Why Meditation And Orgasm Feel The Same To The Brain

By Riddhi Shah / Source: The Huffington Post

Spiritual teachers have been on to this for years, but research is now showing that orgasm and meditation create much the same effect in our brains.

According to a recent article in Scientific American, both meditation and orgasm decrease our sense of self-awareness.

Bliss, says author Nadia Webb, whether through the experience of meditative contemplation or through the bodily experience of sex, "shares the diminution of self-awareness, alterations in bodily perception and decreased sense of pain." In other words, both experiences lead to a temporary stoppage in the incessant flow of our internal commentary. Even if for only a few minutes, we are able to see ourselves as something other than the ego.

READ THE FULL STORY HERE...

This Is Your Brain On God

"Everyone philosophizes," writes neuroscientist Dr. Andrew Newberg in his latest book, The Metaphysical Mind: Probing the Biology of Philosophical Thought. We all speculate about the meaning of all kinds of things, from everyday concerns about dealing with a co-worker to our ultimate beliefs about the purpose of existence.

Accompanying solutions we find to these problems, there's a range of satisfied feelings, from "ah-ha" or light-bulb moments upon solving an everyday problem to ecstatic feelings during mystical experiences.

Since everyday and spiritual concerns are variations of the same thinking processes, Newberg thinks it's essential to examine how people experience spirituality in order to fully understand how their brains work. Looking at the bigger questions has already provided practical applications for improving mental and physical health.

Read the full story here...

Brain Zaps Can Trigger Lucid Dreams

Lucid dreams, in which people are aware of and can control their dreams, are rare. But now scientists have found they can induce this weird state of mind in people by zapping their brains with a specific frequency of electricity.

"I never thought this would work," said study researcher Dr. John Allan Hobson, a psychiatrist and longtime sleep researcher at Harvard University. "But it looks like it does."

The results showed that when the inexperienced dreamers were zapped with a current of 40 Hertz, 77 percent of the time these participants reported having what were described as lucid dreams.

"They were really excited," said study researcher Ursula Voss, of J.W. Goethe-University Frankfurt, who designed the experiments. "The dream reports were short, but long enough for them to report, 'Wow, all of the sudden I knew this was a dream, while I was dreaming.'"

Read the full story here...

The iBrain: The Device That's Trying to Read Stephen Hawking's Mind

By David Ewing Duncan/ Source: New York Times

Already surrounded by machines that allow him, painstakingly, to communicate, the physicist Stephen Hawking last summer donned what looked like a rakish black headband that held a feather-light device the size of a small matchbox.

Called the iBrain, this simple-looking contraption is part of an experiment that aims to allow Dr. Hawking — long paralyzed by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or Lou Gehrig's disease — to communicate by merely thinking.

The iBrain is part of a new generation of portable neural devices and algorithms intended to monitor and diagnose conditions like sleep apnea, depression and autism.

READ THE FULL STORY HERE...

The Brain Rejects Negative Thoughts

By James Gallagher / Source: BBC News

One reason optimists retain a positive outlook even in the face of evidence to the contrary has been discovered, say researchers.

A study, published in Nature Neuroscience, suggests the brain is very good at processing good news about the future.

However, in some people, anything negative is practically ignored - with them retaining a positive world view.

The authors said optimism did have important health benefits.

READ THE FULL STORY HERE...