Lightly edited transcript Filler words and caption errors removed by machine; the meaning is unchanged.
Delson describes a two-day study with researchers from the University of Amsterdam that recorded his brain and body during waking, focused attention, sleep and nirodha (cessation of perception, feeling and consciousness). He explains the design, including sounds played to test whether the brain registers them in each state, and what the researchers hope to learn about how these states differ. The results were not yet available when the interview was recorded.
Key points
- Delson explains that the study grew out of an earlier test with a consumer EEG headset, and that a group of researchers then took it on with medical-grade equipment.
- The recording used 64 EEG electrodes plus sensors for skin conductance, temperature, blood oxygen and breathing, with a second day adding sensors for body movement and nasal airflow.
- On the first day, Delson's brain was compared across a waking baseline, a focused attention state and nirodha, while vowel and pulsing sounds were played to see whether the brain registered them.
- On the second day, a sleep session of about 90 minutes was compared with a nirodha session of about 90 minutes, and Delson reports that he was aware during the sleep stages.
- Delson describes nirodha as a state entered by intention in which the mind switches off, so the only way to know it occurred is just before or after, and he says the researchers were skeptical at first but became interested by the end.
Themes
Transcript
Introducing the brain research study
- We're back. Again, I'm Karuna and I'm here with Delson. And as promised, we're gonna dive some more into the neuroscience in this episode. One of the unique possibilities of this day and age we live in is we can actually peer inside the brain or get a look at how it's changing through the practice of meditation. And we talked about how deep this practice can go. And now I understand, Delson, that there's been some cutting edge work done on your brain. Could you tell us a bit about what the study design was and what they are hoping to find?
Yeah, this study is basically a two-pronged approach. There were two different research teams that were working together. From what I understand, this is from the University of Amsterdam and they are very interested in a couple of things. I'll just give you a little backstory of how this whole research came into play and then what exactly that research involves. This started off with a very preliminary test with the Muse device. And the Muse device is a consumer-based electrode EEG detector. meditation, and then gave my results to David. And this was given to some other people. And there was one person in particular who was in Amsterdam at the time. And he met somebody he had not met for 30 years, or in 30 years he hadn't met them.
And they were good friends. And he found out that this person is now a researcher. I think he was in psychology and neuroscience. And he told them about this preliminary research done with the Muse device. And he was very interested in that. And then they met with somebody else at the party that they met at, who was a well-esteemed researcher in the field of neuroscience.
And they contacted me. They contacted Suttavada Foundation. Medical grade and that can really give much deeper analysis into the brain. I was actually ready to go for that in the beginning of, I think it was spring of 2020, but it was delayed because of the pandemic and then things started moving in August and September. While I was in the Netherlands, we spent two different days doing the research.
Study design and predictive modeling
And this research is part of a larger study that talks about what the brain is doing in these different states of meditation practice. And the first part of the research was what they call predictive modeling. And essentially what that is, is to see if the brain can recognize certain patterns while in different states of either meditation or awareness.
So the way they did it was they hooked me up to this, I call it an octopus because it's all kinds of things coming out of it. 64 electrodes on the head. They had some kind of a watch that checked the temperature and skin conductivity. They had something else on the finger that checked for the blood oxygen levels. And they had some other sensors around my chest and in the back to detect respiration rate and things like that. Awareness with your eyes open, not really doing anything at all, for the first 15 minutes, and I gave them a baseline of what the brain looks like just in a normal waking state. Then they had me look at some kind of video, like a documentary, for 15 minutes, and then see what the brain is reacting to, or how the brain is reacting to that. Then they had me listen to certain sounds. These sounds were like just vowels that were spoken by a male voice or a female voice, and then some kind of pulsating sound.
Explaining nirodha cessation
And the idea for them is that if the brain can recognize those sounds when you get into Nirodha. The last part of the study was to get into actual Nirodha, into cessation of perception, feeling, and consciousness, and they were going to be playing the sounds. was in nirodha there was no recognition of what was happening. So 15 minutes later they asked, did you recognize anything, were you able to hear anything? And I said no, it was just an intention to go into nirodha, and then that was it. Can you just briefly explain nirodha? Yeah, nirodha means cessation, and what we're talking about really is nirodha samapati, which is a state in which one can determine the time for how long the mind would be in the perception, feeling, and consciousness.
The last time we were talking, we were talking about the different jhanas. And we're talking about how jhanas are levels of cessation. And then at the eighth jhana, there is an experience where you let go of the subtlest formations. And in doing so, there is a complete switching off the mind, as it were. So that means there's no awareness there. The only way you know that you are in that state is when you come out of it. what just happened, like the mind was off for a while. But as you get more mastery over this, and as you get more in tune with how to get into nirodha, using a series of exercises for determining the way the mind gets into jhanas, and then finally gets into the cessation of perception and feeling and consciousness.
And what happens is, you're actually able to recognize just a few seconds prior to the attainment of nirodha. Everything dials down in terms of the six sense bases and then it's switched off, and then when you come out everything comes back up. Like a computer shutting down and running back up. Exactly. Exactly. But during that shutdown part where there's nothing there, there's no consciousness, there's no awareness present for you to be able to know what was happening in that state. So the only way you know is either just before or after that state. were doing is that predictive modeling part of it is they were trying to look for how the brain, if at all, recognizes those same sounds it was listening to in the waking state.
So that was the first part of the research. While they were doing this, they randomized the whole thing. So in the first phase, it was waking state, then getting into a more focused kind of attention state, and then getting into nirodha. Then the second phase of that was, again, waking state, but instead then going into nirodha and then a focused attention. So they just switched around to see what was happening.
Second day sleep and nirodha study
So that was the first day. The next day, I had something like close to 90 sensors on the body. It was, again, the 64 electrodes, the blood oxygen level on the finger. There were two of those. There was the temperature checker on the watch. Abdomen, the chest, and the back, and then another kind of belt that tested for any kind of movement or respiration rate, and the feet as well. They had some sensors to see if the feet would move around while asleep, and I'll get to what that was all about. And then they stuck something up my nose, which basically read if there was any breathing going on through the nose or through the mouth.
Wow, you were a real lab rat. Exactly. If you see the photo, it's just basically that. I was a real lab rat. They had me sleep for the first phase of the test. This particular research was related to sleep and how the brain works during sleep, and how is it different from the state of nirodha, from cessation.
They had me sleep for 90 minutes, testing, basically examining and observing the different brainwave states that were happening during sleep. Asleep, there was awareness there, so that means the mind was lucid during the waking state, it was lucid during the light sleep state, it was lucid during the REM stage, and it was lucid during deep sleep. So when the researcher came in after the 90 minutes, they said, were you actually asleep? Because we could recognize that you were asleep, but there was this other part where it seemed like you were still awake. So the mindfulness was such that he could still be, let's say, alert while still in deep sleep. That was the first phase.
The second phase was the Nirodha phase. They had me actually determine that the mind will go into Nirodha for 90 minutes. So I did that, and 90 minutes later, they all started coming into the room one by one and started asking all of these interesting questions. Because what happened was, at the 90 minute mark, the mind suddenly just came back up. So they must have seen something happening there while they were reading that. And they were so intrigued by this whole process that they started asking all kinds of questions. And it became like an impromptu Dhamma talk. And they were all really listening very intently. And then one of the researchers decided they wanted to sign up for a retreat.
And you said they were kind of a little skeptical going into it, right? Oh, yeah, yeah. They were definitely skeptical. The person that started with the research, when he spoke with the other scientists, they were wondering, is this, maybe he's just going to sleep and that's really all that's going on? So they were quite skeptical, but by the end of it, based on their responses at the end of the 90-minute session, they probably did see something that made them very interested. Yeah, well, that'll be very interesting to see the results of that study when they come out. you