Ending Habituation of Stimuli

[DT Strain]

I was reading an online article recently discussing the interrelation between Buddhism and neurobiology, and this phrase caught my eye...

"abolition of habituation to stimuli"

As many know, the brain generally has the tendency to dull out habitual and constant stimuli. The Buddhist concept of mindfulness would seem to me to be an attempt to reduce this tendency such that we stay aware of stimuli which we might normally disregard because we grow accustomed to it.

It seems to me that the brain's tendency to do this is linked to the physical way that neurons operate. When signals pass through the same neurons reptitively they become numb to those signals (like your skin becomming numb in a spot where you repetitively rub it).

Given this inherently physical and functional operation of neurons, is the "abolition of habituation to stimuli" really possible to achieve? What about minimizing it at least?

Obviously, meditation practitioners would say that it is indeed possible to achieve to some degree. But how does the brain do this? Does it re-route habitual signals through new portions of the brain which haven't become numb to them? Or, does it have some way of "undoing" the numbness of the neurons handling certain perceptions?

[Vajradhara]

Namaste DTStrain,


interestingly enough.. when they did a study of accomplished meditators, they discovered that their brains are like our brains, they have managed to change the physical structure through their practice.

pretty astounding stuff.

i'm not sure if they concluded that this changed conditioned continued after the meditive process.

the interested reader can check out this site:

http://www.mindandlife.org/hhdl.science_section.html

metta,

~v

[DT Strain]

Thanks for this link Vajradhara - most interesting!