unlocking your meditation potential (neuroscience)

[Fruiteloop]

Meditation is difficult because we get distractions.

We always feel the impulse to do something or get away from something.

The orbital cortex is what makes it so we value an action or thing.

The polar cortex is what allows us step back from ourselves to calmly adjust to stimuli and situations internal and external.

The polar cortex inhibits the reactions we have to avoid or approach things and become neutral yet aware.

The ACC (anterior cingulate cortex) then relaxes to stop seeing errors everywhere.

This allows the DLPFC (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex) to stop following rigid rules freeing up working memory.

The TPJ (temporal parietal junction) which is the radar of the vision system then is controlled to stop us from switching tasks and focus on what is at hand.

After a while we begin to have synchrony of gamma waves.

In advance meditative states practitioners can increase gamma waves to 200 time above baseline of normal control groups.

A person can begin to increase gamma wave activity by what is known as open monitoring, accepting all stimuli coming in but not reacting to it.

This makes the polar cortex thicker and stronger in deactivation of error signals, increasing working memory, revaluation of stimuli and reducing task switching.

The calmness of inducing open monitoring will boost gamma wave synchrony reducing stress, and tension in the body.

This is also good for physiological awareness inside the body to control unconscious processes.

Impermanence is what happens when we know stimuli is temporary so we become less averse to it and less attached to it. Bliss becomes possible.

 

[Akar]

What do you think about the Goldman equation and the Nernst equation? I think the relationship between the concentration gradient and the voltage gradient is a pretty cool analogy, don't you think?


-Giammarco

 

[Fruiteloop]

What do you think about the Goldman equation and the Nernst equation? I think the relationship between the concentration gradient and the voltage gradient is a pretty cool analogy, don't you think?


-Giammarco

I had to look those up.

Action potentials as to the sodium potassium pumps I am unfamiliar how they work mathematically.

What I do know is that when I took magnesium as a supplement I found out that it is used by neurons to keep calcium balanced inside and outside the membrane of the synapse. The just right amount for it to function properly.

So it is important to have magnesium in the brain.

L-threonate is a type of magnesium that passes the blood brain barrier. I took some and it reduced my anxiety by half.

 

[Asa]

Walking meditation is much more effective for me. My bestie is big into meditation and told me how to do it. I was already doing it naturally, so I went in that direction. With practices like meditation, IMO, it is best not to force it. A method that works for one person may not work for another.

 

[John K]

I find that distractions are very annoying but also very important. It’s easy for me to slip into putting my ego centre stage in meditation, instead of it being just one part of a team. Distractions help me to experience very firmly that I’m much more than what I’m conscious of at any one time. And that in my meditation, it’s not really my ego that makes a lot of the running.

I don’t know if it’s like this for others?

 

[Fruiteloop]

Walking meditation is much more effective for me. My bestie is big into meditation and told me how to do it. I was already doing it naturally, so I went in that direction. With practices like meditation, IMO, it is best not to force it. A method that works for one person may not work for another.

I walk every day but I think too much well doing so.

Someone told me to do walking meditation you need to walk slow.

I think if you walk at the right pace you can pay attention in the right way I suppose?

I find that distractions are very annoying but also very important. It’s easy for me to slip into putting my ego centre stage in meditation, instead of it being just one part of a team. Distractions help me to experience very firmly that I’m much more than what I’m conscious of at any one time. And that in my meditation, it’s not really my ego that makes a lot of the running.

I don’t know if it’s like this for others?

I had to go to the food stamps office today and I waited for 3 hours.

Not that it was unpleasant this time but in the past I had bad anxiety being alone in such places.

Since I been going out more I have calmed down somewhat, just sitting and focussing on my body.

I listened to an old music collection a few hours ago and I felt the music more than it had been before with its volume and clarity.

I think that what has been happening to me in meditation is that I have these ideas that keeps me on track.

That is to be non reactive, to self monitor the body and senses to not be board, and to stay centered between the left and right side of me.

Keeping them in mind I can relax more, have less thoughts and not move / fidget more than necessary.

Because I was forced to do nothing at the food stamps office today these techniques worked really good as a practice.

That is the reason I believe the music was more loud and clear than usual.

The idea of non reactivity helped keep me still and hear the music expand and amplify in me. And listen to it on both sides of my body.

 

[Fruiteloop]

The way the brain works, it is both a filter and a mirror.

Everything is pulling on everything else.

The neurons are trying to remain stable with inputs coming in.

If the brain matches the input with a corollary signal this is called predictive coding.

That is why extraversion happens I believe, the brain matches the inputs.

Only relevant signals get to the top because they were not predicted.

But as more is learned we predict more, at the neuron level.

This creates a more dynamic experience because we notice more as denser connection form.

 

[John K]

The way the brain works, it is both a filter and a mirror.

Everything is pulling on everything else.

The neurons are trying to remain stable with inputs coming in.

If the brain matches the input with a corollary signal this is called predictive coding.

That is why extraversion happens I believe, the brain matches the inputs.

Only relevant signals get to the top because they were not predicted.

But as more is learned we predict more, at the neuron level.

This creates a more dynamic experience because we notice more as denser connection form.

View attachment 102897

This is a view that is very personal to me, but I'll share it in case it's of use to anyone else. It is that I have a strong resistance to relating meditation experience primarily to brain states - our psyches are multi-layered and for me the lower, more physical layers, have no serious explanatory impact on much that happens at the higher levels. To relate to and analyse my meditation experience from my brain states is a bit like trying to explain the significance of this thread, or my WhatsApp chats for instance, by looking at the electrical signals going through the circuits of my iPhone or my laptop.

For me, my brain is simply a vehicle rather than the source, which is, in part, intangible and emergent. I'm quite happy for anyone to look for explanations of psychological states and conscious experience at brain activity level, and I fully expect that sort of approach to deliver new insights of a profound nature - but for me this will always leave out essentials that cannot be induced bottom up, but are always independent existentially from what they are layered upon.

Of course, physical dysfunction in the brain can have a profound impact of how it works, including our meditation experience. But it's important to me to separate categorically (for example) the concepts of a faulty car from the journey I'm trying to make with it.

 

[Fruiteloop]

I think @John K that what you mentioned in that layers exist, then to what the brain does and you cannot tell anything else besides, that if you want to explain what is happening you just need to know what those layers are.

Except for the environmental influences the internal structures and some chemical dynamics follow a strictly physical process we do not see in creatures non human. We have for example language and we have long term memories that depend on these layers functioning as to build up upon themselves like building a foundation. Humans are also social creatures so the brain layers begin as they do with babies and inputting into them "programing" them which what they have at the start until they can be self sufficiency. Only when we have self sufficiency and this dynamic can be explained by loops in the brain as a certain way of modeling the self can we say that we are in the driver's seat so to speak.

It is not just a single "state" it is a whole system of self modeling that is at play. Without self modeling loops you do not get self awareness in such a way as to know you exist and understand how to direct yourself. Take that away your become useless as a baby again. Memories then are essential to these loops becoming more and more complex which I have recently looked into why they form and why we do not override each other. They do form layers chemically as to novel experiences or they fade away but some are integrated into the old memories. It seems that language is a way for the brain to guide itself because animals like us cannot interpret things in psychological way otherwise.

I think that just as we have good and bad experiences what we tell ourselves can shape these layers and made either good or bad models of who we think we are. What we think about who we are can drive us to become more what we think we are. (meditation is supposed to reduce any thoughts good or bad but this still creates a kind of self)

Like how in the movie inside out, the girl had more and more anxiety until she formed a self that kept telling her she was not good enough.

So we can shape who we are by reinforcement. That reinforcement as to mediation is supposed to make a self model that has less anxiety.

Self model ok​

self model anxiety​

 

[Fruiteloop]

@John K

And extraversion is not a state in the normal sense of just a momentary temporary thing that fades away.

It exists because of how we take things in or block things out. At the systems level of the whole self model.

 

[John K]

Only when we have self sufficiency and this dynamic can be explained by loops in the brain as a certain way of modeling the self can we say that we are in the driver's seat so to speak.

It is not just a single "state" it is a whole system of self modeling that is at play. Without self modeling loops you do not get self awareness in such a way as to know you exist and understand how to direct yourself. Take that away your become useless as a baby again. Memories then are essential to these loops becoming more and more complex which I have recently looked into why they form and why we do not override each other. They do form layers chemically as to novel experiences or they fade away but some are integrated into the old memories. It seems that language is a way for the brain to guide itself because animals like us cannot interpret things in psychological way otherwise.

This is where I prefer to take a different perspective, though I respect all the various viewpoints because there are still a lot of unknowns in understanding how consciousness can be. For example, for me there is a philosophical gulf between how the brain stores memories and how I consciously experience them. My memory of a spectacular and almost sacred moonrise across a dead calm Antarctic bay surrounded by snow covered mountains and small icebergs bears no relationship to the electro-chemical means by which I processed that experience and stored it in memory. Nor is the way I retrieve and re-experience that as a memory, with all its emotional tones, anything like the way it is stored and brought back to my consciousness. For me, the electro-chemistry is a near miraculous way of storing, maintaining and accessing that memory, but it cannot express how I experience it subjectively.

But I have very little knowledge of the details of neurology and the science surrounding it. There is a lot written about the so called 'hard problem' scientifically and philosophically of explaining how consciousness and the self-experience of it can be. Are there any new developments that are closer to relating how physical processes can explain how I experience and can reflect on my own existence? How I can say 'I' and both know and feel what that means?

 

[Fruiteloop]

This is where I prefer to take a different perspective, though I respect all the various viewpoints because there are still a lot of unknowns in understanding how consciousness can be. For example, for me there is a philosophical gulf between how the brain stores memories and how I consciously experience them. My memory of a spectacular and almost sacred moonrise across a dead calm Antarctic bay surrounded by snow covered mountains and small icebergs bears no relationship to the electro-chemical means by which I processed that experience and stored it in memory. Nor is the way I retrieve and re-experience that as a memory, with all its emotional tones, anything like the way it is stored and brought back to my consciousness. For me, the electro-chemistry is a near miraculous way of storing, maintaining and accessing that memory, but it cannot express how I experience it subjectively.

But I have very little knowledge of the details of neurology and the science surrounding it. There is a lot written about the so called 'hard problem' scientifically and philosophically of explaining how consciousness and the self-experience of it can be. Are there any new developments that are closer to relating how physical processes can explain how I experience and can reflect on my own existence? How I can say 'I' and both know and feel what that means?

Yes the experience is different from the way it is stored. (the hard problem)

What I only am saying is that when we develop the brain changes to accommodate the new way of having a psychology.

Teenages for example have less developed frontal lobes with white matter being a key component to the speed at which it operates.

When the white matter is thicker then what they have learned to do faster is done faster.

I simply relate this to extraversion in the way I do because it need some kind of explanation for why it exists.

My explanation why it exists does not need to be perfect, I just understand it the way I do for now and better when I get more information.

Without a form of regulation the brain heat up to much and die from sieziers, we keep ourselves stable by inhibitory cells.

Thus we could say when the brain takes in more sensory signals it is actively trying to model them as fast as possible.

When they are doing the opposite then something else is happening in introversion that blocks out signal for a replacement of internal ones.

Meditation could be about internal or external signals but the brain tries to do things with the least effort and why the parts necessary for meditation take so much effort to grow them to pay attention to signals we don't usually follow.

I for example have had a hard time with external sensory data because I don't pay attention to it.

It may be easy for some people but not me. I have to grow those connections to pay attention more to it.

In my head I am always thinking too much.

I just happen to know that this is where my attention goes and is not the same for everyone.

So to me I thought too much about why brains do what they do, it happens that my brain wired itself to pay attention to the things it does.

That the white matter has formed fast connections to those attention areas and I am trying to change them. To make myself better.

 

[John K]

Yes the experience is different from the way it is stored. (the hard problem)

What I only am saying is that when we develop the brain changes to accommodate the new way of having a psychology.

Teenages for example have less developed frontal lobes with white matter being a key component to the speed at which it operates.

When the white matter is thicker then what they have learned to do faster is done faster.

I simply relate this to extraversion in the way I do because it need some kind of explanation for why it exists.

My explanation why it exists does not need to be perfect, I just understand it the way I do for now and better when I get more information.

Without a form of regulation the brain heat up to much and die from sieziers, we keep ourselves stable by inhibitory cells.

Thus we could say when the brain takes in more sensory signals it is actively trying to model them as fast as possible.

When they are doing the opposite then something else is happening in introversion that blocks out signal for a replacement of internal ones.

Meditation could be about internal or external signals but the brain tries to do things with the least effort and why the parts necessary for meditation take so much effort to grow them to pay attention to signals we don't usually follow.

I for example have had a hard time with external sensory data because I don't pay attention to it.

It may be easy for some people but not me. I have to grow those connections to pay attention more to it.

In my head I am always thinking too much.

I just happen to know that this is where my attention goes and is not the same for everyone.

So to me I thought too much about why brains do what they do, it happens that my brain wired itself to pay attention to the things it does.

That the white matter has formed fast connections to those attention areas and I am trying to change them. To make myself better.

Your exploration is very interesting and valid. It's fascinating to come both top down and bottom up on the way our minds work and approach the mysterious bit in the middle from both ends - it's just that I tend to come top down myself.

Have you read any of the neurologist Oliver Sack's books? They are really interesting explorations of the relationship between physical brain and subjective experience. I think in a way his approach is a bit like Jung's was on psychology - they both explored how we work by seeing the results of pathological problems in real-life patients.

 

[Fruiteloop]

Your exploration is very interesting and valid. It's fascinating to come both top down and bottom up on the way our minds work and approach the mysterious bit in the middle from both ends - it's just that I tend to come top down myself.

For what I am doing both are required.

The overall understanding of people at the most complex level (agentcy)

And why this is possible from the construction of a system (brain development / structure).

Since I was 12 I looked at it from how the construct formed because of the books I was exposed to.

There were no psychology books in the middle school library exactly, no anthropology or anything you could say that were from the 60s or 70's

I only took notice of those kinds of books when I realized that social science is required to model groups not just individuals.

Have you read any of the neurologist Oliver Sack's books? They are really interesting explorations of the relationship between physical brain and subjective experience. I think in a way his approach is a bit like Jung's was on psychology - they both explored how we work by seeing the results of pathological problems in real-life patients.

No, but did his book Awakening become that movie with Robin Williams in it? I saw that movie but did not read his books.

 

[John K]

No, but did his book Awakening become that movie with Robin Williams in it? I saw that movie but did not read his books.

I haven't read the book, but I've seen the film which is based on it. I gather the book deals with many cases while the film concentrates on just one.

One of his books, Hallucinations, intrigues me - it seems to tread along and either side of the fine line between how we experience reality and unreality. As with all his work, it looks at physical states that relate to the experiences.

 

[President of Canada]

I am sorry for being such a beginner, but I was wondering if anyone has tips for reaching a meditative state. I find it difficult to quiet my worries and fears. I have tried things like focusing on an object in the room, but I remain unsuccessful.

 

[Fruiteloop]

I am sorry for being such a beginner, but I was wondering if anyone has tips for reaching a meditative state. I find it difficult to quiet my worries and fears. I have tried things like focusing on an object in the room, but I remain unsuccessful.

Something happened to me yesterday.

I was walking to the store and I looked at things far away.

Usually I am adverse to looking at wide open spaces, I look at the ground as I think.

If something is difficult for you to do then it is because you are not relaxed enough around it.

This could be because of a tensition you feel being next to it and if that is the case then you could try relaxation techniques.

The point being is to get your mind off those worries and fears and to train yourself to be relaxed so you can relieve the tenstion.

One thing is that if you want to be relaxed you need to be safe. Then you can search inside yourself for what feels off.

You could breath as and example or listen to music whatever it is that makes you have more of a chance to look at yourself and relax.