British neuropsychiatrist Peter Fenwick researches how consciousness changes as we approach death. In this TEDx talk, he explores the altered states on the edge of death and explains how to engage in a peaceful and satisfying end to earthly existence:
Via Skeptiko, a fascinating interview with neuroscientist Dr. Mario Beauregard, who argues that, like the transition from classical to quantum physics, a revolution is coming in the way science will no longer perceive humans as being merely “biological robots”:
What we call the “modern scientific worldview”… is based on classical physics and this view is based on a number of fundamental assumptions like materialism, determinism, reductionism. So applied to mind and brain it means that, for instance, everything in the universe is only matter and energy that form the brain as a physical object, too, and the mind can be reduced strictly to electrical and chemical processes in the brain.
It means also that everything is determined from a material or physical point of view, so we don’t have any freedom. We’re like biological robots, totally determined by our neurons and our genes and so on. And so we’re reduced to material objects and we are determined by material processes.
Via Science 2.0, a study reveals the section of the brain producing strange powers:
Experimenters from the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences [joined with] the Vivekananda Yoga Research Foundation, Bangalore, India to perform “Probably the first fMRI study to analyse the neuroanatomical correlates of telepathy.”
They asked Mr. Gerard Senehi, “well known for his mind reading and telepathy”, to try to reproduce an unseen sketch which had been drawn by the experimenter. An anonymous control subject was also tested. During their attempts, both individuals were continuously scanned in an fMRI machine.
“The image reproduced by the ‘mentalist’ showed striking similarity to the original drawn by the experimenter, whereas the drawing by the control subject did not. Furthermore, the fMRI scans showed measurable differences in brain activity of the two subjects — “This study’s findings are suggestive of an association between telepathy and the right parahippocampal gyrus.”
BRAIN POWER: From Neurons to Networks is a 10-minute film and accompanying TED Book from award-winning Director Tiffany Shlain and her team at The Moxie Institute.
Picture: Dr. Mario Markus (CC)
A rebuttal to the articles: Heaven is Real: A Doctor’s Experience with the Afterlife and A Neuroscientists Describes His Near-Death Visit to Another Realm.
Dr. Eben Alexander’s article can be summarily dismissed with one sentence in the words of the late, great, (kind of a jerk but…) inarguably intelligent, and erudite Christopher Hitchens: “that which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.” And there you have it. However, considering the nature of my disagreement with Dr. Alexander, I suppose I should put forth an actual case for why I believe his experience does not constitute evidence (let alone proof) for life after death.
There are many possible explanations for what Dr. Alexander went through. Perhaps he really did experience an event in which his disembodied consciousness was whisked away to heaven on the wings of a magical butterfly with a hot brunette in tow.… Read the rest
Happiness is a gamma wave. Via Oddity Central:
Matthieu Ricard was declared the happiest man on Earth by a group of scientists after it was discovered his brain produces a level of gamma waves never before reported in the field of neuroscience.
A former molecular geneticist who left his life and career behind to discover the secrets of Buddhism, Ricard is now one of the most celebrated monks in the Himalayas and a trusted advisor of the Dalai Lama. In 2009, neuroscientist Richard Davidson wired up the French monk’s head with 256 sensors as part of a research project on hundreds of advanced practitioners of meditation.
The scans showed something remarkable: when meditating on compassion, Ricard’s brain produced a level of gamma waves linked to consciousness, attention, learning and memory that were never even reported before in neuroscience literature. Furthermore, the scans scans also showed excessive activity in his brain’s left prefrontal cortex, giving him an abnormally large capacity for happiness and a reduced propensity towards negativity.
From "2001: A Space Odyssey"
Brain scans have shown that when people see faces of other races, their amygdalas light up like home security systems. Some tout this as evidence of hardwired racial bias, evolved to keep the oddly colored “other” out of home territory. But as Robert Wright points out in this recent article, there would be few opportunities for interracial conflict in our geographically dispersed evolutionary past. The “other” would primarily be distinguished by different visual cues such as tribal emblems, because hostile neighboring tribes would generally be of the same race.
More recent brain scan experiments done on children show that, like menstrual cramps and unstoppable boners, neurological race rage doesn’t kick in until after puberty. While the question of “nature vs. nurture” is still open, this suggests that cultural forces are at work.
Wright’s line of reasoning is pretty solid when he says, “[T]hough we’re not naturally racist, we’re naturally ‘groupist.’”
Via The Atlantic:
There’s never been good reason to believe that human beings are naturally racist.… Read the rest
Harvard-educated neurosurgeon Dr. Eben Alexander woke up one morning with a bad case of E. Coli eating his brain. Before he could say “alakazam,” his neocortex had shut down completely, while his incorporeal body was whisked away on butterfly wings into the depths of the Infinite Beyond. He saw visions, was given messages, and upon returning to consciousness, wrote down his story, which he summarized for Newsweek.
Upon reading this account, blogging biologist and professional party-pooper PZ Myers basically accuses Dr. Alexander of being retarded. Relishing in his contempt for any Swedenborgian realities that may lie beyond atoms and the void, Myers wipes his ass with Newsweek on his famous science blog Pharyngula:
I’ve got to wonder who is responsible for this nonsense, and how it gets past the staff at Newsweek. Every once in a while, they’ve just got to put up a garish cover story touting the reality of Christian doctrine, and invariably, the whole story is garbage.
Picture: Jesse Krauß (PD)
Proof of an afterlife, or simply that we really have no idea how the mind works? Via the Daily Beast, Dr. Eben Alexander recounts his trip to a higher plane of existence whilst his brain was shut down in a coma:
As a neurosurgeon, I did not believe in the phenomenon of near-death experiences. I understand what happens to the brain when people are near death, and I had always believed there were good scientific explanations for the heavenly out-of-body journeys described by those who narrowly escaped death.
In the fall of 2008, however, after seven days in a coma during which the human part of my brain, the neocortex, was inactivated, I experienced something so profound that it gave me a scientific reason to believe in consciousness after death.
All the chief arguments against near-death experiences suggest that these experiences are the results of minimal, transient, or partial malfunctioning of the cortex.
Neurologist Oliver Sacks recently discussed his own youthful experiences with psychedelics on the New Yorker Out Loud podcast. It’s to promote his new book Hallucinations, scheduled for publication on November 6, 2012. Enjoy these few minutes with another brilliant mind who crossed paths with psychedelics and lived to tell the tale.
