Contemplative Science Blog

Really nice little Contemplative Science blog on Scoop.it!  The format makes it easy to scan through a bunch of articles and ideas quickly.

Psychedelic Science Conference 2013

I'm not really up on conferences and so forth, but the Psychedelic Science Conference 2013 popped up in my standard search string, and it looks like a really great selection of topics.  Does my heart good to know that all this is going on, and the whole field seems to be taking off.  Lots of good research coming up.

Cognitive-Based Compassion Training (CBCT)

Cognitive-Based Compassion Training (CBCT) seems to be a secularized version of Buddhist Loving-Kindness or Metta meditation, much in the way Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) is a secularized version of, um, more general Buddhist meditation.  Recent research indicates this type of training seems to enhance empathy.  fMRI studies confirmed a plausible neurological basis for changes in measures on a standard empathy test.

Another study compared these two types of meditation (well, not MBSR, but something similar) and the effect on the amygdala.  To be honest, not sure I completely understand the implications, but it's interesting :)

Motivation to Meditate

The newly launched Medivate site and the Medivate Blog seek to help you stayed motivated to meditate.  A recent blog post highlights a half dozen or so pieces of clinical research document positive health benefits.  And there's an app.

Can LSD cure depression?

The pop article "Can LSD cure depression?" covers some of the recent and upcoming research using psychedelics.  Ecstasy (MDMA), for example, appears to be successful in helping people make significant progress with PTSD in just one or two sessions.  Psilocybin may help people overcome nicotine dependency.

Psilocybin has been shown to reduce blood flow in certain areas of the brain.  Feilding says "it may also be significant that the volunteers who reported the most vivid and powerful experiences were also those who had the greatest reduction in blood flow."  Meditation has shown similar changes in blood flow, and as a sample of one, I'd say psilocybin seems to "reach" me much more easily after a few years of daily meditation.

Psychological Shadow Work

From Scott Kiloby's site, a nice article on Psychological Shadows.

Changes From Focused Attention

"Intensive Training Induces Longitudinal Changes in Meditation State-related EEG Oscillatory Activity" reports that an intensive 3 month practice of focused attention (i.e. sustained attention on a fixed object such as the breath) was associated with reduced beta and a lowering of the alpha frequency.

I would assume this is from re-crunching the Shamatha Project data, but maybe it is ongoing.