Meditation and the Neuroscience of Consciousness: an Introduction

P1: KAE 0521857430c19 CUFX049/Zelazo 0 521 85743 0 printer: cupusbw November 6, 2006 16:32 CHAPTER 19 Meditation and the Neuroscience of Consciousness: An Introduction Antoine Lutz, John D. Dunne, and Richard J. Davidson Abstract on the brain and body of long-term practitioners. After an overview of the mecha- The overall goal of this chapter is to explore nisms of mind-body interaction, this section the initial findings of neuroscientific research addresses the use of first-person expertise, on meditation; in doing so, the chapter especially in relation to the potential for also suggests potential avenues of further research on the neural counterpart of sub- inquiry. It has three sections that, although jective experience. In general terms, the sec- integral to the chapter as a whole, may tion thus points to the possible contributions also be read independently. The first sec- of research on meditation to the neuro- tion, “Defining Meditation,” notes the need science of consciousness. The final section, for a more precise understanding of med- “Neuroelectric and Neuroimaging Correla- itation as a scientific explanandum. Argu- tes of Meditation,” reviews the most relevant ing for the importance of distinguishing the neuroelectric and neuroimaging findings of particularities of various traditions, the sec- research conducted to date, including some tion presents the theory of meditation from preliminary correlates of the previously dis- the paradigmatic perspective of Buddhism, cussed Buddhist practices. and it discusses the difficulties encountered when working with such theories. The section includes an overview of three prac- Introduction tices that have been the subject of research, and it ends with a strategy for developing This chapter discusses possible contributions a questionnaire to define more precisely a of meditation to the neurobiological study of practice under examination. The second sec- consciousness and to cognitive and affective tion, “The Intersection of Neuroscience and neurosciences in general. Empirical research Meditation,” explores some scientific moti- on meditation started in the 1950s, and as vations for the neuroscientific examination much as 1,000 publications on meditation of meditation in terms of its potential impact already exist.1 Despite such a high number 497 P1: KAE 0521857430c19 CUFX049/Zelazo 0 521 85743 0 printer: cupusbw November 6, 2006 16:32 498 the cambridge handbook of consciousness of scientific reports and inspiring theoretical wide range of practices. Thus, in a typical proposals (Austin, 1998; Shapiro & Walsh, discussion of this kind, West (1987) argues 1984; Varela, Thompson, & Rosch, 1991; that practices as diverse as the ritual dances Wallace, 2003; West, 1987), one still needs of some African tribes, the spiritual exer- to admit that little is known about the neu- cises of the desert fathers, and the tantric rophysiological processes involved in med- practices of a Tibetan adept are all forms itation and about its possible long-term of meditation. Historically, this attempt to impact on the brain. The lack of statisti- categorize diverse practices under the same cal evidence, control populations and rigor rubric reflects some intellectual trends in the of many of the early studies; the hetero- early 20th century, most especially “perenni- geneity of the studied meditative states; alism,” that argue unequivocally for a cer- and the difficulty in controlling the degree tain genre of mystical experience as the of expertise of practitioners can in part essence of religion (Proudfoot, 1985; Sharf, account for the limited contributions made 1998). From the standpoint of the neuro- by neuroscience-oriented research on medi- sciences, the problem with such a position tation. Thus, instead of providing a complete is that it begins from a set of hypotheses review of this empirical literature (Austin, that are difficult to test because they assume 1998; Cahn & Polich, 2006; Delmonte, 1984, that the common element in mystical expe- 1985; Fenwick, 1987; Holmes, 1984; Pagano rience necessarily transcends thought, lan- & Warrenburg, 1983) we choose to address guage, reason, and ordinary perception – our central question from three directions. most of which are required for any reli- The purpose of this first section is to clar- able neuroscientific procedure to test the ify conceptually what the term “meditation” hypotheses. means and to propose an operational def- In addition to the problem of unverifiable inition. We focus on Buddhist meditative hypotheses, the generic use of meditation practices as a canonical example. We pro- as applying to such a wide range of diverse vide a short presentation of the main tenets practices inevitably trivializes the practices of Buddhist psychology and epistemology, as themselves. For example, the unique tech- well as a description of the standard techniques and context of Sufi zikr must be niques used in many Buddhist practices. ignored if they are to be considered the From these standard claims, we then derive same as the Taoist practice of T’ai Chi. In the possible contributions of meditation to short, to make zikr and T’ai Chi describ- neurosciences and develop tentative propos- able with the same term, one must ignore als for a neuroscientific understanding of a good deal of what makes them radically the cognitive and affective processes that different from each other. This would be are altered by training in meditation. In the akin to the use of the word “sport” to refer last section, we review existing neuroelectric to all sports as if they were essentially the and neuroimaging findings on meditation, as same. A typical result of such an approach well as some preliminary correlates of these is the extremely general model proposed by Buddhist practices. Fischer (1971) in which all forms of meditation – exemplified by Zazen and some unspecified “Yoga” practice – fall along the 1. Defining Meditation same trophotropic scale of hypoaraousal, even though attention to the details of Although widely used, the term “medita- many Buddhist practices, including Zazen tion” is often employed in a highly impre- (Austin, 1998), makes a description in terms cise sense such that its descriptive power is of hypoarousal extremely problematic. greatly decreased. One underlying reason for An alternative approach to research on the term’s inadequacy is that, in its typical meditation is to attend more closely to the usage, it refers generically to an extremely particularity of the individual practices in P1: KAE 0521857430c19 CUFX049/Zelazo 0 521 85743 0 printer: cupusbw November 6, 2006 16:32 meditation and the neuroscience of consciousness 499 question. An apt metaphor in this case Sorting Claims and Descriptions might be the interaction between traditional medical systems and researchers seek- In emphasizing the particularity of each tra- ing to develop new pharmaceuticals. In dition’s approach to meditation, one need their search for plants whose active ingre- not discount the possibility that highly dis- dients might yield effective new medica- parate traditions may have independently tions, some researchers have begun exam- developed techniques that lead to similar ining traditional medical systems in various and measurable outcomes.2 Nevertheless, it cultures in order to narrow their search seems best not to begin with an assump- based on traditional claims about the medic- tion about any such innate similarity in inal properties of local plants (Jayaraman, disparate meditative traditions. One reason 2003; Schuster, 2001). In that collaboration, for avoiding such assumptions is the issue attention to the particularity of the heal- of particularity above, but another reason ing tradition is crucial, for it is the local is that similarities among traditions tend knowledge about specific, local plants that to appear primarily in claims about the will aid the search for new medications. ultimate meaning or nature of the state Clearly, such a project would be gravely hin- attained (e.g., “pure consciousness”) or in dered if researchers were to assume that, for metaphysically charged phenomenological example, an Amazonian healer’s traditional descriptions (e.g., ineffability) that do not herbal lore would somehow amount to the lend themselves to easy measurement or same traditional knowledge about medicinal interpretation. herbs that one would hear from a Himalayan Because similarities among traditions healer. The value of consulting a specific tra- often rest on such issues, an emphasis on dition is precisely that – through accident or those similarities tends to exaggerate a prob- expertise – the tradition may have gleaned lem that all researchers on meditation must some valuable knowledge or developed face; namely, the need to discern which some practice that is not found elsewhere. parts of a traditional account of meditation This importance of particularity supports are useful in formulating a neuroscientific the need to preserve local traditions, but it research strategy, as opposed to parts of an also speaks to the need to heed their bound- account that are not suitable for that pur- aries. A common problem with the literature pose. The problem here is the need to inter- on meditation is a tendency to ignore those pret traditional discourse about meditation, boundaries in order to emphasize some especially in terms of meditative techniques vague universality in human experience. and resultant states. In short, traditional acc- This attention to the particularity of

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