[Buddha-l] Neural Science and Buddhism

[Rob Hogendoorn (Leiden University)]

Probably 'The Guardian' picked up this story in 'Nature':

Nature
25 July 2005

Neuroscientists see red over Dalai Lama
David Cyranoski

Critics of meditation 'pseudoscience' say conference talk should be  
cancelled.

Some say meditation focuses the mind - but others say the research
behind such claims is limited. A growing number of neuroscientists are
calling for the cancellation of a special lecture to be given by the
Dalai Lama in November.

The Buddhist leader is due to speak at the annual meeting of the
Society for Neuroscience (SfN) in Washington DC, but a petition against
the talk has already gathered some 50 signatures.

The Dalai Lama has lived in exile in India since he fled Chinese troops
in Tibet in 1959. Over the past decade he has increasingly encouraged
researchers, sometimes at gatherings at his home, to study whether
Tibetan Buddhist meditation can reshape the brain and increase mental  
well-being.

It was during one of these meetings that he was asked by a member of
the society's executive committee, to give an inaugural lecture on 'the
study of empathy and compassion, and how meditation affects brain  
activity'.

Some of the critics believe that the Dalai Lama's lecture should be
ruled out because of his status as a political and religious figure.
"One of the reasons for inviting him is that he has views on
controlling negative emotions, which is a legitimate area for
neuroscience research in the future," says Robert Desimone, director of
the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at the Massachusetts
Institute of Technology. But "the SfN needs to distance itself as much
as it can from the Dalai Lama and his beliefs", adds Desimone, who
opposes the lecture but has not yet signed the petition.

Many of the scientists who initiated the protest are of Chinese origin.
But they insist that their concerns are purely scientific. Yi Rao a
neuroscientist at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, helped
to draft the petition, which says that the science of meditation is "a
subject with hyperbolic claims, limited research and compromised
scientific rigour".

The letter singles out one of the key publications in the analysis of
meditation, in which Richard Davidson, a psychologist at the University
of Wisconsin, Madison, and his colleagues claim that neural networks
are better coordinated in people who are practised in meditation.

Rao says that the study is flawed, especially in terms of the controls
it used, because it compared practising monks in their thirties and
forties with much younger university students. "Davidson is a
respectable scientist," he says, "but he has put his respectability  
on the
line with this."

Davidson defends his work as the first step in a new field. "Meditation
research is in its infancy," he says. He helped to arrange the Dalai
Lama's talk at the SfN meeting, to be held on 12-16 November. He says
that criticism of the lecture on scientific grounds is misplaced,
because the Dalai Lama is not claiming to be a scientist. "He merely
wants to increase scientific attention on the topics that he thinks are
important for human welfare," Davidson says.

The lecture is the first in a new series organized by the SfN, billed
as "dialogues between neuroscience and society". The controversy has
ensured that dialogue is already off to a rocky start.

The SfN's president, Carol Barnes, says that she is trying to find a
resolution to the protest that will not involve cancelling the lecture.
But one of the petition's organizers, Jianguo Gu of the University of
Florida, says that he and several other scientists will cancel their
lectures if the Dalai Lama's talk goes ahead.


Op 27-jul-2005, om 15:49 heeft Peter D. Junger het volgende geschreven:

>
> An interesting article in the Guardian at
> <http://www.guardian.co.uk/religion/Story/0,2763,1536642,00.html>.
>