New Scientist published some recent work on the brain's perception of 'now' and how the brain serves up 'the present moment'.
Regular meditators often claim that they live more fully or intensely in the present than most people. To test the claim, two groups, one meditators, one not, were asked to look at a drawing of a Necker cube, and press a button each time their perspective of it reversed.
Both groups perceived now to last about 4 seconds, seeming to confound the claims of some meditators. However, when participants were asked to hold a given perspective for as long as possible, the meditators managed 8 seconds on average, compared with 6 seconds for the others.
Meditators tend to score highly in tests of attention and working memory capacity. "If you are more aware of what is happening around you, you not only experience more in the present moment, you also have more memory content," said the Dr. running the experiments.
"Meditators perceive time to pass more slowly than non-meditators, both in the present and retrospectively," he said (my emphasis).
In fact when one experiences time slowing down, such as in an accident, it's because the brain increases the dataflow. Living in slow motion places a strain on the neurological resources and so the brain determines when to kick into overdrive, and when to cruise ...
There are good reasons to practice meditation, if only that by living more alertly, one lives more fully in an empirical sense ... but the idea that someone is more aware of the Real, is something of a nonsense. It's evident that whoever is living in whatever moment, it's a perception created by the rhythms and filters of the brain ...
Regular meditators often claim that they live more fully or intensely in the present than most people. To test the claim, two groups, one meditators, one not, were asked to look at a drawing of a Necker cube, and press a button each time their perspective of it reversed.
Both groups perceived now to last about 4 seconds, seeming to confound the claims of some meditators. However, when participants were asked to hold a given perspective for as long as possible, the meditators managed 8 seconds on average, compared with 6 seconds for the others.
Meditators tend to score highly in tests of attention and working memory capacity. "If you are more aware of what is happening around you, you not only experience more in the present moment, you also have more memory content," said the Dr. running the experiments.
"Meditators perceive time to pass more slowly than non-meditators, both in the present and retrospectively," he said (my emphasis).
In fact when one experiences time slowing down, such as in an accident, it's because the brain increases the dataflow. Living in slow motion places a strain on the neurological resources and so the brain determines when to kick into overdrive, and when to cruise ...
There are good reasons to practice meditation, if only that by living more alertly, one lives more fully in an empirical sense ... but the idea that someone is more aware of the Real, is something of a nonsense. It's evident that whoever is living in whatever moment, it's a perception created by the rhythms and filters of the brain ...
