Study: Meditation Changes Monks' Outlook

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Study: Meditation Changes Monks' Outlook
By Anna Salleh, ABC Science Online


June 7, 2005— Meditation can literally change the way Buddhist monks see the world, reports a new study.

It leads monks to interpret images in a positive way and expert meditators tend to linger on these "happy" images the longest.

Jack Pettigrew, an Australian neuroscientist from the University of Queensland, and colleagues report their research with Himalayan monks in the latest issue of the journal Current Biology.

Pettigrew and team investigated how monks process "perceptual rivalry." This is what happens when someone is presented with an image that can be seen two different ways.

The classic example of such an image is one that can be seen as two faces in profile facing each other on a white background, or a single vase on a black background....cont'd

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