[MD] What is SOM?

[Krimel]

dmb said:
If the professor in my department are right, those projects require
interdisciplinary methodologies, team work across disciplines and
interpretive rather than observational skills. You also need people who can
have a mystical experience, who have some actual experience and training.

Krimel replied:
Ok, your professor it right. It does take that kind of team and that kind of
experimental subject. Here it is. In practice complete with control group:
http://psyphz.psych.wisc.edu/web/pubs/2004/meditators_synchrony.pdf Your
wishes have been granted. What do you make of it?

dmb says:
As far as I can tell everyone on that team was working within a single
discipline. Its true the half of the test subjects were expert at putting
themselves in a meditative state, but they apparently played no real role in
interpreting the data or in contributing other forms of data. Their
expertise was almost exclusively used in their role as an object of study.
If there was an interdisciplinary team there would have been a few scholars
from the humanities department, people who know the history, have read the
literature, have compared the various meditative techniques and the quality
of the experience from a first-person perspective would be fully explored. 

[Krimel]
As for the team, the first author seems to be making something of a career
out of studying meditation; I can find little or nothing about the second
and third authors but the fourth is a Buddhist monk. The last author, who is
the guy in charge of the lab, was approached by the Dalai Lama and asked to
conduct the study. Maybe his holiness was merely selecting the best from a
bad lot but I think your criticism in this respect is unfounded.

The meditative technique that was studied was the one the monks in the study
practiced. They were asked to do what it is they do. The control group was
given instructions to help them approximate what the experts did.

While a study attempting to assess first person experience may or may not be
useful, that is just not what this one was about.

[dmb]
I have to say that that was a pretty typical example of the science I've
been complaining about. "In summary", they say, "the generation of this
meditative state was associated with gamma oscillations". They can assert a
"positive correlation" between these states and the EEG readings, but any
causal relation has yet to be established. Because the tools of inquiry
within their discipline limit them to the observation of physical processes
they can only tell us that "the size of synchrony patterns increased" which
"suggests that large scale brain coordination increases" during these
states. These physical phenomena are only associated or correlated with the
experience and they are observed from without by people who aren't actually
having the experience. And scientifically there is almost nothing we can say
about how or why they are correlated. These guys are being careful NOT to
reduce the experience to a brain state. The problem here is that that this
data, all by itself, is virtually meaningless.

[Krimel]
Scientists are by their nature conservative in framing the results of their
work. They can not for example declare that experience begins as a
metaphysical unity and our study proves it. They are forced by the rules of
the game to construct clear questions with defined terms and in the end it
all turns out to be a bit boring. Endless details on artifacts in their
equipment and more than you want to know about the kinds of measurements
taken. All of this does have an aesthetic quality to it but it is definitely
an acquired takes. 

This particular study did not set out to prove anything. Variables were
stipulated, such as the age and experience of the subject but this was not
an experimental study design to show cause and effect relationships. It was
designed to look for correlations. It is hard to see why they should be
criticized for finding them.

What they found was differences in the brain activity that were positively
correlated with amount of experience with meditation. The more experienced
monks had higher levels of brain activity in certain cortical regions of the
brain than less experienced monks and control subjects. My own take on this
is that changes occurred in the newer areas of the brain where high brain
functions reside. These are regions that help integrate experience and
process the emotional content of experience. In other words higher
consciousness takes place in the higher regions of the brain.

[dmb]
If you had a pal who believed meditation was utterly meaningless, this would
make him think twice. It makes mental states seem 'real' to a hard-core
materialist, but it doesn't shed much light on the nature or meaning of such
an experience. They're looking at road trips in terms of burning gasoline.
Yes, there's no doubt that it will involve some combustion but that's just
easiest and the LEAST interesting part of it.

[Krimel]
In the tradition of science I would suggest that the present study does not
support your idea that primary experience is a unity. Rather it suggests
that the experience of unity is produced through the integration of
experience in those regions of the brain that are the most "human." 

One of the disadvantages of the scientific method is that you can not make
dogmatic statements about the meaning of reality. You have to ask meaningful
questions and take the answers seriously. Often they are not what you would
like to hear.

As for road trips, how far to you think a road trip will get if no one
considers how much gas it will take? Where will it go if no one looks at a
map, analyzes time frames and considers how many meals will be involved and
how much beer and baggies are likely to be consumed? Even in a road trip, if
those static details are not dealt with the dynamic results can be a serious
downer. We are out of gas, nothing to eat, we're down to seeds and stems and
somebody forgot the concert tickets. These details are only "interesting"
when the trip has proceeds without dealing with them. Serendipity is a
wonderful thing especially in road trips. But you can get two much of a good
thing. Hunter Thompson used to plan his like they were military campaigns. 

[dmb]
By the way, the first book in their bib (Zen and the Brain) was written by a
guy who used to teach at my school. 

[Krimel]
I almost bought that book in Boston but by the time I found it in a used
book store I had weight considerations in my luggage to deal with and it was
too big to pack.