Brain science is really discovering a lot about how the brain and the mind works, but we don't really know what the capacities and limitations of the human mind are yet in spite of all of this new research. Brain/Mind science is still very new and the position of this blog has always been that we often don't realize the extent of our potential as human beings. Now, I'm not proposing that anything is possible in terms of mind over body phenomena. But to be fair, we don't really know what is really possible or impossible. The effort to study the effects of meditation on the brain promises to help us get a more realistic understanding about ourselves and what the true potentials are. This leads me to a story I would like to pass along.
The startle response is a universal human response which takes a third of a second to run its course and involves short quick muscle spasms in five facial muscles mostly around the eyes. The response is activated by a sudden loud sound or a shocking sight. This response is a reflex and is the work of the brain stem. In the 1940's it was proven that control of this reflex lies beyond the scope of voluntary control.
Paul Ekman, PhD, a professor and researcher at the University of California in San Francisco, began studying the startle response. He found that there was a relationship to the strength of the startle response and the intensity in which the same subject generally experiences feelings of fear, anger, disgust and sadness. A person with a more powerful startle response experiences stronger versions of these four emotions.
The sound they use in the test is similar to the sound of a gunshot going off near your head. In the 50 years that the startle response has been studied, no one has been able to suppress their flinch even though they are told when the noise will sound. As you may have guessed from the build up...now someone on record has. An individual we will call Oser is a European convert to Tibetan Buddhism who has practiced meditation in the Himalayan region for over 30 years. He was hooked up to machinery that would measure all of his physical reactions and was given the standard instructions for this test. The researchers count down from ten to one at which point the subject hears the loud noise. The researchers instruct to try to suppress the inevitable flinch so that an observer would not know that he felt the startle response. Some people do better than others of course, but no one has ever come close to suppressing the flinching muscle spasms that occur. Even people who use fire arms routinely in their profession were unable to suppress a flinch.
However, Oser did.
Using two different types of meditation during the test, Oser managed to perceptibly mask his flinch in one test and significantly decrease (and on some indicators reverse) his physiological reactions using another type of meditation in the second test. Ekman thought it was a tremendous long shot that a trained meditator would be able to beat this test. It made sense that Ekman didn't believe that it was humanly possible to suppress the startle reaction because of the conclusiveness of the research up to now. However, now someone has, and these results point to something even more profound which is the incredible potential for a person to have emotional balance and control given the relation of Ekman's research of the startle reaction to a person's experience of anger, fear, etc.
I don't necessarily think that we all should start meditating (although, part of me thinks that.) But more that we all have the potential to improve ourselves and our lives in ways that will make and those around us happier and we should definitely take advantage of it.
For much more on the tests run on Lama Oser including fMRI scans check out this article that ran in Shambala Sun which discusses this among many other tests that he participated in.
