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Meditation and Perceptual Rivalry

A forum between Buddhist leasers and eminent scientists noted the benefits deriving from the skills of Tibetan Buddhist monks who have practiced meditation training. The main point of focus involved perceptual rivalries, such as binocular rivalry and motion induced blindness, and how they can give insight into the neural fluctuations despite unchanging stimuli. Perceptual rivalry occurs when there are conflicting and rivaling sensory inputs. A common form of this is binocular rivalry, which is the phenomenon that occurs when our visual perception alternates between two images present to each eye. Another example of rivalry is motion-induced blindness. This describes the apparent disappearance and illusion created when a stimuli is paired with a moving background. The GIF below exemplifies this (when the observer looks at the blinking green dot in the middle, after 10 seconds the surrounding yellow dots will disappear and reappear again.)

When the monks were give rivalry tests, those that performed focused meditation saw an increase in perceptual dominance durations that the control group. These monks were able to stabilize the images and even reach complete perceptual stability for prolonged periods. This suggests that the intense focus practiced in meditation increased visual function when exposed to visual rivalry input. Additionally, when given the motion-blindness test, some monks were able to cause the dots to actively disappear and maintain this state for several minutes. Meditation in this case can allow subjects to alter normal fluctuations caused by neural changes.​

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