Can brain damage lead to an inability to perform Eastern meditation like breath-watching? How about with a stroke-victim, or a schizophrenic?
let me put it to you this way...brain damage can cause death, period. The two main systems responsible for breathing control in the brain are: "preBotzinger Complex" cells and "pre-I " cells...if thats were the brain was damaged...than so is the ability co breath normally was damaged. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11528424
This is hard to say. What might prevent someone who has had a stroke to focus on their breath is that the person will be despaired and unwilling to try something new - given that otherwise, the person is still lucid. As long as the person is able to focus on something, at least for a short while, they are theoretically able to focus on the breath, too. I have heard of people with Alzheimer's who have taken up breath meditation. There is a trend among some people who have had severe illnesses to dramatically change their lifestyle and the way they think. These people will usually say something to the effect of "It took me to get a stroke to finally see how much I was harming myself, and to take action to change the way I live." Granted, there don't seem to be so many who have such a positive attitude toward illness. Many people simply fully succomb to the illness, letting it rule their life, thinking of themselves as victims of that illness.
What I mean to ask is what part of the brain is responsible for attention and concentration. And what happens when a stroke destroys it?
Basically, yes. In the sense that some people do not have the attitude to be willing to meditate, and this is more of a psychological than a physiological issue, but the line between the two is not sharp. Ie. some people are in such a physiological state where it seems reasonable to presume they have the potential to be able to meditate, and that the only thing that keeps them from starting to meditate is their negative attitude toward meditation. Such people might be willing to exercise, play board games, collect stamps - but not meditate. There seems to be a general distrust in the so-called West toward "Eastern stuff". Some therapists therefore introduce Eastern techinques of meditation and relaxation in disguise. E.g. In an anger management course, one might get the instruction "When you are angry, breathe in three times before you reply to the other person" - seems common sense, but it's a simple instruction to focus on your breath.
The limbic system is responsible for alertness. The cerebral cortex, the outer shell of the brain is for overall attention and concentration, different parts are responsible for behavior and the senses. Over 50% of the brain is used to process vision. Breathing and other functions are part of the primitive brain stem.
if you are alive you can more than likely meditate. It involves the switch from perceiving and thinking about things, to simply being. In other words once you stop worrying about being able to meditate you will probably be able to. There is alot of misinformation when it comes to meditation.
Since breathing technique needs mindfulness and alertness. The ability to find, then place, hold and remain on the object would be too difficult.
I think it depends on particular case scenario too. I am a meditator myself (Eastern Prasangika Buddhist style for over 10 years) and have worked with people with various demetias and brain damage including from stroke. I don't really have much experience with the issue but from what I have seen I think it's likely that they could still meditate. Ability to concentrate on a single object may be hard or impossible for some though if particular areas of the memory are damaged. I don't know too much about what areas would since I have never looked into it (my degree was in biochem and my area of knowledge and work these days is computers) so this is just rough educated guess and speculation. I would say if the memory encoding etc is still working then they could, ie. their memory processing of a few seconds of short term and hold it for at least a few minutes in the long term memory they should be capable. As for schizophrenia I think it would depend on the severity of the episode, concentration on a single object might be very hard in some cases.
that's hard to determine. It would depend on the damage, where it is, and the extent of the damage. I'd say so, because it doesn't take much to be able to concentrate on breathing, unless the person is so damaged that you cannot even communicate with them, or they cannot get to a state of compelte self-control.
Depends on how severe the "brain damage" is. First, you've got breath watching, which anything can happen to an individual mind you. This means breath can become short and prevent meditation practices. Strokes and schizophrenics are the same but the numbers are hopefully less than I would imagine. Why do you ask? :wtf:
