Awakened Mind's topics - tribe.net

Free Awakened Mind newsletter

yeshedorje — Mon, 12 May 2008 22:39:28 GMT

We have started an Awakened Mind Newsletter with free Awakened Mind lessons and information on brain wave training. Just sign up @
www.awakened-mind.com.

This tribe will become a forum for all those who wish to share there experiences and ideas...keep it gentle and for the highest good...we are all here to share our love and guidance.

namaste, Gary

posted in Awakened Mind - 0 replies

More fun and mind games

yeshedorje — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 17:31:09 GMT

http://www.sheldrake.org/Onlineexp/portal/

posted in Awakened Mind - 0 replies

Increase your brain power

yeshedorje — Fri, 29 Dec 2006 15:58:14 GMT

If you answer yes to any of the following, then this is the site for you:

Have you ever wished you could be a little quicker, a little sharper mentally?
Are you under increasing pressure to absorb more information, from more sources, more rapidly?
Is your stress level rising due to the need (both at work and home) to perform multiple tasks simultaneously?
Do you wish you could concentrate better in the presence of distractions?
Would faster physical reflexes and sharper visual discrimination serve you well on the ballfield or tennis court or basketball court? How about behind the wheel of your car?
Is it critical at times for you to be at your mental best (a big meeting, an examination, a job interview)?

http://mybraintrainer.com/

posted in Awakened Mind - 0 replies

Practice your Awakened Minds, a fun game

yeshedorje — Sun, 19 Feb 2006 01:40:40 GMT

An online game to develop your intuition...hence your awakened mind:

http://www.psiarcade.com/

click enter to start game and sign-in.

posted in Awakened Mind - 0 replies

Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research - Mind May Affect Machines

yeshedorje — Wed, 20 Jul 2005 20:14:55 GMT

Mind May Affect Machines By Kim Zetter

Story location: http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,68216,00.html
02:00 AM Jul. 19, 2005 PT
For 26 years, strange conversations have been taking place in a basement lab at Princeton University.

No one can hear them, but they can see their apparent effect: balls that go in certain directions on command, water fountains that seem to rise higher with a wish and drums that quicken their beat.

Yet no one hears the conversations because they occur between the minds of experimenters and the machines they will to action.

Researchers at the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research program, or Pear, have been attempting to measure the effect of human consciousness on machines since 1979.
Using random event generators -- computers that spew random output -- they have participants focus their intent on controlling the machines' output. Out of several million trials, they've detected small but "statistically significant" signs that minds may be able to interact with machines. However, researchers are careful not to claim that minds cause an effect or that they know the nature of the communication.

The lab is led by Princeton professor emeritus Robert Jahn, a physicist and former dean of the university's engineering school. Jahn became interested in the mind-machine connection in 1977 when an undergraduate student proposed designing a random event generator, or REG, for her thesis. Jahn was intrigued by the idea of using the device to measure the effect of minds on machines, so in 1979 he launched the lab.

Although the lab is housed at Princeton, the university doesn't support it financially. Instead, the lab has relied on private donors like James S. McDonnell, founder of McDonnell Aircraft (later McDonnell Douglas and now part of Boeing), Laurance Rockefeller and John Fetzer, former owner of the Detroit Tigers baseball team and CEO of Fetzer broadcasting.
Jahn said McDonnell was concerned with how critical electronic systems could be vulnerable to the mindset of human operators under stress.

"McDonnell said he couldn't in good conscience put a young man in the cockpit of an F-18 and assume that all of the highly sophisticated equipment was totally invulnerable to the stress that the pilot would be under in combat or other emergencies," Jahn recalled. "He wanted some research to judge how much he needed to harden that equipment to make it invulnerable to that influence."

Government intelligence, defense and space agencies also have shown interest in the lab's research, which Jahn said he has freely shared.
The first REG that researchers used produced high-frequency random noise. Researchers attached circuitry to the device to translate the noise into ones and zeroes. Each participant, following a prerecorded protocol, developed an intention in her or his mind to have the generator alternately spew out more ones, then more zeroes, and then do nothing at all.
The effects were small, but measurable. Since then, the same results have occurred with other experiments, such as one involving a pendulum connected to a computer-controlled mechanism. When the machine releases the pendulum to swing from a set position, participants focus on changing the rate at which the pendulum slows to a stop.

Other experiments involve a drum machine that participants try to control and a mechanical cascade machine, in which a large device drops thousands of small, black polystyrene balls to fall around pegs in a wall and settle into a row of slots at the bottom. Participants try to direct the balls to fall to one side of the row or another.

Participants have been able to direct one out of every 10,000 bits of data measured across all of the tests. That figure might seem small, but Dean Radin, a senior scientist at the Institute of Noetic Sciences and former researcher at AT&T's Bell Labs, said it's to be expected.
"Many times in the beginning of a new scientific realm the effects are weak because of high variability," Radin said. "We don't know all of the factors yet that are involved in the effect (that could increase the results)."

Radin likens the current state of research to when scientists first began studying static electricity and didn't know that humidity levels could affect the amount of static electricity produced.

There is very little that the researchers understand about the phenomenon, but they do know that results aren't affected by distance or time. Participants, for example, can have the same effect on a machine from outside the room or across the country. They can also have the same effect if they have the intention before the REG is turned on or even if they read a book or listen to music while the machine is running.
Environmental conditions -- such as room temperature -- also don't matter, but the tester's mood and attitude do. It helps, for example, if the participant believes he or she can affect the machine.

Resonance with the machine is another important factor, Jahn said. He likens it to what happens when a great musician seems at one with her violin or a gifted athlete suddenly performs with his equipment in a way that is outside his normal bounds.
Gender matters as well. Men tend to get results that match their intent, although the degree of the effect is often small. Women tend to get a bigger effect, but not necessarily the one they intend. For example, they might intend to direct balls in the random cascade machine to fall to the left, but they fall to the right instead.

Results are also greater if a male and female work together, but same-sex pairs produce no significant results. Pairs of the opposite sex who are romantically involved produce the best results -- often seven times greater than when the same individuals are tested alone. Brenda Dunne, a developmental psychologist and the lab's manager, said the results in such cases often reflect the two gender styles. The effects are bigger, in keeping with what the female alone would tend to produce, but more on target, in keeping with what the male alone would produce.

"It's almost as if there were two styles or two variables and they are complementary," Dunne said. "(The masculine style) is associated with intentionality. The (feminine style) seems to be associated more with resonance."
What does all of this mean?

No one knows. Both Radin and Jahn say that just because there is a correlation between the intent of the participant and the machine's actions doesn't mean one causes the other.
"There is an inference (that the two are related) but no direct evidence," Radin said.
Radin said the phenomenon could be similar to quantum entanglement -- what Einstein referred to as "spooky action at a distance" -- in which two particles separated from each other appear to connect without any apparent form of communication.

Or the effect could be caused by something similar to what occurred in experiments conducted in 1963 by neurophysiologist W. Grey Walter. In those experiments, researchers implanted electrodes in participants' motor cortices and sat them next to a carousel slide projector. Participants were told to advance the slides by pressing a button. What they weren't told was that the button was a dummy. The slides actually advanced in response to an amplified signal sent from the participants' brains.

"(The difference is) we're not talking about sending signals from the brain to the machine through a circuit," Jahn said about the Pear experiments. "Whatever is going on, is going by some anomalous route. We don't know the carrier of this information. We only know something about conditions that favor it."

Although the effects produced in the experiments have been small, they have been repeated over time, though not always in a predictable manner. A participant can have an effect one day and repeat the experiment the next day with no results.

The lab has many detractors who have found fault with Pear's methodologies and dismiss the work as entertainment, comparing the results to motorists who wish for a red light to turn green and think that because the light changes they caused it.

Stanley Jeffers, a professor of physics at York University in Toronto, attempted to conduct experiments that were similar to Pear's, but couldn't replicate the results. Researchers at two German labs, working in cooperation with Pear, also were unable to replicate results using the same equipment that Pear used.

"If their claims are to be taken seriously in science, they have to be replicated," Jeffers said. "If they can't be replicated, it doesn't mean they're false, but science rapidly loses interest."
Dunne, the developmental psychologist who manages the lab, said that Pear repeated Jeffers' own experiments and got significant results. And a dozen meta-analyses done since the 1980s have found a basis for Pear's findings in experiments done by other researchers. Meta-analysis looks at large levels of data across many experiments and combines them statistically to see if the effects repeat overall.

"We're looking at statistical deviations from chance that are unlikely (to occur) over the battery of experiments," Jahn said. "When you do enough of these experiments, (the effects) compound with a statistical weight. There is no doubt at all of the validity of these effects."
Radin, who is not affiliated with Pear, dismisses critics who say the group isn't practicing solid science.

"This field has received far more scrutiny and criticism than many other ordinary fields," Radin said. "The people who do this kind of research are well aware that their research has to be done better. The Pear lab has taken the best principles of rigorous science and applied it to extremely difficult questions and come up with some pretty interesting answers."
Jahn thinks that critics err in expecting the phenomena to follow the usual rules of cause and effect. Instead, he thinks they belong in the category of what Carl Jung called "acausal phenomena," which include things like synchronicity.

"They play by more complicated, almost whimsical, elusive rules," Jahn said, "but they play."
Jeffers is skeptical.
"They can't have it both ways -- say (they're) reputable scientists and have claims for a particular effect under controlled conditions, and then when the results don't work out say rigorous scientific methods don't apply," Jeffers said.
But Jahn said that just because scientists can't explain the phenomena yet, doesn't mean they aren't real.
"If these things are real," he said, "I think our society has a right to demand of science that it pay attention to them and come up with some mechanics to deal with them constructively."

posted in Awakened Mind - 0 replies

Mirror neurons and empathy

yeshedorje — Sat, 21 May 2005 05:47:51 GMT

Here's an interesting bit on empathy...does delta play a part?

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/ramachandran/ramachandran_p1.html

posted in Awakened Mind - 0 replies

Witnessing and the awakened mind

yeshedorje — Tue, 17 May 2005 03:39:58 GMT

A Conceptual and Phenomenological Analysis of Pure Consciousness During Sleep

CHARLES ALEXANDER

Maharishi International University, Fairfield, Iowa

While most accounts of "awareness" during sleep have focused on the phenomenon of "dream lucidity," in this presentation I will discuss a qualitatively distinct state of consciousness beyond ordinary lucidity that can be experienced along with dreaming and deep sleep. This state is referred to in the ancient Vedic tradition as samadhi or "pure consciousness." When this state is maintained during dreaming or sleep, it is said to serve as a silent "witness" or observer to these changing relative states.

Distinguishing Between Pure Consciousness and Dream Lucidity

Let us begin by distinguishing between ordinary lucidity and witnessing. Dream lucidity appears to involve a commingling of the ordinary waking state with the dream state. During the process of dreaming, it is as if the cognitive capacities of the ordinary waking state become activated, and one can now function volitionally from within the dream world. One’s awareness typically remains identified (or asso-ciated) with that of the dream ego, but an arsenal of additional waking state abilities are added (e.g., rational decision processes, memory of having been awake). In lucid dreaming, though one can now actively think about the fact that one is dreaming, one still remains relatively absorbed in the dream world.

In contrast, the experience of pure consciousness is said to totally transcend the activities of both ordinary waking and sleeping. Whereas dream lucidity is typically associated with an increase in cognitive processing and possibly somatic arousal, pure consciousness is described as a heightened state of content-free awareness accompanied by deep silence, a state in which all ordinary activity of thinking, feeling and perceiving has come to a complete rest, yet awareness remains wide awake within itself. What wakes up in lucid dreaming is the localized, active individual ego of the ordinary waking state, the bounded "I" of experience with which we typically identify—albeit now transported into a dream landscape. In contrast, what wakes up during witnessing is the silent, unified state of pure consciousness, said to lie at the basis of all active states of mind and changing states of consciousness. In this state, awareness becomes fully "self-referral," capable of knowing itself directly without conceptual mediation of any kind. The boundaries of the active, localized self are transcended and awareness is said to become identified with a silent inner unbounded Self at the origin of mind, which is experienced as "I-ness," "amness of "Being." Maharishi describes this experience of the Self:

Self has two connotations: lower self and higher Self. The lower self is that aspect of the personality that deals only with the relative aspect of existence. It comprises the mind that thinks, the intellect that decides, the ego that experiences. This lower self functions only in the relative states of existence—waking, dreaming, and deep sleep. . . . The higher Self is that aspect of the personality which never changes, absolute Being [pure consciousness], which is the very basis of the entire field of relativity, including the lower self.

In "witnessing," the Self becomes fully differentiated from and an observer to the changing states of waking, dreaming and sleep and the functioning of the localized self which is embedded in those states. Thus, unlike the typical lucid state in which the localized waking-state self can now function from within the dream, in witnessing, an unbounded Self silently observes from outside of the dream state.

According to Maharishi’s Vedic tradition, witnessing can become a constant reality experienced throughout the 24-hour waking/sleeping cycle and not just experienced during rare moments while dreaming. The goal of Transcendental Meditation (TM) is to provide systematic experience of the pure consciousness state. Maharishi explains:

The Transcendental Meditation technique is an effortless procedure for allowing the excitation of the mind to gradually settle down until the least excited state of mind is reached. This is a state of inner wakefulness with no object or thought or perception, just pure consciousness, aware of its own unbounded nature. It is wholeness, aware of itself, devoid of difference, beyond the division of subject and object—transcendental consciousness.

During this experience knower, known, and the process of knowing converge in one wholeness of experience. This is described as a self-referral state. Because there is only the awareness of awareness. You are aware that you are. There is no active processing of mental contents; it is just a state of pure "knowingness," or being. It is a very gratifying kind of existential reconnection with your basic self.

The goal of meditation, of the TM program, is to maintain this pure conscious-ness state outside of meditation. On the basis of the deep state of rest experienced during TM, tension and stress is released that otherwise blocks one from this silent experience of the Self. Gradually, over years of meditating, this pure consciousness begins to adhere to you, or you adhere to it, and you begin to maintain this silent state during waking, dreaming, and sleeping. Pure consciousness then functions as a witness to ordinary daily activity. You still may engage in ordinary thought, but the silent state is as a backdrop to active states of consciousness. The advantage of this silent state is that it is a state of complete harmony, peace, and inner fulfillment, and cannot be disrupted. Because it doesn’t get disrupted, you don’t lose this "inner lifeline" to Being within.

A substantial body of research has been conducted on the psychophysiological correlates of pure consciousness. Maharishi predicted that pure consciousness would prove to be a distinctive state of restful alertness qualitatively different from ordinary waking, dreaming and sleeping. On the one hand, a deep state of inner silence would be experienced. On the other hand, one is said to become increasingly alert or aware. Indeed, enlightenment is sometimes referred to as simply being fully awake. Thus, this state is said to have a dual character of being both very silent yet more awake, but not aroused. It is both together in one condition.

It has now been repeatedly shown that in the experience of pure consciousness during TM (as indicated by button pressing immediately after the experience) respiration rate often drops to virtually zero for as long as a few seconds up to minute. For some advanced practitioners of TM, their respiration is virtually absent for over half of their meditation. On the other hand, during these experiences, EEG alpha and theta power increased substantially. Also, EEG patterns became more "coherent"—i.e., brain waves (especially in the frontal and central regions), thus suggesting a simultaneous increase in alertness and functional integration.

Now that I have conceptually described the pure consciousness state and how it may differ from lucidity, let me provide some phenomenological descriptions of this state. I’ll begin with experiences of pure consciousness in isolation during exper-iences of TM, as reported by subjects. Their reports are bolstered by the fact that they also displayed substantial periods of respiratory suspension and increased EEG coherence associated with these experiences. The first subject says,

When I experience pure consciousness, it is a state in which I am awake and aware, but not aware of anything except awareness itself. As I merge into the experience, outer-relatedness lessens and inner peace and self-sufficiency remains. It is not an intellectual experience. It is by far the most intimate and simple experience in my life.

A second experience:

I experience pure consciousness as a state of unboundedness and total ease and deep relaxation. There are no thoughts, no feelings, or any other sensations like weight or temperature. I just know I am. There is no notion of time or space, but my mind is fully awake and perfectly clear. It is a very simple and natural state.

This quote clarifies that this is "pure" in that it is content-free. There is no ob-ject of thought. It is not qualified by any particular thought or feeling. It is awareness awake to its own nature, but without any content. That is why the experience has been described as "being" or just "am-ness."

These experiences, of course, don’t just take place in meditators, they occur in non-meditators as well. The purpose of meditation is to stimulate more frequent occurrence of this experience. In "Lines Composed a Few Miles Above Tintern Abbey . . . ," written by the nineteenth-century poet Wordsworth (1904 edition), a spontaneous experience of pure consciousness seemed to be described:

. . . —that serene and blessed mood,
In which the affections gently lead us on,—
Until the breath of this corporeal frame
And even the motion of our human blood
Almost suspended, we are laid asleep
In body, and become a living soul: . . .

This poem clearly describes the dual character of pure consciousness. He describes this experience of attention spontaneously settling down as it does during meditation, until the breath becomes "almost suspended." Yet at the same time we "become a living soul."

We have begun to conduct research to determine if pure consciousness can be maintained outside of meditation—especially during sleep. In a pilot study of an advanced TM meditator who claimed to be having this witnessing experience of a serene inner state throughout waking, dreaming, and sleeping, we found when com-pared to the sleep of two lucid dreamers and a non-lucid dreamer, that this particular subject seemed to physiologically maintain a deeper state of rest. He had lower res-piration rate, lower heart rate, and less REM density, but he also appeared to be alert and could signal from REM sleep, Stage I, and Stage II sleep with strong lateral eye movements. This suggests that he may be experiencing the restfully alert state of pure consciousness during sleep.

Through the efforts of Jayne Gackenbach and Robert Cranson we also now have some preliminary content analyses of the pure conscious experience during sleep. A very advanced group of meditators at an in-residence meditation facility in upstate New York filled out questionnaires on their frequency of experiencing three types of consciousness in sleep: lucid dreaming (which we defined as actively thinking about the fact that you are dreaming); witnessing dreaming (while dreaming you experience a quiet, peaceful inner awareness or wakefulness completely separate from the dream); or witnessing deep sleep (during dreamless sleep you experience a quiet, peaceful, inner state of awareness of wakefulness). These subjects were then required for validation purposes to provide a detailed description of these experiences. Gackenbach then performed a content analysis by first identifying categories that may discriminate among these experiences and then assigning the different ex-periences into each category. There were 55 lucid dreams, 41 witnessing dreams, and 47 witnessing in deep sleep experiences reported by these 66 advanced male meditators. The content categories showing distinctions between them are depicted in Table 1.

Most revealing of these categories was the one on feelings of separateness. In lucid dreaming only 7 percent of the cases were those in which people reported feeling separateness. In the witnessing dream experience, 73 percent of the cases spontaneously reported in their dream description that the dream went on, but they were separate from it. These reports are consistent with our conceptual descriptions of witnessing as involving the complete differentiation of pure consciousness from the dream state—functions as a silent witness completely distinct from or outside of the dreaming state.

Following are examples of maintaining the silent experience of pure consciousness along with but separate from the dream state: "Sometimes no matter what comes into the dream, I feel an inner tranquil awareness that is removed from the dreaming. Sometimes I may even be caught up in the dream but the inner awareness of peace remains." Another example: "I watch it as it is going on separate from me. . . . There are parts, me and the dream, two different realities." These are examples of this feeling of separateness.

Another category which is interesting is that of emotion. There seem to be positive emotions associated with all three states, but extremely positive emotion was reported more frequently for witnessing dreaming and witnessing deep sleep as were feelings of lightness. This is reminiscent of, according to Maharishi’s Vedic tradition, an experience of profound bliss or ananda experience of the inner Self or Being.

On the other hand, dream control was much more frequent during lucid dreaming than witnessing dreams. This is consistent with the claims that dream lucidity typically involves active information processes, manipulation of dream content. As it were, the "will" or volitional capacity of the individual ego can act on its thoughts and desires. This is in contrast to the experience of pure consciousness which is said to be one of complete inner fulfillment or contentment. The Self does not act, but silently observes the changes occurring within waking, dreaming, and sleep.

Also over half the time lucid dreaming was triggered by incongruent mental events in the dreams that appeared to stimulate or awaken intellectual or discrim-inative processes typical of the waking state. On the other hand, witnessing dream-ing and sleep were virtually never triggered by such mental events. The most unam-biguous criterion of witnessing is maintenance of pure consciousness even during deep sleep. Because lucidity involves active thinking and deep sleep is generally, although not always, without mentation, it is not surprising that lucidity (as typically experienced) drops out during deep sleep. However, after long-term practice, TM practitioners gradually begin to report experiences of "witnessing," or maintenance of pure consciousness, even during dreamless sleep.

Here are a few examples:

It is a feeling of infinite expansion and bliss and nothing else. . . . First, it is like an abstract experience of bliss. There is no identity at all. Then I become aware that I exist, but there is no individual personality. Then I become aware that I am an individual, but no details of who, where, or what or when. Eventually these details fill in, and I might then wake up. Sometimes I’m lying there very quietly enjoying the silence, and then I will gradually become aware that I am snoring.

Another experience:

How do you describe an unmanifest experience? It has only happened a half dozen times in 15 years, but when it occurs, it’s crystal clear. Silence, wakefulness. Dark/clear and open. Silent/lively—like an amplifier turned on, but no sound. The experience fades as boundaries of dreams or waking state gather, gain definition and overshadow.

From the perspective of Maharishi’s Vedic Science, the significance of the experience of pure consciousness is that it provides the foundation for the development of stable higher stages of consciousness or "enlightenment." Witnessing of deep sleep indicates that the inner wakefulness of pure consciousness is now beginning to be maintained even during the most extreme conditions of mental inertia—dreamless sleep. Indeed, according to Maharishi, the first stable higher stage of con-sciousness, termed "cosmic consciousness"—is defined as the maintenance of pure consciousness throughout the 24-hour cycle of waking, dreaming, and deep sleep.

One final consideration, in the growth of the first stage of enlightenment, pure consciousness is said to become a silent observer or witness to the changing states of waking, dreaming, and sleeping. However, this development of inner self-sufficiency should not be confused with a state of compassionless detachment. In accordance with Erik Erikson’s injunction that identity provides the basis of intimacy, it is also when one establishes one’s ultimate inner identity, "Being" or Self that a truly profound foundation for intimacy with others is achieved. Unless you fully know who you are through the self-referral of Being, you are not in an ideal position to know and help others. The unbounded Self is classically described as "nonattached" not because it is withdrawn but because it can no longer be disrupted or overshadowed by the boundaries or changing values of thoughts, perceptions and actions. The blissful experience of inner Being thus provides a natural basis for sharing. The sharing of one’s happiness and inner resources with others.

posted in Awakened Mind - 0 replies

Hemispheric Contemplations...

Celeste_Wolfe — Mon, 09 May 2005 19:54:00 GMT

Hi Guys:

I thought this was really interesting and provides some food for thought about the "seat of consciousness."

:) Celeste

The Way We Live Now
Of Two Minds
Sign In to E-Mail This
Printer-Friendly
Single-Page

By JIM HOLT
Published: May 8, 2005
The human brain is mysterious -- and, in a way, that is a good thing. The less that is known about how the brain works, the more secure the zone of privacy that surrounds the self. But that zone seems to be shrinking. A couple of weeks ago, two scientists revealed that they had found a way to peer directly into your brain and tell what you are looking at, even when you yourself are not yet aware of what you have seen. So much for the comforting notion that each of us has privileged access to his own mind.

Rodney Smith

Forum: Mental Health and Treatment

Opportunities for observing the human mental circuitry in action have, until recent times, been almost nonexistent, mainly because of a lack of live volunteers willing to sacrifice their brains to science. To get clues on how the brain works, scientists had to wait for people to suffer sometimes gruesome accidents and then see how the ensuing brain damage affected their abilities and behavior. The results could be puzzling. Damage to the right frontal lobe, for example, sometimes led to a heightened interest in high cuisine, a condition dubbed gourmand syndrome. (One European political journalist, upon recovering from a stroke affecting this part of the brain, profited from the misfortune by becoming a food columnist.)

Today scientists are able to get some idea of what's going on in the mind by using brain scanners. Brain-scanning is cruder than it sounds. A technology called functional magnetic resonance imaging can reveal which part of your brain is most active when you're solving a mathematical puzzle, say, or memorizing a list of words. The scanner doesn't actually pick up the pattern of electrical activity in the brain; it just shows where the blood is flowing. (Active neurons demand more oxygen and hence more blood.)

In the current issue of Nature Neuroscience, however, Frank Tong, a cognitive neuroscientist at Vanderbilt University, and Yukiyasu Kamitani, a researcher in Japan, announced that they had discovered a way of tweaking the brain-scanning technique to get a richer picture of the brain's activity. Now it is possible to infer what tiny groups of neurons are up to, not just larger areas of the brain. The implications are a little astonishing. Using the scanner, Tong could tell which of two visual patterns his subjects were focusing on -- in effect, reading their minds. In an experiment carried out by another research team, the scanner detected visual information in the brains of subjects even though, owing to a trick of the experiment, they themselves were not aware of what they had seen.

How will our image of ourselves change as the wrinkled lump of gray meat in our skull becomes increasingly transparent to such exploratory methods? One recent discovery to confront is that the human brain can readily change its structure -- a phenomenon scientists call neuroplasticity. A few years ago, brain scans of London cabbies showed that the detailed mental maps they had built up in the course of navigating their city's complicated streets were apparent in their brains. Not only was the posterior hippocampus -- one area of the brain where spatial representations are stored -- larger in the drivers; the increase in size was proportional to the number of years they had been on the job.

It may not come as a great surprise that interaction with the environment can alter our mental architecture. But there is also accumulating evidence that the brain can change autonomously, in response to its own internal signals. Last year, Tibetan Buddhist monks, with the encouragement of the Dalai Lama, submitted to functional magnetic resonance imaging as they practiced ''compassion meditation,'' which is aimed at achieving a mental state of pure loving kindness toward all beings. The brain scans showed only a slight effect in novice meditators. But for monks who had spent more than 10,000 hours in meditation, the differences in brain function were striking. Activity in the left prefrontal cortex, the locus of joy, overwhelmed activity in the right prefrontal cortex, the locus of anxiety. Activity was also heightened in the areas of the brain that direct planned motion, ''as if the monks' brains were itching to go to the aid of those in distress,'' Sharon Begley reported in The Wall Street Journal. All of which suggests, say the scientists who carried out the scans, that ''the resting state of the brain may be altered by long-term meditative practice.''

(Page 2 of 2)

But there could be revelations in store that will force us to revise our self-understanding in far more radical ways. We have already had a hint of this in the so-called split-brain phenomenon. The human brain has two hemispheres, right and left. Each hemisphere has its own perceptual, memory and control systems. For the most part, the left hemisphere is associated with the right side of the body, and vice versa. The left hemisphere usually controls speech. Connecting the hemispheres is a cable of nerve fibers called the corpus callosum.

Forum: Mental Health and Treatment

Patients with severe epilepsy sometimes used to undergo an operation in which the corpus callosum was severed. (The idea was to keep a seizure from spreading from one side of the brain to the other.) After the operation, the two hemispheres of the brain could no longer directly communicate. Such patients typically resumed their normal lives without seeming to be any different. But under careful observation, they exhibited some very peculiar behavior. When, for example, the word ''hat'' was flashed to the left half of the visual field -- and hence to the right (speechless) side of the brain -- the left hand would pick out a hat from a group of concealed objects, even as the patient insisted that he had seen no word. If a picture of a naked woman was flashed to the left visual field of a male patient, he would smile, or maybe blush, without being able to say what he was reacting to -- although he might make a comment like, ''That's some machine you've got there.'' In another case, a female patient's right hemisphere was flashed a scene of one person throwing another into a fire. ''I don't know why, but I feel kind of scared,'' she told the researcher. ''I don't like this room, or maybe it's you getting me nervous.'' The left side of her brain, noticing the negative emotional reaction issuing from the right side, was making a guess about its cause, much the way one person might make a guess about the emotions of another.

Each side of the brain seemed to have its own awareness, as if there were two selves occupying the same head. (One patient's left hand seemed somewhat hostile to the patient's wife, suggesting that the right hemisphere was not fond of her.) Ordinarily, the two selves got along admirably, falling asleep and waking up at the same time and successfully performing activities that required bilateral coordination, like swimming and playing the piano. Nevertheless, as laboratory tests showed, they lived in ever so slightly different sensory worlds. And even though both understood language, one monopolized speech, while the other was mute. That's why the patient seemed normal to family and friends.

Pondering such split-brain cases, some scientists and philosophers have raised a disquieting possibility: perhaps each of us really consists of two minds running in harness. In an intact brain, of course, the corpus callosum acts as a constant two-way internal-communications channel between the two hemispheres. So our everyday behavior does not betray the existence of two independent streams of consciousness flowing along within our skulls. It may be, the philosopher Thomas Nagel has written, that ''the ordinary, simple idea of a single person will come to seem quaint some day, when the complexities of the human control system become clearer and we become less certain that there is anything very important that we are one of.''

It is sobering to reflect how ignorant humans have been about the workings of their own brains for most of our history. Aristotle, after all, thought the point of the brain was to cool the blood. The more that breakthroughs like the recent one in brain-scanning open up the mind to scientific scrutiny, the more we may be pressed to give up comforting metaphysical ideas like interiority, subjectivity and the soul. Let's enjoy them while we can.

posted in Awakened Mind - 0 replies

Do Dolphins have awakened minds?

yeshedorje — Sun, 10 Apr 2005 00:38:45 GMT

Look at this site by psychologist Joan Ocean, yes that's her name. She worked with John Lilly for many years and has been swmming with the dolphins and whales for years. Many interesting things to say:

http://www.joanocean.com/Dolphins.html

posted in Awakened Mind - 0 replies

Is there a connection between happiness, flow, and the awakened mind?

yeshedorje — Fri, 08 Apr 2005 23:06:35 GMT

If you haven't looked into positive psychology you might want to check out these sites:

http://www.reflectivehappiness.com/index.htm

http://www.authentichappiness.org/

posted in Awakened Mind - 0 replies

For a discussion of consciousness

yeshedorje — Fri, 08 Apr 2005 14:38:01 GMT

Use this link for a PDF on the nature of consciousness:

http://www.sci-con.org/theory/reprints/20030401.pdf

posted in Awakened Mind - 0 replies

Post Photos

yeshedorje — Thu, 07 Apr 2005 00:33:12 GMT

If you have photos of yourself or any of your awakened mind group, or anything that relates please post it by clicking on the main photo of the yab-yum.

posted in Awakened Mind - 0 replies

Gamma and meditation

yeshedorje — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 19:45:47 GMT

Forthcoming,
Science and Consciousness Review
www.sci-con.org

Breakthrough study on EEG of meditation

Long-term meditators self-induce high-amplitude gamma synchrony during mental practice, by Antoine Lutz, Lawrence L. Greischar, Nancy B. Rawlings, Mathieu Ricard and Richard J. Davidson, in The Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 101(46)16369-16373, 2004

The challenge in studying consciousness has always been to match subjective, first person accounts with objective, third person measurements. Consciousness is, after all, publically unobservable. So there exists a dichotomy between phenomenological descriptions on the one hand and, on the other hand technologies such as fMRI and EEG which map brain activities correlating with cognition and consciousness.

First person phenomenological descriptions have largely stayed outside scientific and Western philosophical approaches, with the exception of William James and Husserlian types of introspection which recount the detailed content of consciousness. But the content of consciousness is not necessarily the same as consciousness itself. Indeed, an ongoing controversy has been whether one could be conscious of nothing. In an interesting debate at a Tucson conference a few years ago, Jonathan Shear argued for the affirmative, pointing out that meditators commonly cleared their mind of content but were nevertheless highly conscious of being. Other forms of meditation focus the practitioner’s mind on specific objects or actions, such as breathing or reciting mantras. In either type of case, an altered state of heightened awareness—of heightened consciousness—is said to be achieved. One might think that EEG or brain imaging of meditative states would be revealing, however previous studies have been largely unremarkable, suggesting for example a modest increase in slow alpha or theta wave EEG activity during meditation. However in those studies meditators were focusing on specific objects or activities. Moreover, higher frequency EEG activity such as gamma wave synchrony (greater than 25 Hz) was omitted.

Meanwhile, a controversy over gamma synchrony simmers. Synchronized gamma EEG is composed of field potentials measured from scalp or implanted electrodes which may be coherent both in local brain regions and more globally across the brain in a range from 30 to 70 Hz, known euphemistically as “coherent 40 Hz oscillations”. In the mid 1980s Wolf Singer’s lab showed that gamma synchrony corresponded with specific recognition in cat visual cortex. As other similar findings followed, coherent 40 Hz became the favorite electrophysiological correlate of cognition and consciousness. Gamma synchrony/40 Hz coherence was found to correspond with attention, face and linguistic recognition, visual binding, task performance, working memory, dreaming and consciousness (e.g. by virtue of its selective disappearance with general anesthesia).

However backlash set in, fueled largely, as far as I can tell, by the failure to account for gamma synchrony by axonal action potentials (“spikes”), the favorite level of reduction in much of neuroscience. The prevalent view has been that consciousness and cognition emerge from functional networks of neurons (“assemblies”, “modules”, “cartels”, “coalitions” etc.) linked by axonal output—to—dendritic input chemical neurotransmitter synapses. Donald Hebb showed in 1947 that altered sensitivities of such synapses would sculpt transient network assemblies, each of which could temporarily take the stage of attention and consciousness by dominant firing. So when 40 Hz correlations were discovered, the presumption was that sequences of axonal-dendritic Hebbian assemblies were firing synchronously at gamma range/40 Hz frequencies.

But synchrony among axonal spikes, and integration of spikes into network-like phenomena proved to be elusive. Francis Crick and Christof Koch, who in 1990 had helped launch the 40 Hz/consciousness bandwagon, were among the first to abandon ship. In some circles, gamma synchrony/40 Hz was discredited as an essential feature of consciousness, despite the continued correlations of gamma synchrony/40 Hz field potentials with cognition and consciousness. No spikes, no deal.

In recent years gamma synchrony has indeed been shown to derive not from axonal spikes and axonal-dendritic synapses, but from post-synaptic activities of dendrites. Specifically, gamma synchrony/40 Hz is driven by networks of cortical inter-neurons connected by dendro-dendritic “electrotonic” gap junctions, windows between adjacent cells. Groups of neurons connected by gap junctions share a common membrane and fire synchronously, behaving (as Eric Kandel says) “like one giant neuron.” Gap junctions have long been recognized as prevalent and important in embryological brain development, but gradually diminish in number (and presumably importance) as the brain matures. Five years ago gap junctions were seen as irrelevant to cognition and consciousness. However more recently, relatively sparse gap junction networks in adult brain have been appreciated and shown to mediate gamma synchrony/40 Hz.1-11 Such networks are transient, coming and going like the wind (and Hebbian assemblies), as gap junctions form, open, close and reform elsewhere (regulated by intraneuronal activities). Therefore neurons (and glia) fused together by gap junctions form continually varying syncytia, or Hebbian “hyper-neurons” whose common membranes depolarize coherently and may span wide regions of cortex. (The internal cytoplasm of hyper-neurons is also continuous, prompting suggestions they may host brain-wide quantum states.) By virtue of their relation to gamma synchrony, gap junction hyper-neurons may be the long-sought neural correlate of consciousness (NCC).

Which brings us to the study by Antoine Lutz and colleagues in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, a prestigious and austere (one might even say stodgy) journal of extremely high repute. The authors compared EEG in two subject groups before and during meditation—not of an object or activity, but of a pure feeling of unreferenced compassion. Dare I say this pure feeling might be deemed a quale?

One subject group was composed of young students trained for a week in meditative technique; the second group consisted of Tibetan Buddhist practitioners with 15 to 40 years of meditation training and practice. The EEG methodology was rigorous, and the results were clear. Compared to novice meditators, the highly trained Tibetan Buddhist meditators had markedly higher amplitude, long-range global gamma synchrony in bilateral frontal and parietal/temporal regions. An increase in gamma synchrony was also observed in baseline measurement (before meditation) which became enhanced and more global during meditation in the trained Tibetan meditators.

For technical reasons (possible muscle artifact and 60 Hz AC interference) the absolute frequency spectrum was not determined, though the experimenters hinted of a significant rise in synchrony and amplitude in the 80 to 120 Hz range during the Tibetans’ meditation. The coherence and power in the range of 25 to 42 Hz was significantly increased statistically. Amplitude of the synchronized gamma activity was greater than any previously reported nonpathological (i.e. non seizure-based) gamma synchrony.

So, what does this tell us about consciousness? Well first, there is an increase in gamma synchrony amplitude and coherence during what I think is fair to call an enhanced state of consciousness—pure intense experience unfettered by cognitive contents. This supports the notion of gamma synchrony as an electrophysiological correlate of consciousness.

Second, the trained Tibetan meditators had baseline increases in gamma synchrony and amplitude, suggesting long-term changes in their brains from years of meditation. One might say they are more highly conscious in a baseline state, achieving even greater intensity of consciousness during meditation.

In a book titled The Quantum and the Lotus by Mathieu Ricard and Trinh Xuan Thuan (Crown Publishers, 2001), Ricard (a molecular biologist turned Buddhist meditator and co-author of the Lutz study) describes the Buddhist concept of three levels of consciousness, including the most important “fundamental luminosity of the mind”. This is a “state of pure awareness that transcends the perception of a subject/object duality and breaks free from the constraints and traps of discursive thought.” Moreover this form of consciousness, according to Mathieu Ricard, can exist independently of the brain, and in fact pervades the universe. Presumably, the meditative state marked by enhanced gamma synchrony represents an immersion of the subjects in this fundamental luminosity. (Such a connection may possibly be explained through the quantum approach to consciousness. For example the Penrose-Hameroff model suggests a connection between brain processes and a funda-mental Platonic realm embedded in the space-time continuum.12,13)

Back to the brain. The enhanced gamma synchrony during the meditative state (as the authors tell us) is most likely due to a) an increase in the size of coherently responding neural assemblies, and/or b) increased precision in the coherence of responding neural assemblies.

Before addressing these possibilities, consider the origin of coherence. Even assuming that cortical neuronal assemblies interconnected by gap junctions (“hyper-neurons”) are the neural correlate of gamma synchrony, there are two possibilities for the coherence. One is that ascending or re-entrant thalamo-cortical inputs drive the cortical neuronal assemblies, like a piano player might rhythmically strike keys on a piano. The other is that the cortical neuronal assembly (hyper-neuron) itself is the source of coherence, due either to some internal reverberative feedback or common underlying mechanism in the extended membrane and/or cytoplasm/cytoskeleton. There are arguments against the thalamo-cortical drive mechanism for coherence based on delays in chemical neurotransmission and the slightly varying lengths of thalamo-cortical axons required to reach appropriate regions of cortex. In addition, thalamo-cortical drive would mean that the thalamus (rather than cortex) was responsible for choosing areas of cortex for consciousness (though proponents of this view point to cortical-thalamic feedback). These are open questions, though the fact that meditators whose consciousness is devoid of sensory inputs from the external world exhibit more highly coherent cortical excitations suggests that thalamic inputs reduce, rather than promote, gamma synchrony. Thus both enhanced a) size and b) coherence precision of cortical assemblies seem likely.

Like most good research, this study raises more questions than it answers. How is the content—in this case the pure quale of compassion—represented? Is it in the specific coherent frequency? Is it in the specific neural regions entrained in the coherent process? Is it in some finer-grained process? Are the coherence, amplitude and/or frequency related to intensity of experience?

One could say (I would not) that the gamma synchrony/coherent 40 Hz corresponding with contentless meditation implied a blank slate, perhaps like a radio station carrier wave, that the coherent amplitude increase was due to lack of interference stemming from lack of cognitive processing. But the trained meditators were conscious—highly conscious—of the feeling of pure compassion. So my impression, as suggested above, is that their enhanced gamma synchrony reflected a release from external (e.g. thalamic) distractions, allowing pure qualia to fill consciousness. Why gamma synchrony (or any brain activity) should be conscious is, of course the ‘hard problem’. As those familiar with my views might suppose, my guess is that conscious experience derives from quantum mechanisms in cytoskeletal structures within coherently excited components of hyper-neurons. These in turn facilitate a more direct absorption in what Buddhists call fundamental luminosity. My guess is also that intensity of experience corresponds not only with coherence, but also frequency, that the 80 to 120 Hz coherence is present in the trained meditators and represents the highest form of consciousness.

The experimenters plan on further work, with refined analysis of the meditative practice and feeling of unreferenced compassion. Among other issues, I personally would like to see them look closely at the higher frequencies they tantalized us with in this paper.

In any case this is a landmark study and the researchers are to be congratulated, and thanked! They cite the work of the late Francisco Varela who pioneered the connection between meditation and neuroscience. Francisco would be pleased indeed.

Stuart Hameroff M.D.
Professor, Departments of Anesthesiology and Psychology
Director, Center for Consciousness Studies
The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona
www.consciousness.arizona.edu/hameroff

References

1. Bennett, M.V., & Zukin, R.S. (2004) Electrical coupling and neuronal synchronization in the Mammalian brain. Neuron. 41(4):495-511.

2. Buhl, D.L., Harris, K.D., Hormuzdi, S.G., Monyer, H., & Buszaki, G. (2003) Selective impairment of hippocampal gamma oscillations in connexin-36 knock-out mouse in vivo. Journal of Neuroscience. 23(3):1013-8.

3. Dermietzel, R. (1998) Gap junction wiring: a 'new' principle in cell-to-cell communication in the nervous system? Brain Research Reviews. 26(2-3):176-83.

4. Draguhn, A., Traub, R.D., Schmitz, D., & Jeffreys, J.G. (1998) Electrical coupling underlies high-frequency oscillations in the hippocampus in vitro. Nature. 394(6689):189-92.

5. Friedmand, D., & Strowbridge, B.W. (2003) Both electrical and chemical synapses mediate fast network oscillations in the olfactory bulb. Journal of Neurophysiology 89(5):2601-10.

6. Galaretta, M., & Hestrin, S.(2001) Electrical synapses between GABA-releasing interneurons. Nature Reviews Neuroscience. 2(6):425-33.

7. Gibson, J.R., Beierlein, M., & Connors, B.W. (1999) Two networks of electrically coupled inhibitory neurons in neocortex. Nature, 402:75-79.

8. Hormuzdi, S.G., Filippov, M.A., Mitropoulou,G., Monyer, H., Bruzzone, R. (2004). Electrical synapses: a dynamic signaling system that shapes the activity of neuronal networks. Biochimica et Biophysica Acta. 1662(1-2):113-3.

9. LeBeau, F.E., Traub, R.D., Monyer, H., Whittington, M.A., & Buhl, E.H. (2003) The role of electrical signaling via gap junctions in the generation of fast network oscillations. Brain Research Bulletin 62(1):3-13.

10. Perez Velazquez, J.L., & Carlen, P.L. (2000) Gap junctions, synchrony and seizures. Trends in Neurosciences. 23(2):68-74.

11. Rozental, R., Giaume, C, &. Spray D.C. (2000) Gap junctions in the nervous system. Brain Research Reviews 32(1):11-5.

12. Hameroff, S.R., & Penrose, R. (1996) Conscious events as orchestrated spacetime selections. Journal of Consciousness Studies 3(1):36-53
http://www.u.arizona.edu/~hameroff/penrose2

13. Hameroff, S. (1998) ‘Funda-mentality’: is the conscious mind subtly linked to a basic level of the universe? Trends in Cognitive Science 2:119-127.

posted in Awakened Mind - 0 replies

Brain trauma and consciousness

yeshedorje — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 13:54:33 GMT

Inside the Injured Brain, Many Kinds of Awareness

By BENEDICT CAREY
Published: April 5, 2005

he debate over Terri Schiavo's fate comes at a time when researchers are deepening their understanding of the unconscious brain.

Neuroscientists now understand at least some of the physiology behind a wide range of unconscious states, from deep sleep to coma, from partially conscious conditions to a persistent vegetative state, the condition diagnosed in Ms. Schiavo.

New research, by laboratories in New York and Europe, has allowed for much clearer distinctions to be made between the uncounted number of people who at some time become comatose, the 10,000 to 15,000 Americans who subsist in vegetative states and the estimated 100,000 or more who exist in states of partial consciousness.

This emerging picture should make it easier for doctors to judge which brain-damaged patients have some hope of recovering awareness, experts say, and already it is providing clues to the specific brain processes that sustain conscious awareness.

"Understanding what these processes are will give us a better sense of how to help the whole range of people living with brain injuries," said Dr. Nicholas Schiff, an assistant professor of neurology and neuroscience at NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital. "That is where this field is ultimately headed: toward a better understanding of what consciousness is."

The most familiar unconscious state is sleep, which in its deepest phases is characterized by little electrical activity in the brain and almost complete unresponsiveness. Coma, the most widely known state of impaired unconsciousness, is in fact a continuum. Doctors rate the extent to which a comatose person shows pain responses and reactions to verbal sounds on a scale from 3, for no response, to 13, for consistent responses.

As in sleep, people in comas may move or make sounds and typically have no memory of either. But they almost always emerge from this state in two to three weeks, doctors say, when the eyes open spontaneously. What follows is critical for the person's recovery.

Those who are lucky, or who have less severe injuries, gradually awaken. "The first thing I remember was telling my ex-boyfriend, who was at the foot of the bed, to shut up," said Trisha Meili, who fell into a coma after being beaten and raped in 1990, and wrote about the experience in the book, "I Am the Central Park Jogger."

In the days after this memory, Ms. Meili said, she slipped in and out of conscious awareness, "as if my body was taking care of the most important things first, and leaving my moment to moment awareness for last."

In fact, researchers say, this is precisely what happens. The primitive brain stem, which controls sleep-wake cycles as well as reflexes, asserts itself first, as the eyes open. Ideally, areas of the cerebral cortex, the seat of conscious thought, soon follow, like lights flicking on in the upper rooms of a darkened house.

But in some cases - Ms. Schiavo's was one of them - the cortical areas fail to engage, and the patient's prognosis becomes dire.

Neurologists were all but unanimous in diagnosing the condition of Ms. Schiavo, whose heart stopped temporarily in 1990, depriving her brain of oxygen. Brain cells and neural connections wither and die without oxygen, like marine life in a drained lake, leaving virtually nothing unharmed.

People with these kinds of injuries - Nancy Cruzan, whose case reached the Supreme Court in 1990 is an example - almost always remain unresponsive if they have not regained awareness in the first months after the injury.

In medical terms, they become persistently vegetative, a diagnosis first described in 1972 by Dr. Fred Plum of Cornell University and Dr. Bryan Jennett, a neurosurgeon at Glasgow University in Scotland. In a sense, the description of the diagnosis began the modern study of disorders of consciousness. "Before 1972 people talked about permanent comas, or irrecoverable comas, but we defined a different state altogether, with the eyes open, some reflex activity, but no sign of meaningful psychological responsiveness," Dr. Jennett, now a professor emeritus, said in an interview.

Inside the Injured Brain, Many Kinds of Awareness

Published: April 5, 2005

(Page 2 of 3)

In an exhaustive review of the medical histories of more than 700 persistently vegetative patients, a team of doctors in 1994 reported that about 15 percent of those who suffered brain damage from oxygen deprivation, like Ms. Schiavo, recovered some awareness within three months. After that, however, very few recovered and none did so after two years.

About 52 percent of people with traumatic wounds to the head, often from car accidents, recovered some awareness in the first year after the injury, the study found; very few recovered after that. "It's the difference between taking a blow to the brain, which affects a local area - and taking this global, whole-brain hit," said Dr. Joseph Fins, chief of the medical ethics division of NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell hospital.

Yet these statistics cannot explain the stories of remarkable recovery that surfaced during the debate over Ms. Schiavo's fate. There was Terry Wallis, a mechanic in Arkansas who regained awareness in 2003, more than 18 years after he fell into unconsciousness from a car accident; Sarah Scantlin, a Kansas woman who, also a victim of a car accident, emerged from a similar state after 19 years; and several others, whose collective human spirit seemed to defy the experts, and trump science.

Researchers say these cases can be accounted for by recent studies that indicate the existence of yet another state of subdued responsiveness, one that represents a clear break from the vegetative.

For years, doctors who specialize in rehabilitation have known that some of their severely brain-damaged patients were responsive, at least once in a while. In their good moments, these patients could track objects with their eyes. They could follow commands, like reaching for a glass, or grabbing someone's hand. They were - intermittently, unpredictably, but unequivocally - responsive.

In 2002, a panel of experts established a new diagnosis on the basis of exactly these reactions: the minimally conscious state. "It took years to get some agreement on the definition, and it's only now getting some acceptance," said Dr. Nancy Childs, at Texas NeuroRehab Center in Austin, "but we've known for years that there was this other group."

In a landmark study published in February, a team of neuroscientists in New York, New Jersey and Washington, led by Dr. Schiff, used imaging technology to compare the brain activity in two young men who were deemed to be minimally conscious with the brain activity of seven healthy men and women. The researchers recorded an audiotape for each of the nine subjects in which a relative or loved one reminisced, telling familiar stories or recalling shared experiences.

In each of the brain-damaged patients, the sound of the voice prompted a pattern of brain activity similar to that of the healthy participants. The team has since replicated the results in other minimally conscious patients.

Like an interlocking set of old Christmas lights, blinking on and then off, the neural connections in minimally conscious patients seem to be in place, the research suggests. In persistently vegetative brains, by contrast, the crucial connections are apparently shot: maybe one light blinks here, another over there, but the full network is dark.

One case, of a 26-year-old English woman named Kate who emerged from a subdued unconscious state after six months, suggests such patients may be at times acutely aware of what is happening around them. During rehabilitation, though unable to communicate, this woman had a visit from a college friend.

"I have just met an old friend from Uni and it really upset me," the woman recalled thinking, doctors reported. "I can now see how much I am missing. She has been married for five years and she has a house and a life. I just scream as I can't cry, which I would do if I could."

Recovery from severe brain damage is viewed in this new understanding as a step-wise progression: people who regain conscious awareness pass from a coma to a vegetative state to minimal consciousness - and almost always do so quickly, usually within a month or so of shaking the coma. Those who regain awareness within hours of emerging from a coma probably also pass through the same progression, but so swiftly the changes go unnoticed, some experts say.

Inside the Injured Brain, Many Kinds of Awareness

Published: April 5, 2005

(Page 3 of 3)

"If you look at these cases of recovery closely, you will find that many of these patients were showing signs of consciousness much earlier" than is sometimes portrayed in news media accounts, Dr. Fins of NewYork-Presbyterian said.

Researchers know little about how to draw a person out of a minimally conscious state, which itself can last a lifetime. In one study of 124 brain-damaged patients, doctors in Philadelphia and New Jersey reported in March that amantadine, a drug for Parkinson's disease, appeared to speed recovery in some people. But the evidence was not definitive and will require confirmation, the authors wrote.

Advertisement

Rehabilitation, such as it is, typically includes life support, if needed, and regular visits from medical staff, typically to change the patient's position in bed and to stimulate the senses with bright lights, noises, sharp smells and tastes, including lemon and chocolate. "I always tell families that it's time and nature and God taking care of things, that what we do mostly is monitor the patients," said Dr. Childs.

Dr. Joseph Giacino, a neuropsychologist at the JFK Johnson Rehabilitation Institute in Edison, N.J., has been following a group of brain-damaged patients with both oxygen-deprivation and traumatic injuries, and finds that the group with traumatic injuries - if they become minimally conscious - are far more likely to show signs of recovery than the others. "There is a real separation between these patients and the others in terms of improvement in the first year," Dr. Giacino said.

Ms. Schiavo showed no evidence of having ever entered a minimally conscious state, either in the early 90's or later, neurologists say. An EEG of her cerebral cortex showed almost no electrical activity, said a neurologist who examined her, and a dozen experts interviewed about her case agreed that an M.R.I. scan would have added no information.

In Dr. Schiff's study comparing M.R.I. activity of minimally conscious with normal subjects, the researchers also found a striking difference. The overall rate of energy consumption was significantly higher in the normal brains than in the minimally conscious ones. This difference in idling speed may be crucial to maintaining conscious awareness, Dr. Schiff and others suggested.

Because signaling between brain cells requires one cell to overwhelm the other, Dr. Schiff said, a lower idling speed may make the signaling threshold harder to overcome - effectively damping activity throughout the brain. "The idea is that maybe if you were to activate that substrate, you may cross the threshold and generate enough activity" to produce more awareness, he said.

posted in Awakened Mind - 0 replies

Welcome!

yeshedorje — Wed, 06 Apr 2005 00:06:14 GMT

This is the first post for the Awakened Mind Tribe. This is your community so use those high performance minds to build what you want and need. This is the place to share your lives, ideas, dreams, travels, and adventures of mind. As they said in "What the Bleep" we create our own reality so make it a good one filled with loving kindness and enlightened minds.

posted in Awakened Mind - 0 replies