September 29, 2003 – American researchers trying to unravel the secret of the benefits of meditation received an invaluable boost from Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, when he offered them the participation of his Buddhist monks .
The leader of this study, Professor Richard Davidson, claims that these monks are the “Olympic gold medalists” in meditation.
It was in 1992 that the Dalai Lama, having heard of the research carried out by Doctor Davidson, contacted him to make him this offer. Shortly after, Doctor Davidson and his team landed in northern India to get the project going. Over the next 10 years, dozens of monks traveled to the scientist’s lab in Wisconsin to undergo a whole host of tests.
Dr. Davidson’s initial hypothesis assumes that an individual’s emotional personality is a factor, at least in part, of the relative strength of the two components of his prefrontal cortex: the left side, which is associated with positive emotions, and the right side, which is more likely to be associated with negative emotions. The “domination” of one party over the other would partially explain why different individuals handle the same situation differently.
To test this hypothesis, Doctor Davidson and his colleagues asked the monks, as well as a group of volunteers who had been taught Buddhist meditation, to look at a series of unpleasant images, such as that of a mutilated body or that of a severed hand. At the same time, the researchers measured the brain activity of their subjects using an electroencephalogram.
The results of this study have not yet been made public, but Dr. Davidson revealed, informally, to have detected in one of the monks a level of activity in the left prefrontal cortex exceeding that of the other 175 participants.
Jean-Benoit Legault – PasseportSanté.net
From The New York Times; September 14, 2003.
