Episode 49: The Enlightenment Hack?
Episode 49 of M3CS’s Contemplative Science Podcast saw Jay Sanguinetti come on to the show to talk about his collaboration with Shinzen Young - looking into the concept, ethics and necessary mitigations for the potential of using ultrasound to stimulate the brain.
For the full podcast, check out the episode here.
In this episode, we cover...
The reports of beginner to ‘Olympian’ meditators when experiencing brain stimulation.
Potential drawbacks of using technology to assist the lifelong meditation journey.
His sense of responsibility to create safe and empowering frameworks for treatment.
Jay Sanguinetti is a philosopher, neuroscientist, and cognitive psychologist who got his PhD at the University of Arizona, where he continues to conduct research at the Science Enhanced Mindful Awareness Laboratory (SEMA). Currently, he's investigating how technology can be used to augment a meditation practice.
Here are some of the key insights from the conversation...
Master meditators like Shinzen Young are incredibly valuable to Jay’s research.
”And that's what's so cool about working with Shinzen is that he is a phenomenologist in a sense, right? He has learned how to describe his states and experiences with such rich detail. He's kind of like our report vehicle. We do it on him, he reports and he says, ‘Maybe you should change the protocol like this.’ That becomes really helpful for designing that protocol so we get the benefit out of it. Pretty neat, to have that type of connection.”
Ultrasound is breaking new ground in brain exploration!
”A lot of researchers, including myself, for a long time have dreamed of a safe, non-invasive - meaning no surgery - type of technology that you can wear that gets you basically anywhere in the brain. So it can get that energy focused. And that's what focused ultrasound can do. Because it's sound waves instead of electricity, as soon as you get it through the skull, then you can focus it literally to anywhere in the brain, including deep parts like the thalamus or the hippocampus or basal ganglia. That becomes very exciting from a neuroscience point of view because now I can reach parts of the brain that electricity has a really hard time with.”
Simply seeking peak states is the wrong way to safely implement this technology.
”That's why for the creators of the tech, the expectation of what you think is going to happen to the person's really important to define up front so that you're creating towards something helpful and useful for that person. And that's why we're thinking it’s more important to try to find how to make the system plastic so we can learn and change and then empower that person to change in the direction that's good for them... that way you're not so focused on optimising states, because if you do that, I think we got a problem here.”
The best place to find Jay is here. For the work of the SEMA Lab in Arizona see here.
See you next week!
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This podcast has a single purpose: to help its listeners integrate the practical lessons of contemplative life. If you enjoyed the episode and you’re interested in finding out more, check out ‘Training For Humanity’ - M3CS’s exclusive short courses, including Mindfulness for Wellbeing and Peak Performance, as well as Maintaining a Mindful Life.
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