Using the general concept of perceptions and awareness as my departure points, I began researching technology being applied towards meditation.
The March 2005 issue of The National Geographic magazine reported:
“Richard Davidson and his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have been studying brain activity in Tibetan monks, both in meditative and non-meditative states. Davidson’s group had shown earlier that people who are inclined to fall prey to negative emotions displayed a pattern of persistent activity in regions of their right prefrontal cortex. In those with more positive temperaments the activity occurred in the left prefrontal cortex instead. When Davidson ran the experiment on a senior Tibetan lama skilled in meditation, the lama’s baseline of activity proved to be much farther to the left of anyone previously tested. Judging from this one study, at least, he was quantifiably the happiest man in the world.”
This research showed how technology could successfully be combined with meditation to develop a better understanding of how the mind works. However, unlike Davidson’s research group, I wanted a more natural interaction that required less commitment, where user wouldn’t have to connect themselves to hundreds of electronic sensors.
Electrodes measure brain activity in
Tibetan Buddhist teacher and artist
Dru-gu Choegyal Rinpoche. National Geographic March 2005.