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Correlation between Pineal Activation and Religious Meditation Observed by Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging
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- Interdisciplinary MRI/MRS Lab, Department of Electrical Engineering, National Taiwan University
- Anthro-Celestial Research Institute, The Tienti Teachings
- Department of Electrical Engineering, National Taiwan University
- Department of Neurology, Cardinal Tien Hospital Yung Ho Branch
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- Document Type:
- Manuscript
- Date:
- Received 15 November 2007 17:24 UTC; Posted 15 November 2007
- Subjects:
- Neuroscience
- Abstract:
The human brain possesses plenty of functions but little is known about its scientific relationship with mind and spirit. Conferences1,2 focused on the connection between science and religion were held very recently in which neuroscientists, Buddhist scholars and Dalai Lama discussed attention, mental imagery, emotion, mind, brain functions and meditation, suggesting religious meditation offers an effective means to investigate the mystery of mind and spirit. In the past decade, scientists struggled to obtain brain mappings for various meditation styles using different brain imaging techniques and stimulating results have been observed3-17. In this letter we report that, together with other brain regions, pineal body exhibit significant activation during meditation process, supporting the long lasting speculation that pineal plays an important role in the intrinsic awareness which might concern spirit or soul. Pineal is known as an endocrine organ which produces substrates including melatonin and has been ascribed numerous even mysterious functions but its activation during meditation has never been observed by brain imaging technique. In seventeenth century, based on anatomic observation, Descartes ventured to suggest that pineal serves as the principal seat of the soul18-20. Inspired by its geometric center in the brain, physiologists, psychologists, philosophers and religionists have been speculating for centuries about pineal’s function relevant to spirit and soul. In this study, we chose Chinese Original Quiet Sitting, one style of meditation, to explore this long lasting speculation by functional magnetic resonance imaging technique. Our results demonstrate a correlation between pineal activation and religious meditation which might have profound implications in physiological understanding of the intrinsic awareness.
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- This document is licensed to the public under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License
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Liou, Chien-Hui, Hsieh, Chang-Wei, Hsieh, Chao-Hsien, Lee, Si-Chen, Chen, Jyh-Horng, and Wang, Chi-Hong. Correlation between Pineal Activation and Religious Meditation Observed by Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Available from Nature Precedings <http://hdl.handle.net/10101/npre.2007.1328.1> (2007)
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Rick Strassman on 02 January 2008 17:23 UTC
I marshall a lot of circumstantial evidence suggesting the pineal produces DMT, a powerful hallucinogen, during meditation. It’s called DMT. The Spirit Molecule (Park Street Press, 2001).
Rick Strassman MD
University of New Mexico School of Medicine