Choose a topic from Tuesday's readings that you were particularly interested in. Your job is to do some more indepth research on that topic. That may mean looking up some of the original research cited in the chapter and finding and reading the original research article. It also could mean searching the internet for other content and information out there on this topic (ranging from videos, news releases, summaries of research findings, others' blog posts, etc).
One you have completed your search and explorations I would like you to clearly state what your topic is, discuss how it relates to the readings, and thoroughly discuss what you learned about this topic from your additional resources.
It is possible to do this assignment with one source (an original research article). I encourage you to use this approach for at least half of these types of assignments. The other method, is to find suitable internet content that helps you learn more about your topic. If you choose this method, I'd like you to provide 3 sources of information (in the form of internet links). Do not be tempted to just discuss each of the links separately. You must synthesize the information, and discuss the topic as a whole.
At the bottom of your post, please include several key terms that reflect your topic, as well as your sources (either the citation for the 1 research article, and link if it is available on line, or 3 links to the internet content you discussed).
Please be prepared to discuss your topic, as a portion of each in-class day will be devoted to hearing from all of you about what you learned.
When reading though chapter five an interesting term I came across was dream yoga. I found this interesting and the book didn’t go into it as much as I had hoped it would. There for, I have decided to look more into the subject on my own for use of this assignment. Dream yoga is described as a form of lucid dreaming. A lucid dream is described as any dream that one is aware that one is dreaming when dreaming. Having been practiced by Tibetan Buddhism for over 1,000 years and its main idea or goal is directed towards awakening the consciousness and apprehend the/a dream. Which makes a lot of sense, when I googled the practice, the search results almost always came up as “Tibetan Dream Yoga..” One article explained dream yoga as a “fourth time”, it meant that the practice brings about an awareness of where the all times meet, being the past, present, and future. Other areas such as creativity, relaxation of multiple fears, and the ability to rid bad habits are all incentives for practicing dream yoga. Another article explained dream yoga as a way of using the dream state for developmental ends. Everything I have read about dream yoga and the lucid state it tends to happen in reminds me of hypnosis. Hypnosis sounds somewhat like this conscious yet not state of being. I understand that it is different and there is not another person in charge of you during the practice. But it all just sounds like being hypnotized by yourself. If that’s possible. It stated that not all people hold the ability to reach this lucid state there for not all of us are capable of dream yoga, however many of us are. And those that are do not have to be experts at meditation. It can be practiced by all who are able to reach the lucid state, however one aspect other than this is key, commitment. As long as they are committed enough to do so, they may. Yet, it seems very difficult and how are you truly supposed to know? Leading into my next point, you’re supposed to be able to fall into a dream state without sleeping. An interesting question I came up with is how one is able to consciously reach their dream state? To me this seems impossible because besides “day dreaming”, which I’m not sure count as an actually dream, dreams if I remember right happened during REM sleep. So, how exactly is one supposed to reach this lucid state consciousness when dreaming doesn't usually happen until one is in their deepest realm of sleep.
Terms: Dream yoga, Tibetan Buddhism, lucid dreaming, REM, consciousness, fourth state,
Articles:
Tibetan Dream Yoga: A Complete System for Becoming Conscious in Your Dreams
http://www.amazon.com/Tibetan-Dream-Yoga-Complete-Conscious/dp/1564557960
Dram Yoga: Lucid Dreaming in Tibetan Buddhism
http://www.world-of-lucid-dreaming.com/dream-yoga.html
A Buddhist Perspective on Lucid Dreaming
http://www.sawka.com/spiritwatch/abuddhis.htm
For this exploration blog, I looked into states of consciousness associated with epilepsy. One of my family members was diagnosed with epilepsy when he was 12 and it was a real challenge for him to get and keep his license due to Iowa’s driving laws. According to Iowa’s laws, people who experience seizures associated with loss of consciousness or loss of voluntary control are not allowed to drive. Those people need to be seizure-free for 6 months before they can get a license and their license is revoked if they have a seizure. It was frustrating for my family member because he was originally diagnosed with complex-partial seizures which, according to the Epilepsy Foundation, are classified as causing a state of altered consciousness. A different neurologist later diagnosed him with simple-complex seizures which do not cause altered consciousness. In all of the seizures he ever had, he never lost voluntary control or lost consciousness. It was very frustrating because he still was not allowed to get his license. That’s why this chapter about consciousness intrigued me. I searched various sources on the internet for information about the states of consciousness associated with seizures. One of the most useful sites was the Epilepsy Foundation website that defined and characterized the many different types of seizures. There are two main groups of seizures: primary generalized and partial. Primary generalized seizures begin with a widespread electrical discharge that involves both sides of the brain at once. Partial seizures begin with an electrical discharge in one limited area of the brain. Although there are many different types of seizures in the two domains, I was most interested in simple-partial and complex-partial because that is what my relative has.
Simple-partial seizures can have a variety of different symptoms and are further classified depending on the symptoms. Motor seizures cause a change in muscle activity. A person might experience abnormal movements such as jerking of a finger or stiffening of part of the body. Sensory seizures cause changes in any one of the senses. People with sensory seizures may smell or taste things that aren't there, hear clicking or ringing when there is no actual sound, or feel a sensation of pins and needles or numbness. Psychic seizures change how people think, feel, or experience things. They may have problems with memory or garbled speech. They may suddenly feel emotions like fear, depression, or happiness with no outside reason. Some may have feelings of déja vu or jamais vu. When people have simple-partial seizures, they are fully awake, alert and able to interact throughout the seizure. Overall, these seizures are brief lasting less than 2 minutes.
Complex-partial seizures are different from simple-partial seizures in many ways. These seizures usually start in a small area of the temporal lobe or frontal lobe of the brain. They can quickly involve other areas of the brain that affect alertness and awareness. If the symptoms are subtle, other people may think the person is just daydreaming. The seizure can wipe out memories of events just before and after it and most people don’t have memory of what is going on during the seizure either. Some of these seizures start with a simple partial seizure. Then the person loses awareness and stares blankly. Most people move their mouth, pick at the air or their clothing, or perform other pointless actions. They usually last between 30 seconds and 2 minutes. Afterward, the person may be tired or confused for about 15 minutes. One of the main differences between the two types of partial seizures is the level of consciousness involved. Simple-partial involve normal, alert consciousness whereas complex-partial involve altered consciousness or “loss of awareness”, although neither involves total loss of consciousness.
I also found an article that studied the states of consciousness of participants experiencing both simple partial and complex partial seizures. The study used 26 patients who had temporal lobe epilepsy and experienced both complex-partial and simple-partial seizures. 63 seizures were recorded through EEGs and used in the analysis. The study found that the waves observed during complex-partial seizures closely resembled cortical slowing during other states of unconsciousness such as sleep, coma, or deep anaesthesia. Unlike complex-partial seizures, some of the simple-partial seizures didn’t even show up on the EEG recordings.
Terms: states of consciousness, epilepsy, partial seizure, sleep, coma
Englot, D., Yang, L., Hamid, H., Danielson, N., Bai, X. (2010). Impaired consciousness in temporal lobe seizures: The role of cortical slow activity. Brain: A Journal of Neurology, 2010: 133; 3764–3777.
http://www.epilepsy.com/driving-laws/2008716
http://www.ehow.com/about_6628411_simple-complex-partial-seizures.html
http://www.epilepsy.com/learn/types-seizures/complex-partial-seizures
I wanted to look more into the idea of afflictive consciousness. I wasn’t satisfied with the book’s definition of afflictive consciousness and I wanted to find out more about it. I found three online sources and it seems that afflictive consciousness is the part of your conscious that focuses on negative emotions and feelings. The first source I looked at claimed that mind training was the way to tame an ‘afflictive mind.’ The ways to achieve that including calming an overactive mind, developing mindfulness, increasing loving-kindness, and having a basic education about how the mind works.
The second source that I read connected afflictive states of mind with a disturbed concept of cause and effect. More specifically, it focused on a person’s disregard for how their actions may impact them or others in the future. It wasn’t so much a focus on people not planning or fully thinking through their decisions but rather a disconnect with small events being caused by previous behaviors. An example that was given was a coworker saying “I have a bad headache today” and not understanding that it was probably caused by them not getting enough sleep the night before.
The last source that I looked at three specific afflictive emotions that they pinpointed as the biggest: jealousy, anger, and attachment. This author claimed that afflictive emotions lead to a dependency on people, materials, or both. This source also focused on training the person to truly understand why they are upset with a person or a situation. Rather than blaming someone else, you should accept what has happened and move past it.
Terms: afflictive consciousness, negative emotions, afflictive emotions, mind training, afflictive mind, mindfulness, loving-kindness, cause-effect, jealousy, anger, attachment
http://www.noetic.org/blog/integral-health-and-the-role-of-consciousness/
http://www.transpersonalconsciousness.com/#!bloger-feed/cn7c
http://dharmanet.org/coursesM/30/novideo/12links3c.htm
For this week’s blog I decided to research subliminal messaging and how it affects our unconscious and conscious. When researching subliminal messaging, I found famous case against Judas Priest. Subliminal messaging was the key factor in the civil lawsuit against the heavy metal music group. This civil lawsuit was administered by the mothers of two suicide victims who blamed the heavy metal group for placing subliminal messages in their music. The mothers claimed that the subliminal messages such as “do it” caused their sons to shoot and kill themselves.
When the lawsuit was first brought to attention, the lead singer Rob Halford commented on the subliminal message claim. He stated that even if there were subliminal messages in the music, they were protected under the first amendment. When this argument was brought to trial however, Judge Whitehead ruled that subliminal messages are not protected under the first amendment. The judge’s reasoning included that there is no information exchange nor are disagreements or arguments possible. Judge Whitehead also explained that people have a right to be free from unwanted speech and because subliminal material cannot be avoided, it constitutes an invasion of privacy.
Another key point in the trial was whether or not Judas Priest purposely placed or placed subliminal messages at all in their song “Better by You, Better by Me”. A computer expert broke the song into smaller components and after numerous replays; the judge was able to hear the phrase “do it”. The members of Judas Priest testified that “do it” was the result of two tracks that included Halford exhaling on one and the guitar on the other. With this testimony the Judge ruled that the phrase was due to a chance combination on sounds and was unintentional.
Finally the last main component to the trial was whether subliminal messages could cause people to perform certain actions such as commit suicide. On the defense side, Dr. Shevrin explained that people retrieve subliminal messaging at a subliminal level. This means that a person is unaware of the information being received yet the messages can affect a person’s behavior, emotions, and health. Dr. Shevrin also stated that in order for subliminal messages to be capable of influencing a person’s behavior, the person must have a personality predisposition that makes it more likely that he or she will engage in a particular act.
When researching previous records of Raymond and James, their records exhibit potential personality predisposition such as a history of violent behavior, extensive substance abuse, and the possibility of depression. One may conclude that this history is substantial evidence that both young men had personality predispositions and were therefore influenced by the subliminal message. This history however, is not enough evidence to prove that the suicides occurred due to subliminal messaging and may potentially be considered an illusory correlation.
The prosecution had many valid points in their argument against subliminal messages causing certain actions. According to Ewing & McCann (2006) the prosecution expert psychologist Dr. Anthony Pratkanis testified that the research on subliminal stimuli shows that it can have an effect on mental processing but much of the research is limited to semantic priming. Semantic priming, as defined by Dr. Pratkanis, is when people can decrease the amount of time it takes them to recognize the meaning of a target word when a related word is presented subliminally right before the targeted word. This is was also present in our book’s example of the words “cat” and “dog” across the screen.
He farther more states that there is no scientific evidence of the unconscious mind being influenced by subliminal messages that would cause a person to act a certain way such as committing suicide. Dr. Moore also agreed that there is not enough scientific evidence to support such a claim that these young men killed themselves due to subliminal messaging.
The final verdict of the case against Judas Priest was not guilty. Judge Whitehead ruled that there was simply not enough scientific research to support the theory that subliminal messages on the Judas Priest album caused the suicidal behavior by Raymond and James. The suicidal deaths of the two young men were mostly likely attributed to depression brought on by alcohol and marijuana consumption.
This case provides the idea of influence from the unconscious to the conscious. Although this case is very extreme, it can provide some evidence similar to the example in our book of the word “cat” appearing on the screen. This evidence is the existence of the unconscious and its potential influence on our thoughts, behavior, and emotions.
Terms: unconscious, conscious, behavior, emotions, subliminal messaging, semantic priming, correlation, personality predisposition, depression
Ewing, C. P., & McCann, J. T. (2006). Judas Priest: A message in the Music. Minds on
Trial (pp. 103-113). New York, NY: Oxford University Press, Inc.
Moore, T.(1996). Scientific Consensus and Expert Testimony: Lessons from the Judas
Priest Trial. Committee for Skeptical Inquiry. Retrieved from http://www.csicop.org/si/show/scientific_consensus_and_expert_testimony
Rabkin, E. and Rosenberg, V. (2008). The Judas Priest Trial. About Subliminal.
Retrieved from http://www.umich.edu/~onebook/pages/frames/aboutSet.html
For today’s blog, I looked at the article that documented a study involving DMN (default mode network) activation at various levels of consciousness. The study used control healthy patients, patients with locked-in syndrome, vegetative patients, minimally conscious patients, and patients in comas. I thought the comparison of brain activity at various states of consciousness would be interesting to read about. To start, the article defines the DMN at the set of brain areas that show more activity during rest than during attention demanding tasks. The idea was to see if there was a relationship between DMN activation and differing levels of consciousness. To do this, the researchers studied 14 non-communicative brain-damaged patients and 14 healthy control patients.
The study defined comatose patients as unarousable unresponsiveness. A vegetative patient was characterized by preserved behavioral sleep-wake cycles and reflexive but not purposeful behaviors, meaning that they were regularly asleep or awake and could react to stimuli, but there was no conscious control over their behavior. Minimally conscious patients were unable to communicate but they could show inconsistent non-reflexive behaviors, meaning they showed some signs of consciously controlling their actions, but only sometimes. Patients with locked-in syndrome were categorized as awake and conscious but without the ability to speak or move their limbs or facial muscles.
The study only used 1 locked-in patient, 4 minimally conscious patients, 4 vegetative patients, and 5 comatose patients, as well as 14 healthy volunteers of the same ages. fMRIs were taken of the patients in an unsedated state. They found that there was a correlation between DMN connectivity and the level of consciousness. Highest levels of connectivity were associated with healthy patients, followed by minimally conscious, then vegetative, then comatose. These results were essentially what I expected them to be, seeing as most normal brain activity should happen in healthy patients.
Interestingly enough, the study stated during the discussion that being able to measure the activity of the DMN in brain-injured non-communicative patients would help in categorizing the patient. It would be understandably difficult to distinguish between minimally conscious and vegetative. From understanding the relationship between DMN activation and levels of consciousness, doctors and researchers would be better able to diagnose brain trauma patients.
I thought this article and study was pretty interesting. Studying the variation of consciousness through the medical lens was a really cool way to get a new perspective on the information from the chapter. The article, though interesting, doesn’t really tell me much about mediation, though I wonder what the connectivity of the DMN is like during meditation in contrast with regular resting state. Would there be more or less connectivity?
I didn’t find this article as interesting as I have previous experiments. I also wasn’t really interested in chapter 5 of Dorjee. The levels of consciousness didn’t really interest me that much. I hope that later chapters and research I find will be more engaging.
Terms: Default mode network, brain activity, levels of consciousness, fMRI, locked-in syndrome, minimally conscious, vegetative, comatose
Link to study: http://brain.oxfordjournals.org/content/133/1/161.full
There are many differences between Western views of meditation and the Buddhist practices. This particular article goes into detail about Samatha and Vipassana meditations. It talks about our cognitive operations in relation to those types of meditation as well. I thought this would be an interesting topic to write about because this chapter was rather boring and I felt as if looking into some cognitive connections to meditation might make it more interesting.
Samatha meditation focuses on being in deep states of concentration in which our minds are able to be still and calm. Vipassana meditation focuses more on wisdom and gaining a better understanding of the nature of things in the context of knowing they are impermanent, unsatisfactory and not of the self. The connections these two meditations show is a good example of how Buddhist meditation requires mindfulness.
Cognition is the general term for mental activities. Buddhist texts believe that mindfulness incorporates similar functions as those cognitive processes. It involves our recognition, memory, conception and discrimination. This source makes an interesting connection that I had not thought of prior to reading it. It says that mindfulness in Buddhism is like the equivalent of metacognition in psychology. Both involve the ability to recognize your own cognitive functions. One particular difference between mindfulness in psychology compared to in Buddhism is that psychologists emphasize the “nonjudgmental” component of mindfulness. The Buddhist definition is similar to paying attention in a deliberate and particular way and without passing judgment.
Interestingly, this source talks about four categories that help to classify mindfulness in Buddhism, which are: simple awareness, protective awareness, introspective awareness, and deliberately forming conceptions. Many psychologists use simple awareness mindfulness. This involves observing and being aware of an object but not actually evaluating the object itself. The other three categories do include either evaluation or judging. Introspective awareness is similar to metacognition in psychology. It requires that you be aware of your mental states and that you watch them closely and regulate them by choosing the beneficial and wholesome states and continuing to develop those.
In Western culture, the self is emphasized. For instance, we value self-control, self-esteem, self-improvement, etc. In Buddhist psychology the self is viewed as an artificial construct that gets in the way of obtaining mindfulness. The Buddhist practice believes that you must have an intentional control of attention to in order to have understood the basis of mindfulness. I believe attention is the overarching theme when understanding how mindfulness works. It is very important that you stay attentive and focused. There are many differences between Western psychology and Buddhist views but this source did a really good job of comparing them in a way that also shows many similarities and common themes.
Terminology: Samatha, Vippassana, Buddhist practices, metacognition, wisdom, understanding, nonjudgmental, simple awareness, protective awareness, introspective awareness, forming conceptions, self-control, self-esteem, self-improvement, attention
Kuan, T. (2012). Cognitive operations in Buddhist meditation: interface with Western psychology. Contemporary Buddhism, 13(1), 35-60. doi:10.1080/14639947.2012.669281
Consciousness tends to be a more philosophical area of study than a psychological one. I wanted to learn more about the conscious experience, so I looked up Nagel’s article (1974) “What Is It Like to Be a Bat?” The mind–body problem in philosophy examines the relationship between mind and matter, and in particular the relationship between consciousness and the brain. Without consciousness the mind-body problem would be less interesting, but with consciousness, it seems hopeless. The article attempts to explore the mind-body problem by giving an example of the divergence between the two types of conception—subjective and objective. Nagel uses bats as an example. He explains that they perceive the external world mostly by sonar. The echolocational information deciphers distance, size, shape, motion, and texture comparable to those made by vision. Their form of perception is not similar to any sense humans possess; therefore, there is no reason that it is subjectively like anything we can image or experience. It is unlikely any meaning can be attached to the supposition, or in other words, experiences are different because each experience has different meanings to others. Another example is that the experience of a person deaf and blind from birth is not accessible to a person who is neither deaf nor blind, and vice versa.
In Dorjee Chapter 5, the biggest phenomenon of consciousness is the conscious experience. Scientific methods cannot tackle the underpinnings of consciousness. Take perceptual experience, for instance, “when we are looking at the sky with a friend-it is impossible to compare the actual experience of blue color across the two minds. There is no way to measure directly whether the experience-the ‘what it feels like’ element of consciousness (Nagel 1974)-elicited by exactly the same sensory input procedures identical conscious experiences” (p. 90-91). The reality or logical significance cannot be denied for that would be the most ignorant cognitive dissonance.
Key terms: consciousness; conscious experience; mind-body problem; subjective; objective; cognitive dissonance
Nagel, T. (1974) ‘What is it like to be a bat?’, Philosophical Review 4: 435-450.
This week’s chapter was about consciousness, and one area that they touched on was dreaming, specifically lucid dreaming. This is a topic that has always been pretty interesting to me, so I decided to hit up psycarticles to see if I could find a cool study about it. The article I found explored lucid dreaming among hardcore gamers. There was a number of reasons why they used hardcore gamers for the study, those being: (1) gamers spend large periods of time in an artificial reality and would theoretically be better at identifying one should they be in one (2) both video game play and lucid dreaming have been associated with better spatial abilities (3) high levels of attention and absorption have been characteristic of gamers, similar to the features of meditation, which has been associated with more lucid dreaming. The researchers identified four criteria one must meet to be characterized as a hardcore gamer. The hardcore gamer must play video games several times a week, on average. The hardcore gamer must have typical gaming sessions of playing for more than two hours. The hardcore gamer must have played over 50 video games in their lifetime. Also, the hardcore gamer must have been playing video games since grade 3 or earlier.
Cognitive components of the gamers lucid dreams were assessed using the MACE (Metacognitive, affective, cognitive experience) questionnaire. At times in the study, they referred to specific questions from the MACE, but never actually showed them, so I felt a little in the dark for parts of the article. The entire study was self-report measures, which was identified as the key limitation in the discussion section. Many of the dreams associated aspects of the games that the gamers had been frequenting, including car chases and gun fights. They also varied between third and first person, which is a common thing for video games. This shows the association from waking life relevancies to dream states. Another key aspect of the findings is that the lucid dreamer seldom found anything to be difficult. They also pointed out the ability to think to oneself and make decisions being a key aspect in lucid dreaming. One participant reported a dream in which he was driving through the desert and his car caught fire. Instead of abandoning the car, he decided to stay inside of it because he wanted to see what it was like. He reported making the decision and then observing the situation as he watched himself die. He said he was totally calm. Despite the fact that this dream seems a little disturbing, it fit with all aspects of lucid dreaming, as did other hardcore gamers’ reports. The study shows that gaming is associated with lucid dreaming and focused problem solving.
Terms: video games, lucid dreaming, problem solving, MACE, consciousness
Gackenbach, J., Kuruvilla, B. (2013). Cognitive structure associated with the lucid features of gamers dreams. Dreaming. Vol. 23. 256-265
Empathy has created a history where humans have been viewed as the dominant species. Through empathy our weakness as a species have been eradicated, while our strengths have been multiplied. Empathy brings us together, but there is also a downside to empathy. Empathy is not homogenous, it is dichotomous, meaning that it brings us close together and pulls us apart. Understanding this concept helps determine why we create war, and violence. Empathy creates strong emotions between friends, family, and those we associate with. However, because we identify so strongly with those in the in-group, we defensively other those we place in our out-group. This powerful emotion that humans emit, empathy, creates a culture where people are able to associate, identify, and emphasize with. However, because empathy is dichotomous it also creates members of the same community who we do not associate with, identify with, and emphasize with. It is this distinction that turns a seemingly positive emotion such as empathy into a negative consequence. Empathy creates a community where people want to assimilate, nobody wants to be placed into the out-group, therefore we have created socialized normative behaviors that prevent the othering of ourselves, and aids in our collective identity that provides us with a support group we can emphasize with. Anyone who falls outside of the acceptable normative behavior of society will be othered, and viewed with disdain, It is this distress that causes war, and violence to erupt. Currently there is a social problem with empathy where members of a society are incapable of placing themselves in the shoes of others, or emphasizing with members of the out-group. This is an existential flaw that is caused by the socially accepted behavior developed through empathy. One could take this argument and call Hitler’s actions justified because he was emphasizing with members of the in-group when he himself was in the out-group. He emphasized with the in-group that he viewed as unquestionable dominant, and superior to the out-groups. He looked to end out-group suffering and protect the future of the dominant group. However, few would find this view point attractive, and of course one should make the argument that empathy should not be bound within the in-groups and out-groups that it spawned, that it should apply to all living things, human and non. Today people have a particular problem with crossing cultural boundaries to emphasize with members of the out-group, and it continues to lead to the war, and violence mentioned earlier. All humans have the ability to emphasize, even psychopaths (although they experience diminished empathy), and this ability can be used in a negative sense. Some killers have successfully gained acceptance in a group of people, because those who chose to follow them emphasize with either their case, or personality. This form of empathy is easily viewed as wrong in a historical context, but with a presentist view they believed, and identified with the plight of that individual. Just as war is caused by an excessive identification, so too is this relationship. Both look to end a group that they see as the out group.
All of the problems surrounding empathy are created by people failing to realize the out-group is composed of people too. Empathy is easy to do when it is towards your in-group, but if you can emphasize with the out-group then you have successful practiced empathy to its fullest extent. Knowing that all people are capable of empathy, is it possible to say that we need to reshape our cultural identity to view all humans as people just like us? Social constructs that create in and out groups seem to alter who we readily emphasize with, so should we get rid of all out-groups? As far as I can see, there will be no negative side effects that arise from riding the world of out groups.
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/good-thinking/201310/whats-wrong-empathy
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/am-i-right/201404/there-is-ugly-underside-empathy
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/blame-the-amygdala/201308/dissecting-empathy
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/out-the-darkness/201403/the-psychology-war
Terms: Empathy, Out-group, In-group.
For this exploration blog I found an interesting article related to consciousness. The article distinguishes the different aspects of spirituality, intelligence and consciousness. According to Mayer (2000), the idea of spiritual consciousness stems from the possibility of structuring consciousness, through meditation, contemplation, and other means, so that it focuses on oneness, transcendent states, and ultimate concerns. Intelligence refers to a capacity or ability that primarily concerns performing valid abstract reasoning with coherent symbol systems. The “abstract reasoning” criterion represents a more classical approach to intelligence: The first hallmark of intelligence is the capacity to carry out abstract reasoning. Such thinking involves the ability to carry out many types of mental transformations, such as identifying similarities and differences, making generalizations, mentally rotating figures, and other tasks, all according to specifiable rules.
Traditionally, spirituality is viewed as a form of consciousness and that spiritual intelligence is not highly distinguishable from spirituality itself. Spirituality seems better characterized by consciousness than by abstract reasoning. Previous researchers have defined spirituality as “a way of being and experiencing that comes about through awareness of a transcendent dimension that is characterized by certain identifiable values in regard to self, others, nature, life and whatever one considers to be the Ultimate. Mayer (2000) has argued that there exists a class of personality parts that include basic, brain-related mechanisms or modes of processing. These are variously called enablers or enabling mechanisms because they enable human personality to operate. Theses enablers can be divided into four broad categories, which include cognition, motives, emotions, and consciousness. At this near-brain level, it is possible to separate out something like pure motive (e.g. thirst), a pure feeling (e.g., sadness), a pure mental capacity (e.g., the capacity to remember digits), and pure consciousness (e.g., awareness of being alive).
Motives, emotions, or cognitions rarely operate on their own, but rather blend together to some degree. They join in two ways first, at the near-biological level itself and then as they are synthesized when a person learns and thinks about the world. Enables stay relatively unchanged in terms of function and purpose through-out the life span. At the same time, by virtue of operating in a changing, growing mind, they can become enhanced, or guided, in some way. Thus, short-term memory can be enhanced by learning mnemonics (i.e., memory tricks). Consciousness appears able to guide or steer itself through the use of self-suggestion, the influence of current concerns, meditative practices, and other procedures. Transcendence includes such qualities as leaving behind physicality, and sensing bonds with humanity. Mysticism involves entering spiritual states of consciousness in which, through the use of special rituals and prayer, one may become especially contemplative, have flashes of insight, or even see visions. Thus, both transcendence and mysticism appear primarily to involve highly structured processes, with cognition providing a supporting role by representing the things that must be transcended or contemplated, but with little requirement for abstract reasoning.
As people learn about themselves and the world, they create mental models of reality that integrate motives, emotions, cognitions, and consciousness in another way. These models form a second broad class of personality components different from the enablers in that they are primarily mental representations rather than operations; they are maps or concepts of the self or the world. These models are learned representations, called by such diverse names as establishments: schemas, personal constructs, scripts, plans and goals. Certainly, there is abstract reasoning involved in mental representations of spiritual learning. Other aspects of spiritual intelligence include sanctification and coping. Sanctification involves joining everyday activities with a sense of the sacred. Spiritual coping involves using sacred meanings to find purposes in setbacks and challenges, and to assist one in moving forward in life. These two areas of spiritual intelligence come closest to meeting criteria for abstract reasoning. The last aspect of spiritual involves virtuous traits. These include behaving so as to convey forgiveness, gratitude, humility, and mercy. All in all, this article was very intriguing and I really like how it connected spirituality and consciousness with intelligence. It really complimented well with chapter 5.
Mayer, J. D. (2000). Spiritual intelligence or spiritual consciousness?. The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, 10(1), 47-56.
Terms: consciousness, spiritual intelligence, spiritual consciousness, abstract reasoning, enablers, cognition, motives, emotions, Transcendence, Mysticism, learned representations, sanctification, coping
Something that really interested me from this week’s reading was the section on the role of consciousness as experienced meditators die, so I decided to research this topic further. First off, death is considered incredibly important in Buddhism. It’s believed that the dead have nine times the wisdom and sensitivity of a living person. This thought is intriguing considering people who have near-death experiences, like the Sage Ramana Maharshi I studied earlier this semester (who started a life of meditation afterwards), often gain wisdom or rearrange their priorities in life.
One source came from Amitabha Hospice Service, which specializes in Buddhist care for the dying. Their website explained that there are eight stages of death and each stage is associated with an element. The first stage involves the earth element and is characterized by the body shrinking and becoming weak; the second with the water element where the bodily fluids dry up and hearing loss occurs; the third with the fire element where the ability to digest and smell ends; the fourth with the wind element where touch, taste, and breathing stop; and the next four deal with “wind” forming and dissolving at different parts of the heart. According to Amitabha, a person has completed these last stages once all heat is gone from the body, although traditionally people prefer to wait three days after this last stage to ensure that subtle forms of consciousness are gone.
Certain Tibetan scholars claim that corpses still have a vital energy, so according to this thought it makes sense that Buddhists believe in the existence of consciousness even after the legal definition of dead has been met. Interestingly, Tibetan Buddhists are okay with taking organs for transplants during this time of death in the body (after proposed dead by medical standards). They believe that even though operating on the body may distract the remaining consciousness, the compassion received will be of great benefit to this process.
What’s most mind-boggling is how people claim this process can last for weeks. Ordinarily, people can live only three to six days without water, with extreme cases living up to 10 days. What I wonder is if meditation could extend this process because the mouth is closed, which decreases the amount of moisture released during breathing, and since there is an absence of movement, therefore using up the body’s water reserves less quickly.
One source I found was a chapter of a book that was the transcript of a conversation between the Dalai Lama and several neuroscientists. They had an interesting discussion on what is consciousness and death. The scientists mentioned how in the body different parts die at different times. There isn’t one point in time where everything in the body dies all at once. Most medical professionals truly consider a person dead after there is no blood flow to the brain. However, the Buddhist perspective was that there is life as long as there is consciousness residing in the body, which they claim can happen without the body being “alive”. Another interesting thought expressed in this conversation was the comparison of a flat EEG reading to an international phone call, and how you can’t rule out for certain the person on the other line isn’t there if you don’t hear anything. This idea would go along with the thought that consciousness exists even after external signs of breathing stop. If I learned anything from researching this topic more, it’s that defining death is tricky and that there is much that we don’t know.
http://www.livescience.com/32320-how-long-can-a-person-survive-without-water.html
http://books.google.com/books?id=o2Sd3TfaxgoC&printsec=frontcover&dq=sleeping+dreaming,+and+dying&hl=en&sa=X&ei=ncFaU7OwLMHXygHnlIGgCg&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=sleeping%20dreaming%2C%20and%20dying&f=false
http://www.jsri.jp/English/ojo/special/palmoafternoon.html
http://www.amitabhahospice.org/public/helpful_info/buddhist_death.php
Terms: consciousness, Buddhism, compassion, meditation, EEG
Chapter 5 was all about consciousness so I found an article on Locked In Syndrome (LIS). LIS is when patients are fully paralyzed but are still conscious and are still able to communicate by eye movements and blinking. Consciousness is perceived by the ability to move eye lids and bling but patients with total locked in syndrome aren’t able to do that. Total LIS is the complete immobility which includes the eyes. This kind of LIS is hard to prove consciousness. This study focuses on a 21 year old girl who had a stroke and was unable to communicate. She was unable to eat, breath on her own. Though she was presumably comatose, her brain scans came back and showed no signs of brain damage.
After the first 3 weeks of no improvement in the hospital, she was moved to the neurology unit. In the neurology unit, LIS was considered. Voluntary brain responses were present in the patient. Doctor’s continued testing the patient—she was not sedated with no other acting drug. After 63 days from being in admitted into the hospital, she began to show consciousness. She was able to respond and smile at her name and other words that evoked a kind of emotion. The study concludes that explicit comprehension of auditory-verbal instructions provides the ability to detect voluntarily brain responses in patients that were assumed to be comatose. The study notes that more research needs to be done on a larger scale than with just one patient.
I found this study to be interesting and wanted to blog about it though it doesn’t have much of a connection to mediation but more about consciousness. The definition consciousness is the state of being awake and aware of one's surroundings. The study discussed about that one might not always have to be awake in order to be conscious. Meditation effects and strengthens our consciousness. It might be quite a stretch but without the ability to communicate, having LIS, being conscious and only able to focus on her thoughts might have put in a meditative state and therefore strengthening her consciousness and working her way out of LIS. Again, that’s a pretty big stretch to link this article to meditation but I tried.
Terms: locked in syndrome, consciousness, comatose, neural activity, focus, meditation
http://www.coma.ulg.ac.be/papers/LIS/schnakers_Neurocase2009.pdf
Hopefully this blog will be a little more interesting than the last. I decided to search for the similarities between the western view and Buddhist view of things. Our book is always comparing the two, but comes off as rather bias in the matter. The author starts by explaining the western view and then explains why it is incorrect. Then Dorjee proceeds to explain why the Buddhist view works better. Only a handful of times did I come across some actual scientific readings in the text that were not full of bias.
So for this blog I began by searching for Western and Buddhist similarities. I was not disappointed. I came across an article from Alan Wallace. Alan is an author, translator, teacher, researcher, interpreter, and Buddhist practitioner interested in the intersections of consciousness studies and scientific disciplines such as psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and physics. He was most known for being the long time translator for the Dalai Lama. He researches commonalities between Eastern and Western scientific, philosophical, and contemplative modes of questions. He even spent 14 years training as a Tibetan Buddhist monk, ordained by the Dalai Lama.
Alan talked about a groundbreaking study that he is leading, which he said will "scientifically prove meditation's fruitful effects." This study assesses changes in the brain functioning and behavior of subjects who meditate intensively every day for an entire year. He talked about how Western science can now start to show the facts that Buddhist monks have known for years. So while he was still favoring Buddhism, much like our author, he at least is trying to connect the two together by preforming useable research that will help non Buddhist see the beneficial properties to Buddhism.
This will be great since there is not a lot of scientific research on the subject. Hopefully by doing this it will lead to more exploration on the science of meditation and help others to understand the benefits better and how it works.
Terms: Western view, Buddhism, behavior, scientific study, research
http://www.buddhistchannel.tv/index.php?id=7,1066,0,0,1,0#.U2VOwfldV80
As I was not all that interested in the chapter, it was incredibly difficult to identify a subject for further investigation. I tried to find an article relevant to dream yoga, but couldn’t find one worth writing about (well, I found some, but didn’t have access to the entire article). Instead, I chose to investigate lucid dreaming.
The article chosen didn’t discuss meditation in relation to lucid dreaming much, beyond that it increased awareness of being in a dream and, as such, increased the ability to lucid dream. Dream research, like consciousness, is particularly difficult to measure because it is not a tangible, measurable subject and, even worse, dreamers often forget their dreams. As such, there hasn’t been much empirical research done on the subject and what has been done is almost entirely correlational.
Finding ways to better measure dream research could go a long way in understanding human consciousness, perhaps even determine where one is in the Dzogchen training module. Additionally, there is certainly an application to psychotherapy. Lucid dreaming has been shown to decrease stress from nightmares (meditation decreases nightmare frequency, except in the case of one of our classmates, apparently, haha). Researchers have not determined if it is because dreamers are aware they are in a dream or if because they can alter an aspect of the dream, which are two of the seven components of lucid dreaming. The seven components, all dealing with awareness of the situation are as follows:
1. Awareness of the dream state (orientation);
2. Awareness of the capacity to make decisions;
3. Awareness of memory functions;
4. Awareness of identity;
5. Awareness of the dream environment;
6. Awareness of the meaning of the dream;
7. Awareness of concentration and focus (the subjective clarity of that state).
All of these seven facets are intuitive, to me, except for number six. I very rarely understand the meaning of any given dream and science itself doesn’t yet understand the meaning of dreams in general, so I think that requirement is far too stringent. The article discusses how lucid dreaming can be induced by having a recording playing while sleeping saying “This is a dream” or something to that effect. Or just educating people about the ability to lucid dream.
However, though the article didn’t focus on it, I am particularly interested in the links between dreaming and meditation, through which lucid dreaming is the only conceivable way to measure them. For example, if meditators focus on specific things throughout meditation, does that become prominent throughout their dreams? Meditation and dreaming are both altered forms of consciousness, so I’d be curious if focusing on a flame (like I do) will increase the prevalence of flame in a dream state of mind. I’m also curious as to the content of dreams change as one progresses through the Dzogchen training. For example, do enlightened individuals have nightmares about the same type of things, since there is no concept of self? There overall experiences of nightmares are fewer, but how do the nightmares themselves change? And why? The author discusses how meditation can also induce more lucid dreaming, so there must be some link, but as of yet research has yet to be able to determine how to investigate it.
Terms: meditation, Dzogchen, lucid dreaming, psychotherapy
http://eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?vid=5&sid=01d8d564-2ea7-45cf-9eff-9b025848802f%40sessionmgr4002&hid=4105