THIS IS YOUR BRAIN...THIS IS YOUR BRAIN ON PRAYER AND MEDITATION... (1041 hits)
Study Shows How Prayer, Meditation Affect Brain Activity
The Huffington Post | By Jahnabi Barooah Posted: 10/18/2012 3:25 pm EDT Updated: 10/19/2012 12:16 pm EDT
How do prayer and meditation affect brain activity? Dr. Andrew Newberg, MD, is the Director of Research at the Myrna Brind Center for Integrative Medicine at Thomson Jefferson University Hospital and Medical College, and he has studied the neuroscientific effect of religious and spiritual experiences for decades.
In a video that recently aired on "Through the Wormhole" narrated by Morgan Freeman on the TV channel Science, Dr. Newberg explains that to study the effect of meditation and prayer on the brain, he injects his subjects with a harmless radioactive dye while they are deep in prayer / meditation. The dye migrates to the parts of the brain where the blood flow is the strongest, i.e,. to the most active part of the brain.
The image compares brain activity at rest and while the subject (a Presbyterian minister is shown in the video) is in deep prayer.
The red part indicates greater activity, and in this case, increased activity is observed in the frontal lobes and the language area of the brain. This is the part of the brain that activates during conversation, and Dr. Newberg believes that for the brain, praying to God in the Judeo-Christian tradition is similar to talking to people. "When we study Buddhist meditation where they are visualizing something, we might expect to see a change or increased activity in the visual part of the brain," Dr. Newberg said.
While observing atheists meditating or "contemplating God," Dr. Newberg did not observe any of the brain activity in the frontal lobe that he observed in religious people. The image compares brain activity at rest and while the subject is in deep meditation.
Dr. Newberg concludes that all religions create neurological experiences, and while God is unimaginable for atheists, for religious people, God is as real as the physical world. "So it helps us to understand that at least when they [religious people] are describing it to us, they are really having this kind of experience... This experience is at least neurologically real."
teach hard sis! One of the purposes of prayer and/or meditation, is to seek spiritual strength in rising above our lower self!
Sunday, November 11th 2012 at 3:45PM
Truth B. Told
Dispite this coming from a scientific point of view it goes against every day common sense. example,
IN Buddhism, meditation is to slow down the mind, and the functions of ones body to the point of not thinking at all. ...
THE MIND IS TO BECOME A BLANK SLATE SO TO SPEAK.(smile)
Thursday, April 10th 2014 at 6:47PM
ROBINSON IRMA
"I" do believe that hearing this morning about the commentof the Pope directedd at the Native-Americans can serve better to explain my comment in response to the theme of this blog...
THE POPE SAID THAT HIS MAKING A NATIVE-AMERICAN A SAINT SHOWS THAT "THESE PEOPLE ARE CLOSE TO GOD"...statements like these making different groups than one's self as not made up of individuals is the same as saying they are no t members of the human race since humans are individuals.
Buddhist as well as Buddhism is made up of many different peoples as well as different kinds of buddhist rituals...the simple "some" makes a total differents in showing something as small but major called "R-E-S-P-E-s-T"...and this conclusion on the 'atheist is even worst...
any, th emany times I have been told to my face that I am lying when I say I believe in Jesus is my rational for that one. (smile)
love this teacing moment blog of yours my beautiful almost perfect daughter...
