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CogSci, Dalai Lama, and the lab rats
« on: 2003-09-13 19:17:38 » |
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Dalai Lama visit provides a subject for scientists
Boston Globe, Sep 12, 2003
http://www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2003/09/12/dalai_lama_visit_provides_a_subject_for_scientists/
The Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of an ancient religion, arrives in Boston today with a surprising goal: changing the field of neuroscience.
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At an MIT auditorium tomorrow, the Tibetan leader will begin presiding over two days of intense discussions -- the first ones open to the public -- aimed at understanding what happens inside the meditating brain, and what it can reveal about the broader workings of the human mind.
Though many Western researchers are skeptical about working with a man who believes in reincarnation and was chosen for his position based on a vision in a lake, the MIT conference quickly sold out to an audience of about 1,200 people, mainly scientists, and racked up a waiting list of 1,600.
The conference is designed to bring scientists and Buddhists together to devise experiments that explore the unusual abilities of Buddhist monks and others trained in meditation, with the goal of better understanding what the brain can accomplish when carefully focused.
Top scientists say they have come to view meditation as an increasingly important area of research and are thrilled at the Dalai Lama's promise to send substantial numbers of Buddhist monks to Western laboratories, where their brains can be studied with the latest scanning equipment.
"This is opening a secret body of rich knowledge that we have not had access to," said Marlene Behrmann, who is speaking at the conference and is a professor of psychology at Carnegie Mellon University. "It is a watershed."
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This weekend's conference, called "Investigating the Mind," is not primarily focused on the health effects of meditation. It is organized around three broad topics -- attention, emotion, and mental imagery -- that are active areas of research in brain science and which might benefit from the participation of highly trained Buddhists.
Mental imagery is a vital question to scientists for its close links to thinking and memory. One cannot remember the location of a parked car, for instance, without such imagery.
Buddhists claim to be able to do things that directly contradict the findings of Western scientists, said Stephen Kosslyn, a leading expert on mental imagery who is a professor of psychology at Harvard University. In studies of Western subjects, Kosslyn has found people can't hold onto a detailed mental image, and take time to put the pieces of such an image together. Buddhists, however, say they are able to hold a rich image in mind for minutes at a time, and to conjure up a complex image practically instantly, a process, he said, they describe as "like a fish leaping from water."
Kosslyn, who is participating in the conference, said that he is skeptical of those claims, but that a collaboration with Buddhist monks would yield useful information about the brain.
"From my perspective, these are like the virtuosos of mental imagery," he said. "They show what mental training can achieve."
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Such a project could hold the potential to expand the field of neuroscience, suggesting whole new areas of study. Davidson, for example, has embarked on a research program to study compassion, an emotion that is a central concept in Buddhist psychology, but which Western science has largely ignored. If the Buddhists are correct, then Western researchers have missed an important part of the brain's emotional machinery, one whose cultivation could have profound effects on society.
"We want to place compassion center stage as a focus of legitimate scientific inquiry," said Davidson. "These guys can turn it on at will."
For the Buddhists involved in the conference, the work is partly motivated by curiosity. Understanding the true nature of the universe is a fundamental tenet of Buddhism.
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