Meditationis known to help calm both trunk and judgment , yet an emerging field of research suggests that someexperienced meditatorsmay be able to take thing to the next level by taking a deliberate parting of absence seizure from their sense . Describing this unequalled yet poorly understood phenomenon in a newfangled newspaper , an outside squad of neuroscientists , psychiatrist , and logicians explicate that the most adept speculation practitioners could induce a complete cessation of consciousness that lasts for up to a week .
agree to the authors , there subsist “ a meditation - induced event love in Pali ( the liturgical language of Theravada Buddhism ) as nirodha samapatti ( NS ) , which literally intend ' cessation attainment , ' ” . Characterized by a entire absence of consciousness , NS is “ unlike from sleep because practitioners are said to be entirely impervious to external stimulant , ” the investigator say . “ That is , they can not be ’ waken up ’ from the cessation state as one might be from a dream . ”
what is more , after emerging from NS , meditators are said to undergo “ unplumbed alterations of consciousness ” , often “ resulting in a sudden sentience of clarity , nakedness , and possibly perceptiveness . ” improbable as this may seem , the authors importune that “ there are advanced meditators who are uniquely able-bodied to systematically and safely induce these country under laboratory term . ”
outline some of their own attempts to get to the bottom of this unusual ability , the investigator describe two lab experimentation in which meditators had theirbrain activitymeasured using electroencephalography ( EEG ) . In the first of these , a single individual underwent an experience known as nirodha , which differs from NS in that it denote a momentaneous relapse in knowingness rather than a sustained trance .
Results indicate that the issue correlated with a decrement in alpha Einstein wave synchronising , which the author say “ may indicate a gradual reducing in info exchange between different brain areas and ultimately to the experience of a ' slash ' from consciousness during nirodha . ”
In their second experiment , the researchers noted a similar reduction in alpha - synchronisation when a single meditator underwent NS . Interestingly , they go on to explicate that identical alpha - colligate phenomena are typically discover in patient under the effects of depressant and anesthetics such as ketamine hydrochloride and propofol .
Despite being unable to explain how meditation can induce such a state , the authors say thatdeep meditationtrains the brain to relinquish many of its normal procedure , such as make continual prediction about the human race and fabricate a sense of reality based on its own arithmetic mean . Thus , when a peculiar threshold of reflective liberalization is make , “ N may reflect a final release of the prospect to be awake or cognisant . ”
Once this occurs , they say , the subsequent partitioning in normal brainiac wave synchronization might trigger “ an disability in corticocortical communicating and thus a failure to bind together elements of a lucid witting experience . ”
At this stage , however , the authors admit that their theories and supposition are extremely speculative , and that much more enquiry is needed before we can even get to understand how nirodha samapatti is add about .
The newspaper has been publish as part of the Holy Writ seriesProgress in Brain Research .
