Mathieu Ricard: Change your Mind Change your Brain & on the habits of happiness

Last Updated on June 20, 2021 by pg@petergamma.org

In the brain, there is a center for speech, there is the visual cortex, but there is no center for happiness. Happiness can be trained, as Mathieu Ricard, PhD. explains:

Mathieu Ricard is a Buddhist monk with a PhD. in cell genetics, best selling author, translator, and photographer. He has lived in the Himalayan region for the past 45 years.

Why aren’t we constantly happy? According to the Buddhist teachings, suffering is caused by thoughts and negative emotions. These teachings explain how to get rid of those.

Mathieu Ricard on the Habits of Happiness

Mathieu Ricard explains the left prefrontal activiation (Gamma power), the difference between the right and the left frontal lobe.

People with more Gamma wave activity on the right side of the prefrontal cortex are more

depressed, withdrawn, they don t describe a lot of positive affect, if you suffer from depression, you go to the right side.

People with more Gamma wave activity on the left side of the prefrontal cortex

have more tendancy to altruism, happiness, curiousity, etc. if you see a comic movie, you go to the left side, if you are happy, you go to the left side.

Can Harrison Kinsleys setup with OpenBCI be modified to be an EEG data aquisition system which is helpful to meditate?

And if so, what is possible to do with this setup?

Is it possible to build a DIY EEG cap from components with up to 256 EEG channels?

https://openbci.com/forum/index.php?p=/discussion/1663/greentek-gelfree-s-eeg-cap/p1

The group of Richard Davidson, who did meditation research with Buddhist monks used a setup with fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) and 256 channel EEG.