I think, therefore I am. The legendary pronouncement of philosopher René Descartes lingers as accepted wisdom in the Western world nearly four centuries after its author's death. But does thought really come first? Who actually runs the show: we, our thoughts, or the neurons firing within our brains? Walter J. Freeman explores how we control our behavior and make sense of the world around us. Avoiding determinism both in sociobiology, which proposes that persons' genes control their brains' functioning, and in (...) neuroscience, which posits that their brains' disposition is molded by chemistry and environmental forces, Freeman charts a new course--one that gives individuals due credit and responsibility for their actions. Drawing upon his five decades of research in neuroscience, Freeman utilizes the latest advances in his field as well as perspectives from disciplines as diverse as mathematics, psychology, and philosophy to explicate how different human brains act in their chosen diverse ways. He clarifies the implications of brain imaging, by which neural activity can be observed during the course of normal movements, and shows how nonlinear dynamics reveals order within the fecund chaos of brain function. (shrink)

Yoga-Sutras of Patanjali is a foundational psychological text that organizes, codifies, and systematically presents in s_tra form the psychology as practised in India around second century BCE. Its theme is to help humans free themselves from their congenital bondage due to conditioned existence and consequent suffering. The goal is to restore the person to her inherent unconditioned blissful being. The quintessence of Yoga is meditation. Meditation consists of dharana and dhyana, a contemplative state of passive attention precipitated by a prolonged (...) practice of concentration. Dhy_na practice leads to sam_dhi, a stand-still altered state in which the mind is controlled and restrained from habitual cognitive processing. This paper provides a theoretical background of Patanjali Yoga and a select review of empirical research on the neurophysiological correlates of meditation, highlighting on the one hand some of its methodological shortcomings and conceptual problems and suggesting on the other hand the areas of promise for further research on meditation. (shrink)

Despite the growing interest in the neurobiological correlates of meditation, most research has omitted to take into account the underlying philosophical aspects of meditation and its wider implications. This, in turn, is reflected in issues surrounding definition, study design, and outcomes. Here, I highlight the often ignored but important aspect of definition in the existing scholarship on neuroscience and meditation practice. For a satisfactory account of a neuroscience of meditation, we must aim to retrieve an operational definition that is inclusive (...) of a traditional ontological description as well as the modern neurocognitive account of the phenomena. Moving beyond examining the effects of meditation practice, to take a potential step forward in the direction to establish how meditation works, it becomes crucial to appraise the philosophical positions that underlie the phenomenology of meditation in the originating traditions. This endeavor may challenge our intuitions and concepts in either directions, but issues pertaining to definition, design, and validity of response measures are extremely important for the evolution of the field and will provide a much-needed context and framework for meditation based interventions. (shrink)