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Monks See Through Optical Illusion Games

Posted by timothy on from the use-your-illusion dept.

FhnuZoag writes "Nature is reporting that Buddhist monks, highly trained in meditation, were better able to maintain focus in a set of computer generated illusions designed to confuse the brain. The particular illusions involved showing different images to each eye, and maintaining a state of motion-induced blindness. This may be scientific proof of the efficacy of meditative study. The full, original article may be downloaded here. (500 KB PDF)"

2 of 63 comments (clear)

  1. This is priceless... by TripMaster+Monkey · · Score: 3, Funny

    From TFA:

    Alternatively, we can increase the duration of the disappearance by disrupting teh activity of the Right hemsiphere with precisely time pulses (the Right hemisphere seems to be much more picky about the prcise timing of teh TMS pulse thanthe Left, perhasp associated with the large blocks of time that the Left deals in ).

    What the hell? Who wrote this article, Jeff K.?

    d00d, this iz teh ghey.
    --
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    ~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey

  2. Thinking changes perception? by crmartin · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This is interesting.

    I've been doing Buddhist practices for damn near 40 years now, and I've noticed it anecdotally: a lot of visual illusions don't seem to work any longer. Now, it's hard to separate that out from being, well, old (remember how as a kid it looked for all the world like the moon was racing along with your car when Mom and Dad drove you somewhere at night?) and perceptual psych is way down the list of things I want to do in my spare time, but it seems completely plausible to me that monks who spend lots more time in these practices than I do would show these effects very strongly.

    Exceeding focus of thought is required to write a sentence like that one, I hope you know.