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How meditation can make you a better learner
Meditation doesn't just reduce stress or make you a more spiritual person; it changes your brain in a variety of ways that can make it easier to learn new information.

- Mindfulness meditation has been shown to have a wide array of effects on the human brain.
- Many of those effects work together to improve the human brain's ability to learn new information.
- If you're interested in becoming a smarter human being, consider incorporating meditation into your daily routine.
People meditate for all sorts of reasons. Some do it for spiritual purposes, others do it to reduce stress, and still others do it to manage their mental health. Meditation is a broad practice with many disparate effects, so it makes sense that people's motivations would be correspondingly varied. But there's more reasons to meditate than to simply feel relaxed or attain spiritual goals — one such reason is to become a better learner.
Meditation and learning
First, let's define meditation. "At base, in essence," said psychologist Daniel Goleman in a Big Think interview, "every kind of meditation retrains attention." It can take many forms, but the majority of Western empirical research focuses on mindfulness meditation, in which the meditator focuses their attention on an experience in the present moment in an accepting, non-judgemental way. Commonly, this focus is placed upon the breath. There are other forms of meditation, such as the loving-kindness meditation common in Buddhist practices, where the meditator focuses on cultivating compassion for all beings. The bulk of scientific research, however, has been conducted on mindfulness meditation.
One of the best-known benefits of mindfulness meditation is in its ability to reduce stress. Robust research has shown that meditation is a powerful tool against stress, even for those suffering from anxiety or other mental disorders. In turn, stress plays a powerful role in learning. On the one hand, high levels of stress can leave us with an excessively strong memory, as is the case in PTSD. On the other, chronic stress inhibits the growth of neurons in the hippocampus, making it more difficult to form new memories. Acute stress, too, makes it more difficult for us to retrieve memories that we've already formed. By practicing mindfulness meditation, we can reduce the impact of stress on our ability to form and retrieve memories.
Train Your Brain: Mindfulness Meditation for Anxiety, Depression, ADD and PTSD | Daniel Goleman
Meditation also appears to protect your brain from the negative effects of multitasking. Several studies have shown that multitasking impairs your ability to learn. "The brain actually does not do multitasking," said Goleman. "It doesn't do several things at once in parallel, rather it works in serial and it switches very rapidly from one thing to the next." Once you switch away from a task that you've been focusing on, it takes time for you to ramp up your concentration again to where it was previously. "Unless," says Goleman, "you've done that ten minutes of mindfulness; focused on your breath, for example, just watched it in and out, noticed when your mind wandered, brought it back." In this case, your concentration returns much more quickly.
In addition to protecting your brain against the deleterious effects of multitasking and stress, mindfulness also bolsters your working memory. Not only does meditation promote growth in the hippocampus, it also trains your brain to better manage something called proactive interference. Proactive interference occurs when older memories in the brain interfere with the retrieval of newer and more task-relevant memories, an effect that some researchers theorize accounts for nearly all instances of forgetting items in your working memory. One study attributed this improved ability to handle proactive interference to mindfulness meditation's focus on the present moment — being more present enabled study participants to prioritize recent, task-relevant memories and remember information better.
How can I get started meditating?
The nice thing about meditation is that it requires essentially nothing — just a quiet space and perhaps a chair. You don't have to subscribe to any religion or philosophy to engage in it and reap its benefits. Here's a very simple way to start meditating:
- Sit down in a comfortable chair. You can sit however you like, but it's probably best to keep your hands in your lap and to sit with good posture.
- Set a ten-minute timer on your phone.
- Close your eyes.
- Pay attention to your breath.
- As your mind wanders away from your breath (it will), don't get upset at yourself; just acknowledge whatever thought distracted you and return to paying attention to your breath.
- Repeat steps 4 and 5 until your time is up.
Many of the benefits of meditating are essentially instantaneous, though they'll fade as the day goes on. As your meditation practice becomes a more significant part of your routine, those benefits will also become a more enduring part of your life. Some people find it useful to use a guided meditation app, like Headspace, or to read books both to learn more and to stay motivated, like Mindfulness in Plain English or How to Meditate. But if you're a student or are simply interested in becoming a better learner throughout your life, incorporating a bit of meditation into your day may be the extra edge that you need.
- 10 powerful meditation quotes to inspire your practice - Big Think ›
- How meditation can change your life and mind - Big Think ›
- Anxiety and depression can affect learning ability - Big Think ›
‘Designer baby’ book trilogy explores the moral dilemmas humans may soon create
How would the ability to genetically customize children change society? Sci-fi author Eugene Clark explores the future on our horizon in Volume I of the "Genetic Pressure" series.
- A new sci-fi book series called "Genetic Pressure" explores the scientific and moral implications of a world with a burgeoning designer baby industry.
- It's currently illegal to implant genetically edited human embryos in most nations, but designer babies may someday become widespread.
- While gene-editing technology could help humans eliminate genetic diseases, some in the scientific community fear it may also usher in a new era of eugenics.
Tribalism and discrimination
<p>One question the "Genetic Pressure" series explores: What would tribalism and discrimination look like in a world with designer babies? As designer babies grow up, they could be noticeably different from other people, potentially being smarter, more attractive and healthier. This could breed resentment between the groups—as it does in the series.</p><p>"[Designer babies] slowly find that 'everyone else,' and even their own parents, becomes less and less tolerable," author Eugene Clark told Big Think. "Meanwhile, everyone else slowly feels threatened by the designer babies."</p><p>For example, one character in the series who was born a designer baby faces discrimination and harassment from "normal people"—they call her "soulless" and say she was "made in a factory," a "consumer product." </p><p>Would such divisions emerge in the real world? The answer may depend on who's able to afford designer baby services. If it's only the ultra-wealthy, then it's easy to imagine how being a designer baby could be seen by society as a kind of hyper-privilege, which designer babies would have to reckon with. </p><p>Even if people from all socioeconomic backgrounds can someday afford designer babies, people born designer babies may struggle with tough existential questions: Can they ever take full credit for things they achieve, or were they born with an unfair advantage? To what extent should they spend their lives helping the less fortunate? </p>Sexuality dilemmas
<p>Sexuality presents another set of thorny questions. If a designer baby industry someday allows people to optimize humans for attractiveness, designer babies could grow up to find themselves surrounded by ultra-attractive people. That may not sound like a big problem.</p><p>But consider that, if designer babies someday become the standard way to have children, there'd necessarily be a years-long gap in which only some people are having designer babies. Meanwhile, the rest of society would be having children the old-fashioned way. So, in terms of attractiveness, society could see increasingly apparent disparities in physical appearances between the two groups. "Normal people" could begin to seem increasingly ugly.</p><p>But ultra-attractive people who were born designer babies could face problems, too. One could be the loss of body image. </p><p>When designer babies grow up in the "Genetic Pressure" series, men look like all the other men, and women look like all the other women. This homogeneity of physical appearance occurs because parents of designer babies start following trends, all choosing similar traits for their children: tall, athletic build, olive skin, etc. </p><p>Sure, facial traits remain relatively unique, but everyone's more or less equally attractive. And this causes strange changes to sexual preferences.</p><p>"In a society of sexual equals, they start looking for other differentiators," he said, noting that violet-colored eyes become a rare trait that genetically engineered humans find especially attractive in the series.</p><p>But what about sexual relationships between genetically engineered humans and "normal" people? In the "Genetic Pressure" series, many "normal" people want to have kids with (or at least have sex with) genetically engineered humans. But a minority of engineered humans oppose breeding with "normal" people, and this leads to an ideology that considers engineered humans to be racially supreme. </p>Regulating designer babies
<p>On a policy level, there are many open questions about how governments might legislate a world with designer babies. But it's not totally new territory, considering the West's dark history of eugenics experiments.</p><p>In the 20th century, the U.S. conducted multiple eugenics programs, including immigration restrictions based on genetic inferiority and forced sterilizations. In 1927, for example, the Supreme Court ruled that forcibly sterilizing the mentally handicapped didn't violate the Constitution. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes wrote, "… three generations of imbeciles are enough." </p><p>After the Holocaust, eugenics programs became increasingly taboo and regulated in the U.S. (though some states continued forced sterilizations <a href="https://www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/eugenics/" target="_blank">into the 1970s</a>). In recent years, some policymakers and scientists have expressed concerns about how gene-editing technologies could reanimate the eugenics nightmares of the 20th century. </p><p>Currently, the U.S. doesn't explicitly ban human germline genetic editing on the federal level, but a combination of laws effectively render it <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jlb/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jlb/lsaa006/5841599#204481018" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">illegal to implant a genetically modified embryo</a>. Part of the reason is that scientists still aren't sure of the unintended consequences of new gene-editing technologies. </p><p>But there are also concerns that these technologies could usher in a new era of eugenics. After all, the function of a designer baby industry, like the one in the "Genetic Pressure" series, wouldn't necessarily be limited to eliminating genetic diseases; it could also work to increase the occurrence of "desirable" traits. </p><p>If the industry did that, it'd effectively signal that the <em>opposites of those traits are undesirable. </em>As the International Bioethics Committee <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jlb/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jlb/lsaa006/5841599#204481018" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">wrote</a>, this would "jeopardize the inherent and therefore equal dignity of all human beings and renew eugenics, disguised as the fulfillment of the wish for a better, improved life."</p><p><em>"Genetic Pressure Volume I: Baby Steps"</em><em> by Eugene Clark is <a href="http://bigth.ink/38VhJn3" target="_blank">available now.</a></em></p>Octopus-like creatures inhabit Jupiter’s moon, claims space scientist
A leading British space scientist thinks there is life under the ice sheets of Europa.
Jupiter's moon Europa has a huge ocean beneath its sheets of ice.
- A British scientist named Professor Monica Grady recently came out in support of extraterrestrial life on Europa.
- Europa, the sixth largest moon in the solar system, may have favorable conditions for life under its miles of ice.
- The moon is one of Jupiter's 79.
Neil deGrasse Tyson wants to go ice fishing on Europa
<div class="rm-shortcode" data-media_id="GLGsRX7e" data-player_id="FvQKszTI" data-rm-shortcode-id="f4790eb8f0515e036b24c4195299df28"> <div id="botr_GLGsRX7e_FvQKszTI_div" class="jwplayer-media" data-jwplayer-video-src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/GLGsRX7e-FvQKszTI.js"> <img src="https://cdn.jwplayer.com/thumbs/GLGsRX7e-1920.jpg" class="jwplayer-media-preview" /> </div> <script src="https://content.jwplatform.com/players/GLGsRX7e-FvQKszTI.js"></script> </div>Water Vapor Above Europa’s Surface Deteced for First Time
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="9c4abc8473e1b89170cc8941beeb1f2d"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/WQ-E1lnSOzc?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>Lair of giant predator worms from 20 million years ago found
Scientists discover burrows of giant predator worms that lived on the seafloor 20 million years ago.
Bobbit worm (Eunice aphroditois).
- Scientists in Taiwan find the lair of giant predator worms that inhabited the seafloor 20 million years ago.
- The worm is possibly related to the modern bobbit worm (Eunice aphroditois).
- The creatures can reach several meters in length and famously ambush their pray.
A three-dimensional model of the feeding behavior of Bobbit worms and the proposed formation of Pennichnus formosae.
Credit: Scientific Reports
Beware the Bobbit Worm!
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="1f9918e77851242c91382369581d3aac"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_As1pHhyDHY?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>What is the ‘self’? The 3 layers of your identity.
Answering the question of who you are is not an easy task. Let's unpack what culture, philosophy, and neuroscience have to say.
- Who am I? It's a question that humans have grappled with since the dawn of time, and most of us are no closer to an answer.
- Trying to pin down what makes you you depends on which school of thought you prescribe to. Some argue that the self is an illusion, while others believe that finding one's "true self" is about sincerity and authenticity.
- In this video, author Gish Jen, Harvard professor Michael Puett, psychotherapist Mark Epstein, and neuroscientist Sam Harris discuss three layers of the self, looking through the lens of culture, philosophy, and neuroscience.
Discovery of two giant radio galaxies hints at more to come
The newly discovered galaxies are 62x bigger than the Milky Way.
