Actually, I'd say it is the other way around. Some forms of meditation, such as breath meditation, are basically exercises in concentration/decisiveness/judment/sticking with an intention: one trains oneself to stick with one topic (such as the breath) for the allotted time, and whenever the mind wanders off to another topic, one brings it back to the chosen topic.
One of the purposes of meditation is to calm the mind, because it is only with a calm mind that one can make wise decisions. As you yourself have experienced. But there is a lot more to meditation than just calming the mind. Then perhaps you should read up on things a bit. For example, a short Dhamma talk (also in audio).
I was referring to the supposed benefits of the increased gyrification. Evidence Builds That Meditation Strengthens the Brain: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120314170647.htm "...Presumably then, the more folding that occurs, the better the brain is at processing information, making decisions, forming memories and so forth."
Some meditators say that training the mind is much like training muscles - there are visible, measurable results. With muscles, as you train and train properly, you become faster/stronger/more flexible along with there occuring changes in muscle tissue and metabolism. With all that, you can train even better and accomplish even more in terms of exercise, while there are also other beneficial results of the training. Arguably, the brain is on principle like that, too. But studies as the one you link to sometimes lead people to conclude that all one needs in order to process information faster etc. is to have an "improved" brain - regardless of how that improvement has come about, whether by meditation, pills, surgery or some other way, as if the way the improvement has come about does not matter. And I'll argue that the way the improvement has come about does matter.
Oh, so that's what's on topic -- its connection to such? I'm more interested in if the practice generates any brain structure changes, which would be evidence that it's more than just passive, therapeutic introspection. I guess I'm an apa-meditativist or something in regard to the other: Couldn't care less. Another notorious indifference to add to the rest of my baleful collection (or so I've been told in regard to the latter).
No, CC, you're on topic, or close enough. My original question was: In reference to the old Sci Writer post I found "The Presence'. I mean for this thread to be open-ended, and I like the way you're going with it, I guess I was just having a rant in referring to the Judaeo-Christian Sky Fairy, excuse me. I try to studiously ignore the god botherers on this forum, but I guess I had just been reading something of their nonsense somewhere else. If I have any opinion on this topic, it is that meditation has patently nothing to do with any mystical mumbo-jumbo. Wynn, talk of Buddhism and the dharma is fine, that's not god-bothering at all. I am glad to read anything you want to say on that topic, but yeah, mostly I hope this thread will be a scientific and clinical look at meditation, and perhaps prayer, if that's even possible... Thanks everyone.
I just heard a door slam over at the creation institute. I like this idea a lot. We don't think of machines this way since they don't manufacture their own parts in order to adapt. Tie that in with systemic behaviors of components in an organism and ouila, the soup's ready. There are so many things going on at so many levels. What you're talking about here is mutation on top of a platform of interactive components. The mutation brings a certain loss of functionality affecting certain components and decoupling them somehow. But then there is a gain of some degree of freedom for the system to reconfigure its architecture. The new set of choices has a wider spread in terms of permutations because there are more independent elements spanning the range of possible configurations. Even if only one new permutation opened up, if it happens to correspond to a viable niche, natural selection will usher it in. What a concept. You're right, it's very counter-intuitive, but also very elegant. It fits your idea of "sudden endowment" nicely, too, since it operates at the level of reconfiguration, which presumably could produce drastic results. Endosymbiosis might dovetail with this. It shares the notion of initiating "sudden endowment" in regard to the origin of certain ancestral organelles. If lower functions that support the organelle were broken in this way, by decoupling the signaling and adding some degree of freedom to reconfigure some component of the organelle, it might explain cell complexity in a whole new light. Good analogy, since it casts people in functional roles, and to that degree their organization can be modeled as a system. And of course we see it unfolding around us so it's highly intuitive. It also conveys the idea that specialization can occur in any level of a hierarchy that has some elements of a system architecture. I think that's another aspect of "sudden endowment" that this explanation offers. I also think it helps explain the way colonial metazoa specialize. It's also very appropriate because they tend to use proteins for signaling. One of the early results of this is the emergence of sexual reproduction and a quick and easy way to scramble DNA without wrecking it. The colonial forms like the one below managed to use the same protein to stick together. Because they are becoming something different than lone choanocytes, that there is the emergence of group behavior, there may be a tendency to view this with some degree of religiosity or superstition. Presumably this is just one higher level of the hierarchy for a system, and perhaps the mechanism you described accounts for how this particular protein enables such higher complexity. All of this is directed at the OP merely from the observation that the only apparent purpose of signaling among neurons in certain parts of the brain is signaling itself. Such functionality may or may not be genetically linked to colonial ancestors such as choanocytes. Nerves evidently played a role in elevating the metazoans into true animals so there's a plausible timeframe for the genetic connection to arise. If anything what you've said brings me back to how or why these pulses are flying around in or heads. For organisms, the medium might not be the message, but it certainly is old. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
