[FairfieldLife] Re: “What the Beatles Gave Science” in Newsweek

[shempmcgurk]

Is that Nancy Cooke de Herrera in the upper left-hand corner?

If it is, she reminds me of Zelig.



--- In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, Vaj <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> "What the Beatles Gave Science" in Newsweek
> http://www.newsweek.com/id/69587
> 
> Their visit popularized the notion that the spiritual East has  
> something to teach the rational West.
> 
> Nov 19, 2007 Issue
> 
> Like millions of others who believed there must be more to life 
than  
> the libertine exuberance of the '60s, the Beatles hoped that the  
> Hindu teacher Mahesh Yogi—known as the Maharishi, or "great saint"— 
> would help them "fill some kind of hole," as Paul McCartney put it  
> years later. So in the spring of 1968, the Fab Four traveled to 
the  
> Maharishi's ashram overlooking the Ganges River in northern India,  
> where they meditated for hours each day in search of 
enlightenment,  
> as Bob Spitz recounts in his exhaustive 2005 biography, "The  
> Beatles." The high-profile visit still echoes 40 years later—in, 
of  
> all places, science, for the trip popularized the notion that the  
> spiritual East has something to teach the rational West. Soon the  
> Maharishi was on Time magazine next to the line "Meditation: The  
> Answer to All Your Problems?"
> 
> 
> It wasn't. But in the late 1960s a few intrepid scientists began  
> dipping their toes into the exotic new waters to study the effects 
of  
> Transcendental Meditation (TM), which the Maharishi developed, and  
> other forms of mental training. Most of that early research "was 
just  
> not of high caliber," says B. Alan Wallace, president of the Santa  
> Barbara Institute of Consciousness Studies. "Reputable scientists  
> were told, 'We can't study that; we'll be tarred and feathered'." 
But  
> just as meditation has become as mainstream as aerobics, research 
on  
> it has achieved a respectability that astonishes those who 
remember  
> the early floundering. With neuroscientists at the University of  
> California, Davis, Wallace is leading a $1.4 million study of the  
> effects of intensive meditation on attention, cognitive function 
and  
> emotion regulation. Prestigious institutions such as the M.D.  
> Anderson Cancer Center conduct studies on how Tibetan yoga 
improves  
> sleep in patients with lymphoma, and top journals publish research 
on  
> the brain waves of Buddhist monks. Studies of meditation are more  
> than mainstream. They're expanding beyond the predictable—I mean, 
how  
> surprising is it that meditating lowers stress?—into uncharted  
> terrain, such as how different forms of meditation alter brain  
> circuits in an enduring way.
> 
> In large part, that research is making headway because it's much 
more  
> rigorous than in the early days. Then, few studies accounted for 
the  
> annoying little fact that meditators' low levels of stress might  
> reflect self-selection (maybe only mellow people chose to meditate  
> and stuck with it) rather than the practice itself. Nor did they  
> consider that the reduction in stress, blood pressure, heart rate 
and  
> other measures between the beginning and the end of a meditation  
> course might reflect the placebo effect: you expect something good 
to  
> happen, and it does. "You can't really control for that," says 
Robert  
> Schneider of Marahishi University in Iowa, a center of research on  
> TM, "but new studies come close." Although relaxation techniques 
and  
> TM both lower blood pressure, for instance, the effect of TM is 
twice  
> as big. Top hospitals from Stanford to Duke are convinced: they 
have  
> instituted meditation programs for patients suffering chronic pain  
> and other ailments.
> 
> Afraid to sully their reputations, it took three decades for  
> scientists to ask the obvious: does meditation change the brain? 
But  
> in the 1990s British psychiatrist John Teasdale became intrigued 
with  
> mindfulness meditation, a Buddhist practice in which you sit 
quietly  
> and observe whatever thoughts and perceptions arise in your  
> consciousness, but without judging them. He and colleagues showed  
> that mindfulness training halves the rate at which people treated 
for  
> depression relapse. That set the stage of studies showing that 
mere  
> thought can alter brain activity in a long-lasting way that 
benefits  
> other forms of mental illness.
> 
> Neuropsychologist Richard Davidson of the University of Wisconsin 
had  
> practiced meditation since the 1970s but didn't dare study it. 
Only  
> in the 1990s did he "come out of the closet," he says. Now 
Buddhist  
> monks and yogis trek to his lab to have their brains scanned. They  
> look different from the brains of undergraduates (but then, whose  
> doesn't?), having stronger electrical waves of the kind that knit  
> together disparate thoughts into the grand enterprise of 
consciousness.
> 
> Even in novices, meditation leaves its mark. An eight-week course 
in  
> compassion meditation, in which volunteers focus on the wish that 
all  
> beings be free from suffering, shifted brain activity from the 
right  
> prefrontal cortex to the left, a pattern associated with a greater  
> sense of well-being. And three months of intensive training (10 to 
12  
> hours a day) in mindfulness meditation had a remarkable effect on  
> attention. Usually, when something attracts your attention—in this  
> study, a number interrupting a stream of letters on a screen—it 
takes  
> the brain's attention machinery time to reset. If two numbers 
flash  
> less than 0.5 seconds apart, most people don't see the second one.  
> But after mindfulness meditation, with its focus on sharpening  
> attention, volunteers detected many more numbers, Davidson's team  
> reported this year. What happened was that the meditators used 
fewer  
> attention circuits to perceive the first number and therefore had  
> enough left over to detect the second. Meditation is still 
not "the  
> answer to all your problems," but it's having a good run unveiling  
> the brain's secrets.
>