Summary: Sense and awareness of biological signals through digital media feedback. Connections between modern neuroscience and Vedic Sanskrit Texts of ancient Hinduism.
Description:
Think of a forest. Have you ever been to one? Even if you haven’t, you can probably imagine how it may sound or look. “Hearing and seeing” spaces inside our heads that we model through cognition is called auralization and visualization. Modern technology allows to accurately model acoustic and visual environments and make them audible and visible through speakers, headphones, screens and head mounted displays, e.g., augmented or virtual reality. Then, how about auralizing and visualizing the internal functioning of the human body? This is called audiovisual biofeedback, the mapping of biometrics, such as heart or breathing rate, to sounds, shapes and colors. Audiovisual biofeedback provides a way to become aware of our organs (interoception) and exercise the integration of our senses by stimulating the assembly of sensory neural networks (synesthesia). As a whole, these bio-technological processes support the perception of the bonds between physical and unmaterial dimensions, long described in scriptures of ancient Hindu civilizations.
Here, when you pace your breathing to generate specific sounds and colors, you can experience Heart Rate Variability Audiovisual Biofeedback with a standard camera, such as the ones in mobile devices or laptops. HRV is measured from color changes in face skin. Its value should be optimized by breathing slowly, i.e., at the pace of the oscillating nature sounds. Red tones will be more visible when you fall out of sync and blue tones will be more visible when your bio signals sync in. The later leads to nervous system coherence (Pranayama) and interoception support (Vipassana), i.e., relaxation and awareness of your body’s functions.
This work makes use of open source algorithms and makes the practice of audiovisual biofeedback freely available to those interested in exploring the connections between mind and body and the cognitive processes that underpin them. The ultimate questions of science and spirituality approach the nature of consciousness and should be a matter of debate for everyone, since thereby lies the present and future of the realities we want to construct with our attention.
The parallels between biofeedback research findings and millenary traditions are no coincidence. The neurophysiology of meditation along with its advantages have been explored extensively over the last decade, bringing analogies between age-old myths and modern science closer together. For instance, Samsara in the Vedic texts of Hinduism and further developed in Buddhism, dates a thousand years B.C.E. It is the first known written record on the notion of dissatisfaction and impermanence characterizing the alleged repeated cycles of rebirth and re-death caused by the illusion (Maya) of craving and ignorance. The liberation from Samsara, i.e., Moksha or Nirvana, involves the release of the state of suffering achieved by the freedom of one’s own mind through meditation. While different types of meditation branched from the ancient Vedas adjusting to individual states and needs, e.g. Zen, Mindfulness, Mantra, all of them are grounded on attention management and commonly rely on audible rhythmic patterns to achieve it. In general, meditation activates or deactivates neural oscillatory patterns related to cognition and affection as shown in fMRIs of experienced and naïve meditators reporting states of selflessness [1].
| References: | |
| [1] | J. A. Brewer, P. D. Worhunsky, J. R. Gray, Y. Y. Tang, J. Weber and H. Kober, “Meditation experience is associated with differences in default mode network activity and connectivity,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, vol. 108, no. 50, pp. 20254-20259, 13 12 2011. |
| [2] | I. Z. Khazan, The clinical handbook of biofeedback: a step by step guide for training and practice with mindfulness. |
| [3] | B. Eggen, “Interactive Soundscapes of the Future Everyday Life,” 2016, pp. 239-251. |
| [4] | C. L. BALDWIN, AUDITORY COGNITION AND HUMAN PERFORMANCE: research and applications., CRC PRESS, 2019. |
| [5] | Sensory Evaluation of Sound, CRC Press, 2018. |
| [6] | “Mindfulness and Neurofeedback – YouTube,” [Online]. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wil45EaQvUE |
| [7] | “The Neuroscience of Consciousness – YouTube,” [Online]. Available: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k_ZTNmkIiBc&t=2276s |
