The Berkeley Science Review: Articles

Karma and the Cortex
Buddhist monks and brain researchers meld minds (view PDF)
by Robin Padilla

The antagonism between science and religion has once again come into the spotlight of pop culture. With books by prominent atheists like Richard Dawkins on the bestseller list and debates over the validity of Intelligent Design in the headlines, the faithful and the skeptical alike argue that science and religion are essentially incompatible. But must this always be the case? Neurobiologist David Presti disagrees, pointing to the amiable and lively dialogue between scientists and practitioners of Buddhism, which has existed for decades.

Presti, of the Department of Molecular and Cell Biology, is interested in how neurobiological processes relate to human psychology. "The development of sophisticated techniques for studying the brain has allowed us to accumulate tremendous knowledge," Presti says, "yet there remain deep mysteries, such as just how our mental experiences relate to brain physiology." This "mind-body problem" is one of the biggest challenges in contemporary neuroscience. But a meticulous examination of the mind and how it relates to the physical world is precisely what Buddhist monks have been doing for thousands of years.

The numerous ancient Buddhist treatises dealing with the mind have been highlighted recently at meetings between the Dalai Lama and neuroscientists. Buddhism's emphasis on understanding and controlling mental processes struck a chord with Presti. "The value of looking at contemplative traditions such as Buddhism," he explains, "is that they often ask questions of great interest to neuroscientists, like, 'How can we understand the mind?'"

One approach to this question involves investigating the effects that Buddhist meditation can have on the brain or on mental states. Presti's research has begun to do just that. In 2003 he was part of a team that examined perceptual changes brought on by meditation. Specifically, they looked at a phenomenon called binocular rivalry. Binocular rivalry occurs when a different image is placed in front of each eye. Instead of producing a superimposed image, the brain focuses on each image separately, involuntarily switching between the two. The time it takes for the brain to switch between images is called the rivalry rate. "It's established that the rivalry rate varies little when measured at different times in the same person," Presti says, referring to the pioneering work done in the late 19th and early 20th centuries by Burtis Burr Breese.

Breese had his research subjects press and hold buttons corresponding to the different images placed in front of each eye. He was able to quantify the rivalry rates by examining how long each button was pressed and the times it took for image switching to occur. The average rivalry rate was approximately two seconds, although the rates varied from person to person. Despite this variation (about half a second), it was found that the rivalry rate for an individual could not be changed to an appreciable extent. Breese's experiments became a model for future investigations of binocular rivalry.

Presti's team measured the rivalry rate in dozens of Tibetan Buddhist monks with years of meditation experience. Initially, the monks displayed average rivalry rates. After a period of meditation, however, the rates of switching were significantly slower; some monks were even able to focus on a single image indefinitely. These results were "totally unprecedented," Presti says.

The full study, published in Current Biology, shows that it's possible to consciously influence neural processes that are normally automatic, and that this skill can be developed in many forms of meditation. Significantly more research is needed to fully understand the effects of meditation on cognitive processes, but Presti hopes his work will stimulate other neuroscientists. "Incorporating wisdom from meditative traditions into investigations of the mind-body question in neuroscience," he says, "could well lead to some interesting surprises in our understanding of the nature of mind."

Studies like Presti's have intrigued both the neuroscience community and the general public, but some, like the Department of Psychology's Eleanor Rosch, feel that far greater caution is needed from researchers trying to probe the effects of Buddhist meditation practices. She is especially wary of the manner in which most scientific research has been approaching Buddhism.

More than a century ago, the influential psychologist William James theorized that a great deal could be learned about the mind by studying religious experiences. Rosch's recent work has been guided by this idea; she is interested in how the insights offered by Buddhist meditation might be applied in areas like therapy and stress reduction. Rosch has written extensively on the Buddhism-neuroscience dialogue and is concerned scientists are "largely missing the point" by focusing on what is, from the Buddhist perspective, the most superficial and rigid layer of the mind.

Rosch feels much of the scientific research relating to meditation is so preoccupied with "mapping the brain" that valuable knowledge of how the mind works may be overlooked. Similarly, she also believes that traditional neuroscientific and psychological methods must be modified for more significant interactions between Buddhism and neuroscience to take place. She summarizes this point in a recent Psychological Issues paper examining psychotherapies based on Buddhist mindfulness techniques, stating that "there may be levels (or modes of functioning) of the mind below the surface level of reason, emotion, and ego which are not approachable through the assumptions and logic of our present research."

Despite her criticisms, she acknowledges the great potential for constructive and illuminating interactions between neuroscience and Buddhism, as long as scientists remain open-minded. "What the meditation traditions have to offer science is not just more data to plug into the old way of looking at brains, but a whole new way of looking."

Presti, however, emphasizes that the methods and techniques for mental observation in Buddhism, while very different from those of Western science, are quite compatible. Accepting ideas only after rigorous investigation, for example, is a vital tenet of both philosophies, as the similarity between the Royal Society's motto, Nullius in Verba ("on the words of no one"), and the Buddhist phrase ehi passiko ("come and see"), attests.

Robin Padilla is a graduate student in chemistry.

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