Meditation, Alzheimer's disease and Migraines

If we 'google' Alzheimer's and mindfulness meditation, we will get a dozen articles about the benefits of this practice in the slowing of the fateful disease. Should we meditate to elude the prospect of dementia in our late years? Certainly not, for two reasons.

Let's look at the first one. Everything that defines a person as a specific individual and everything that person knows and can do is encoded in the brain. Such code is his or her software. The brain itself, following with the technological comparison, is his or her hardware. It is in this hardware where the Alzheimer's disease seems to inflict the pernicious damage that leads to the malfunctioning of the whole hardware/software complex.  

Since the end of the 20TH century, numerous studies -the earliest with Buddhist monks, the most recent with meditation apprentices-that have revealed remarkable changes in the brain, as results from the intensive exercise of mental silence. Some researchers have detected significant increases in neuronal activity in certain areas. Others, more striking, reported physical changes to the concentration of grey matter. Such finds are not surprising since the brain is the control of everything, whether intellectual activity or meditative passivity.

A pilot project at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston in 2013 suggests that the brain changes associated with meditation practice may contribute to slowing the upsurge of the cognitive disorders related to Alzheimer's disease and other dementias.

"This was a small study... but we're very excited about the initial findings because they suggest that mindfulness based practices may reduce hippocampal atrophy and improve functional connectivity in the areas of the brain most affected by Alzheimer's disease”, says project lead author Dr. Rebecca Erwin Wells.

The optimism is an obvious consequence of the scientific eagerness to soon find solutions to such serious condition. It should be stressed, however, that the American Alzheimer Association acknowledges the current science ignorance about the cause of the disease. Some plaques and tangles in the neural fibers of patients are the main suspects of the death of affected cells and the loss of tissue in the brain. The illness seems then to originate in physical damages and not as a problem of neuronal connectivity.

Through comprehension tests and observations of behavior, doctors may conjecture that the dementia of a patient may come from Alzheimer's, but it is only his or her autopsy what will confirm unequivocally that the person suffered from this terrible evil. The changes detected by instruments on meditators' brains are not sufficient to establish that a soft treatment such as meditation will prevent a disease whose unequivocal presence will only be known after death. In consequence, the potential delaying of the Alzheimer's disease does not seem to be a good enough motivation to start meditating.

Let's review the second reason. We should never have expectations when we close our eyes and favor mental silence, because any illusory desire arising will become part of the noise that we want to silence. We must not even pursue the elimination of anxiety or stress, the prime movers of countless psychosomatic ailments.

With much humor, S. N. Goenka (1924-2013), the great promoter of the Vipassana technique for mindfulness meditation, chronicled the sequence of his own learning, which he received directly from U Ba Khin, a lay sage from Myanmar. Master Goenka recounted that his first approach to Ba Khin originated from some devastating migraines that he suffered and that would heal, as someone had advised him, through meditation. When he explained that this was his motivation to attend the Vipassana retreat, the rejection he got was categorical. "A migraine is not sufficient reason to meditate," said the Burmese sage.

Shortly afterwards, Master Goenka understood the message. The experience he went through during his first retreat, to the fortune of millions of people, led to the progressive creation of the one hundred and seventy Vipassana Meditation Centers that there exist today around the planet.

The picture of our eventual dementia is, without any doubt, terrifying. But if, in your particular case, dear reader, the prevention of Alzheimer's is your motivation to meditate, it will probably be a waste of your time. Neither should you start meditating because you suffer from migraines. Approaching meditation, determinedly and uninterestedly, all your psychosomatic ailments will go away, headaches included... And so, at the right time.

Gustavo Estrada
Author de ‘INNER HARMONY trough MINDFULNESS MEDIATATION’
@gustrada1

Absolutism and Groupthink

The propensity towards corruption of undisputed authority and the tendency to dysfunctional decisions of very cohesive groups are facts recognized by sociologists and psychologists. Both phenomena have been carefully studied by academia. The problems of any society worsen when the two trends are combined in one single scenario.

Let us talk first about absolutism. Since no ruler would accept that his or her behavior were analyzed by scientists, social psychologists Joris Lammers and Adam Galinsky, among others, have recurred to studies with volunteers who have been previously primed as powerful (power prime​d) and brought to act in artificial situations where they may exercise categorical authority.

Priming techniques include, among many, the self-affirming repetition of phrases such as 'I am the one in command', or the reliving of past circumstances in which participants had full control of events. During Insight II, a motivational workshop which this columnist attended years ago, the facilitators played ‘Gonna Fly Now’, the Rocky film’s musical hit, when they wanted to grow the participants' sense of authority. When we, participants, heard 'Gonna Fly Now´ we felt, I must confess, really empowered to immediately perform with much energy the assigned tasks. We were indeed primed for power.

In one of the simulations led by Drs. Lammers and Galinsky, participants had to rate both their own behavior and that of third parties, based on an ethical scale from one (totally immoral) to nine (totally acceptable) in a large number of entries. The test results showed not only negative influence of power in ethical conduct but also that the owners of authority tend to judge others with a moral stick stricter than that with which they measure themselves. The weak -the unprimed- in contrast, applied similar metrics both to judge themselves as to measure the powerful. According to Dr. Galinsky, power inclines  those who have it toward either the breaking of the rules or toward their free interpretation  so that they may manipulate evidence to suit their purposes.

​​​​The seco​​nd problem around excessive leadership comes from the so-called groupthink, a social anomaly, though its denomination entails a positive connotation. Groupthink is an abnormal way of acting in which the members of a group, seeking to maintain unanimous agreement, tend to close their eyes to indisputable realities and ignore reasonable courses of action. The cohesive groups that always appear around the powerful -the devoted to the cause, the faithful servants of the leader, the beneficiaries of the autocratic system- are particularly prone to this behavior.

Back in the seventies, American psychologist Irving Janis documented in detail the causes and symptoms of groupthink . Causes include the homogeneity of the group (political, social, religious ...), the spontaneous or directed isolation from external sources of information and the authoritarian leadership of the ruler in control -the subject of this note.  Symptoms are, among others, the blind belief in the morality of the group, the indiscriminate disqualification of those who do not belong to it, the pressure to 'straighten' the disloyal, and the censorship of ideas deviating from consensus.

​The scientific study of the harms of groupthink is limited by the implicit difficulty to quantify subjective factors. Despite this limitation, the detrimental impact of groupthink is clear and examples abound. Two outstanding contemporary fiascos originated in groupthink environments are the American invasion to Iraq without conclusive evidence to justify it and the concentration of modern physics research over the past three decades in the so-called string theory, a field with questionable scientific future.

It is thus evident that strong leaders with unconditional followers cause major damage to any society or group. Those in power who skillfully manipulate their players to win their loyalty would result most damaging in any circumstance. Nothing can be as socially harmful as a corrupted control with majority support.

For this reason the reelection of authoritarian rulers with high electoral capital, whether legitimate or negotiated, is as inconvenient as risky. Such reelections -some of peoples, other of dynasties- so fashionable in the 21st century Latin America, are already showing their unfortunate consequences in this region.

Gustavo Estrada
Author of ‘INNER HARMONY through MINDFULNESS MEDITATION’
www.harmonypresent.com ​​

Sounds and Silences

There are times when we want to focus on something—reading a text, listening to a presentation, doing a complicated task—and, without even noticing, our mind flies off in a different direction. We then send us encouraging messages, I'm attentive! I must not wander! Come on! But soon distractions are back in the game and beat us again. Our brain lacks modules to command mental concentration, in the way it gives instructions to initiate more simple things as making a phone call or going out to lunch.

Focusing on something is inhibiting all interfering signals; digressions result from surrendering to such signals. Concentration therefore does not result from the excitation of neuronal circuits that keep us tuned to the task of the moment but from inhibiting the distracting signals fired randomly by our mental conditioning—the preferences and dislikes—sown on us by media and culture. The neural mechanisms that command actions are known as excitatory circuits; those which stop tasks are called inhibitory circuits. The latter are as important as the former and the balance between the two is crucial to our performance.

Are there exercises to improve concentration? Yes, and they are helpful: Practicing hatha yoga, staying still for long periods, identifying differences in two similar pictures... Because of the way it works, however, mindfulness meditation is the best way to improve concentration.

Once motionless, silent and with mouth and eyes closed, the meditator leaves with no job, for the duration of the practice, the brain circuits that drive motion, and that manage the functions of talking, eating and seeing; leaving such circuits with no duty is inhibiting their work. For example, just by closing our eyes, we are silencing one fifth of our neurons; vision is one of the functions with highest demand of brain-power.

Readers may get a rough idea of the functioning of the inhibitory mechanisms by focusing their attention for a few seconds on the contact areas of their skin with their clothes, or of their body with the chair where they are sitting. With practice and time, people will detect much more subtle signals than those resulting from physical contact.

In the rotation of attention around the body and in the perception of sensations commonly ignored, meditators exercises their inhibitory circuits, forcing them to a continuous on/off switching mode during the whole session. This repeated activation/deactivation of neuronal circuits is equivalent to the successive tension/release of tendons and muscle fibers during physical exercise.

Inhibitory mechanisms are charged with maintaining human consciousness free from irrelevant information that diverts it from the successful completion of the task at hand. The exercise of these mechanisms leads to a substantial increase in our ability to concentrate.

Do other forms of meditation lead to similar improvements? Yes, although on a smaller scale. With continued exercise of mindfulness, the meditator reaches a state of pleasant silence without pursuing it. It is not so with other meditation approaches that appease the busy mind with whimsical tricks. For example, there are practices, such as transcendental meditation, that include verbal or mental repetition of mantras or sacred words that inevitably block the ‘unsearched’ arrival of pure mental silence. In mindfulness meditation there are no chants, essences, pictures or sounds... Even the word 'silence', when pronounced, produces noise.

"In any interpretation,” I heard a master guitarist saying, "sounds are as important as silences." It is similar for brain activity. This virtuous musician added that, during his rehearsals, his attention always focuses on both notes and pauses, that is, sounds and silences. Our frantic daily routine prevents us from listening to the screams of our mind and, even less, does not leave room to pay attention to its infrequent moments of calm.

Mindfulness is the permanent observation of sounds and silences in our head. Mindfulness meditation is, in turn, the workout of inhibitory circuits that, once strengthened, stop unnecessary noise. Concentration then becomes a natural and spontaneous activity which does not require willpower.

Gustavo Estrada
Autor de ‘Hacia el Buda desde el occidente’
http://www.harmonypresent.com/

Could Robots Meditate?

Mindfulness meditation is a concentration exercise during which meditators observe, attentively, impartially and detachedly, their breathing, their sensations or their mental states. A modern robot is a computerized machine that can autonomously do the job of a person.

The word 'robot', coined by Isaac Asimov in 1941, was the exclusive domain of fantasy until a few decades ago. However, with the extraordinary scientific developments of the 21st century, intelligent machines invaded all fields of human activity and are now performing tasks never dreamed of before. Could modern robots meditate?

Three decades ago the word 'robot' used to bring to my head R2-D2, the friendly automat of ‘Star Wars'. Nowadays I immediately associate the same word with the prodigious Google driverless car. When I see the videos about this equipment in Internet, I must pinch myself to assimilate that, unlike R2-D2, the Google car is not science fiction and that it will be of common use in less than a decade. This is why I use its features to discuss the subject of this note.

According to Sridhar Lakshmanan, an expert in driverless vehicles, a truly autonomous car demands three components: (1) a global positioning system (GPS), (2) a system for the recognition of the surroundings of the auto, and (3) a super-software that, by integrating the two previous functions, coordinates the implementation of the equivalent work that otherwise a driver would perform.

To start the trip, the passenger, using an intelligent phone, reports his or her destination to the car. Component 1, the GPS, locates the current position while a proven satellite imagery technology, available for quite some time now, plans the requested route. Once the start and end points have been located, component 2, a set of radars, cameras and lasers, enters the action for a 360-degree continuous monitoring throughout the whole trip.

The recognition system exercises a level of ‘mindfulness’ that a human being could hardly perform. Component 2 discerns every minute detail on the four sides of the vehicle, unceasingly checking everything that moves (cars, cyclists, people, workers on the way...) and everything that is static (parked cars, traffic lights, signs, posts…). The super-software is the component 3 that replaces the driver, which, at the end of the route, it even reminds passengers for they not to forget their belongings as they step out from the car.

Could a Google car meditate? To answer this it is necessary to clarify the word 'meditation' since it has many variations. Obviously, such sophisticated machine could well make us to believe that it is meditating with one of the many existing approaches by, for example, repeating loudly 'powerful' mantras, visibly counting the beads of a rosary (a mala), displaying in panels its work to decipher impenetrable paradoxes (koans), or singing sacred chants in Sanskrit.  

However, as an electronic device does not work with neuronal signals and lacks biological qualities (breathing, sensations, mental states ...) to focus on, the farthest Google cars could go to convince us that they are practicing mindfulness meditation would be to stay quiet and still, with their radars, lasers and cameras off. A casual observer would never think that the device is meditating but that it is out of service.

Both the question of this note and its answers are naive: A robot will never make us believe that it is practicing meditation, of any kind and, even less, mindfulness meditation. It must be emphasized, however, that robots, by design, cannot get distracted, unless they are broken, and, consequently, any exercise to improve their concentration skills is meaningless and adds nothing to their capacities.

At the very moment that a Google car diverted from its job, an accident will occur. A robot at work must always remain ‘attentive and conscious': The machine is either focused on performing the task of the moment or it is off, at rest. It is us, humans -not they, the robots- who have to practice mindfulness meditation, hoping that our concentration skills improve, as it actually occurs. Taking further the parallel of people versus Google cars, we should always be either focused (actively on) while awake, or asleep (turned off) as we rest. Mindfulness meditation does help us to carry out both tasks properly.

Gustavo Estrada
Author of ‘INNER HARMONY through MINDFULNESS MEDITATION’
www.harmonypresent.com

Fanaticism and equanimity

Last June the Government of Libya announced that Mokhtar Belmokhtar, founder of the Islamist group Al-Mourabitoun and brain of the attack to a gas plant in In Amenas, Algeria, had been killed with other six terrorists. The assault on the gas plant, which occurred more than two years ago, led to the death of 38 foreigners, among them my son Carlos, who worked there or were visiting the facilities. Was I soothed when I learned about the fall of the evil terrorist? No, I was not.

The death of Belmokhtar could not be confirmed and, right from the beginning, Al Qaeda denied the report. Recognition tests failed to identify his body. The search for the murderer is still active and it appears that he is still transgressing. Did it make me mad the denying of the initial news? Neither.

The pain in my son's disappearance is immeasurable and will accompany me to the end of my days. My indifference about the fate of this criminal, however, does not allow me to brag of equanimity; the elimination or the evasion of this bandit do not alter in any way my sorrow though, of course, it is important that there be justice. My greatest frustration is not associated with an occasional ungrateful name but with the sinister and continued stupidity of the fanaticism of any kind, whether religious, political or racial. The atrocities of fanatics never stop generating ruthless suffering to millions of human beings.

There is no much difference between the violence brought about by religious creeds, political dogmas or racial segregation. Horror of horrors when the three things come together! In all cases, terrorist actions and violations of the most elementary rights soon become permissible tactics for the groundless cause. And, when fanatical leaders are the power holders in a society, tragedies reach absurd excesses.

The extremists of the Muslim religion, the regrettable example of the moment, want to impose their metaphysical beliefs at any cost, in a way similar to what was attempted by many Christians and Catholics regimes until not long ago. This trend is intrinsic to all faiths. Even the wise teachings of the Buddha, when his followers make out of them a religious sect or a political party, lead to the persecution and discrimination that are now suffering the Rohingya Muslims in Western Myanmar and the Tamils in Sri Lanka.

The well-intentioned social justice of the socialist left led to the Chinese and Soviet horrors as well as to the countless acts of terrorism that have occurred and keep repeating thanks to the populism promoted by corrupt demagogues and egomaniacal leaders, only interested in enriching themselves and imposing social models, well-recognized as ineffective and disastrous. And the supposed superiority of the 'Aryan' race, a macabre example of tragedy, led to the Nazi atrocities.

The believers of a religion, the followers of a political doctrine or the supremacists of a racial group are commonly proud of their positions, illusory and irrational as they are. Still the majority of these characters see themselves as objective: "I'm an unbiased individual with much respect for other people’s opinions". Would these ‘tolerance models’ seriously consider the possibility that their religion may not be true, their doctrine may be wrong, or that their race is not genetically superior? Whoever fails to open the mind to the eventual fallacy of his or her biased thinking, bears seeds of violence. Unfortunately, when it comes to supporting a cause that its followers consider 'fair' and 'true', many of these ominous seeds will eventually germinate.

Well said Steven Weinberg, Nobel Prize in Physics 1979: "With or without religion you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” Or political beliefs, or assumptions of racial supremacy, I add.

No, neither the disappearance of Mokhtar Belmokhtar diminishes my sorrow of father nor his survival increases my grief. Instead, the continuing presence of fanaticism in any of its multiple expressions, murdering innocents in the name of ethereal or absurd causes, does make my pain more acute. When somebody remains uncompromising against fanaticism, as this columnist, is it possible for this person to maintain equanimity? I am not so sure whether we can be fanatics of anti-fanaticism. Each individual should answer such question.

Gustavo Estrada
Author of ‘Inner Harmony through Mindfulness Meditation’
www.harmonypresent.com

Consciousness: The Primary Mystery

Despite the countless laws of physics, chemistry and biology that mankind has discovered and the extraordinary progress that has been achieved through the practical application of such laws, researchers are nowhere near falling short of enigmas to solve. We do not yet know whether there are other universes, as string theory suggests; neither can we imagine the structure of the first molecule that replicated by itself to open the door to life three billion years ago; nor we know what dark matter or dark energy are, phantasmagoric substances these that together account for ninety-five per cent of the content in the known universe.

Without downplaying such remote unknowns, the primary mystery, however, is very near our eyes, more precisely behind them. How do neurons create consciousness in our brain? How does the sense of identity arise, grow in early childhood, stabilize after a few years, decline with old age and extinguish when the body expire?

Consciousness provides us an overwhelming and intimate conviction of an 'I' that draws limits and sets us apart from other people. Like all the characteristics of human life, consciousness and all the links and organic functions associated with its functioning are the result of evolution by natural selection in sequential processes that took millions of years. Nevertheless, we know little beyond this description.

The emergence of the sense of identity is the reward of evolution to the genetic memorizing of events that benefited the survival of our primitive ancestors. The stabilization of favorable mutations gradually formed the genetic coding of consciousness, though we don't know yet what genes are involved or how they generate the brain messages that make us feel unique and know that we are such.

Detailed explanations of the emergence of consciousness in our remote ancestors are just somewhat a bit less unknown than in 1858 when the naturalist Charles Darwin and anthropologist Alfred Wallace first postulated, publicly and for the first time, the theory of evolution of species by natural selection.

Wallace was a spiritualist that spent his last years trying to communicate with the dead. Within such metaphysical framework, he came to question his great 'materialistic' intuition (in his time the words 'neuron', 'gene' or 'byte' did not exist) and at some point expressed that natural selection was insufficient to explain the evolution of consciousness. "I hope that you have not murdered too completely your own and my child," wrote to him with concern Darwin. Fortunately for science, this did not happen.

The initial lack of explanations for consciousness seems to be moving toward the other end in recent years. Now the abundance of hypothesis could create confusion before reaching a final theory, and the awarding of the corresponding Nobel, be it in physics, chemistry or medicine, could take several decades.

Here are three examples that are making scientific noise. Bernard Baars, neuroscientist of the Neurosciences Institute in La Jolla, California, likens consciousness to the memory of a computer that preserves data from experiences after having lived them through. According to this theory, thinking, planning and perception are generated by biological adaptive algorithms.

The integrated information theory of neuroscientist Giulio Tononi at the University of Wisconsin in +Madison maintains that consciousness must do two things; one, it must be able to store and process huge amounts of data, as computers can do, and two, it must be able to integrate such data into a unified whole of information that cannot divided into its components. 

Cosmologist Max Tegmark of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, on the other hand, suggests that consciousness is a state of matter, and arises from a particular set of mathematical conditions. According to Dr. Tegmark, there are varying degrees of consciousness, as there are different states for water (steam, liquid or ice).

Consciousness is the primary mystery and not only because everybody experiences it. For a problem to be recognized as such there must be someone who identifies it and wants it solved. If nobody had consciousness, that is, if there were no human beings, aware and curious, there would be neither explorers nor areas to explore. And no phenomenon would be enigmatic at all if there were nobody who would like to solve it. It is because we have the privilege of possessing consciousness, even if we do not understand it, that all the other mysteries exist.

Gustavo Estrada

Author of ‘Inner Harmony through Mindfulness Meditation’

www.harmonypresent.com

Wonders and Obsessions of Technology

In spite their obliviousness, smart phones are... well, smart. The added value of their predecessors, the original cell phones, was mostly their mobility but their skills soon started to grow in many directions and to invade the territory of laptops, by acting as 'clients' in Internet, as computers commonly did. Smart phones are now overshadowing, when not displacing all kind of gadgets as calculators, sound recorders, cameras, GPS navigation devices, watches and chronometers.

Linked to other electronic tools, smart phones are getting into everything. For example, there are applications, already in operation or under development, that collect and manipulate data about physical and mental conditions for both research studies and health screening. Who would have dreamed of this! Let's look at two cases.

The Stanford University School of Medicine completed recently an application for both cardiac health surveillance and the collection of information to help improve the understanding of the functioning of the heart. The software, which operates on an Apple platform, uses the motion sensors of the phone. The program not only records the physical activity of the owners and the associated risk factors but also generates, believe it or not, personalized recommendations. The day the initial study was announced ten thousand people signed up.

On the mental health side, the School of Engineering at the University of Connecticut is designing a similar application that correlates variables such as energy level and social interaction to estimate people’s mood variation. This software will collect data on variables associated with physical activity and voice tone through the sensors and microphones in the phones. For example, the built-in GPS provides guidelines to calculate the frequency with which the user is getting out of her house while the microphones generate ‘measurements’ of her mood, according to the pitch of the voice. These and other pieces of information will provide bases to assess and compare levels of depression.

In the past, the transfer of new technologies to less developed countries could take up to decades; now the globalization of new developments happens much faster. Advances with so many potential benefits, as the two just described, will soon spread all over the planet. The kind of things that can be done through software applications and modern cell phones is only going to be limited by imagination.

Not everything is rosy, however. Cartoons that ridicule the growing dependency and the obsessive behaviors that smart phones are creating in their users abound in Internet. There is real concern among scholars of social sciences about the possible harmful consequences of this trend. Are smart phones diminishing personal contact? Are text messages replacing verbal communications? Are people becoming more introverted? The answers to these and many other questions are neither easy nor predictable.

However, for their impressive success, nobody argues the intelligence of modern cell phones, acknowledging that such gadgets are totally ignorant of what they are doing. Some of the fans of this wonderful enchantment walk with caution. A phrase I heard recently sums up the mixture of admiration and fear around the topic: "Current phones are so exceptionally smart they are taking control of their owners." And, furthermore, they could soon be writing prescriptions for them to follow

Gustavo Estrada
Author of ‘Inner Harmony through Mindfulness Meditation’
www.harmonypresent.com