The parliament also was a significant event in western Buddhism. Two Buddhists addressed the assembly in person, and another -- a Pure Land scholar -- sent a paper read in his absence. This was, arguably, the first substantive introduction of Buddhism to cultural westerners, and it created impressions that persist in the West to this day. This includes the perception that Buddhism is a science-friendly spiritual tradition, an appropriate topic given our recent look at the Higgs Bosun and Field.  


Among the attendees was Soyen Shaku, a Japanese Rinzai Zen abbot who was the first Zen master to teach in the United States. His book Zen for Americans, first published in 1906, is still in print.

Soyen Shaku's translator was a young student named D.T. Suzuki, whose books and translations would someday pique the interest of Alan Watts (who wrote many popular books about Zen) andJack Kerouac, among others. Thus Zen came to the West.  


Another significant Buddhist at the parliament was Anagarika Dharmapala. Dharmapala was a Theravadin layperson and scholar who, for a time, was an associate of Henry Steel Olcott. Dharmapala also played an important role in the 19th century revival of Buddhism in Sri Lanka. And he remains hugely influential in how Buddhism is perceived in the West, even to those who never heard of him.  

At the time of the parliament, Dharmapala was 29 years old. Press reports described his all-white robes, his black curly hair, and his gentle, refined face. His pleasant appearance and excellent English gained him considerable attention in U.S. newspapers.  

Dharmapala made more than one speech at the parliament, and in his talks he stressed the harmony between Buddhism and science. Christianity at the time was reeling from the challenge of Darwin's Origin of Species, and psychology was just emerging as a new branch of science. Dharmapala discussed both, skillfully arguing that the Buddha had taught things science was just beginning to discover.  


Although the Buddhism and science connection is not at all unreasonable, Dharmapala appears to have been one of the first to make it.  This theme resonated well with progressive Westerners of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, earning respect in the West for Buddhism as a tradition worthy of study and practice.

This article originally appeared HERE  

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Thursday, October 3, 2013

Evidence Continues to Build That Meditation Strengthens the Brain

Guest article

Earlier evidence out of UCLA suggested that meditating for years thickens the brain (in a good way) and strengthens the connections between brain cells.  Now a further report by UCLA researchers suggests yet another benefit.


Eileen Luders, an assistant professor at the UCLA Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, and colleagues, have found that long-term meditators have larger amounts of gyrification ("folding" of the cortex, which may allow the brain to process information faster) than people who do not meditate. Further, a direct correlation was found between the amount of gyrification and the number of meditation years, possibly providing further proof of the brain's neuroplasticity, or ability to adapt to environmental changes. 

The article appears in the online edition of the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

The cerebral cortex is the outermost layer of neural tissue. Among other functions, it plays a key role in memory, attention, thought and consciousness. Gyrification or cortical folding is the process by which the surface of the brain undergoes changes to create narrow furrows and folds called sulci and gyri. Their formation may promote and enhance neural processing. Presumably then, the more folding that occurs, the better the brain is at processing information, making decisions, forming memories and so forth.

"Rather than just comparing meditators and non-meditators, we wanted to see if there is a link between the amount of meditation practice and the extent of brain alteration," said Luders. "That is, correlating the number of years of meditation with the degree of folding."

Of the 49 recruited subjects, the researchers took MRI scans of 23 meditators and compared them to 16 control subjects matched for age, handedness and sex. (Ten participants dropped out.) The scans for the controls were obtained from an existing MRI database, while the meditators were recruited from various meditation venues. The meditators had practiced their craft on average for 20 years using a variety of meditation types -- Samatha, Vipassana, Zen and more. The researchers applied a well-established and automated whole-brain approach to measure cortical gyrification at thousands of points across the surface of the brain.

They found pronounced group differences (heightened levels of gyrification in active meditation practitioners) across a wide swatch of the cortex, including the left precentral gyrus, the left and right anterior dorsal insula, the right fusiform gyrus and the right cuneus.

Perhaps most interesting, though, was the positive correlation between the number of meditation years and the amount of insular gyrification.

"The insula has been suggested to function as a hub for autonomic, affective and cognitive integration," said Luders. "Meditators are known to be masters in introspection and awareness as well as emotional control and self-regulation, so the findings make sense that the longer someone has meditated, the higher the degree of folding in the insula."

While Luders cautions that genetic and other environmental factors could have contributed to the effects the researchers observed, still, "The positive correlation between gyrification and the number of practice years supports the idea that meditation enhances regional gyrification."
  
Other authors of the study included Florian Kurth, Emeran A. Mayer, Arthur W.Toga, and Katherine L. Narr, all of UCLA, and Christian Gaser, University of Jena, Germany. Funding was provided by several organizations, including the National Institutes of Health.  The authors report no conflict of interest.


This article originally appeared HERE  

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