The man giving the talk, Matthieu Ricard, is a scientist turned monk whose brain has been studied for the effects of meditation. The results were that you can change your mind's biology through meditation.

Mr. Ricard says, "The mind is malleable, our life can be greatly transformed by even a minimal change in how we manage our thoughts and perceive and interpret the world. Happiness is a skill. It requires effort and time."

Perhaps other brain functions can be enhanced as well.

-- JustinColannino - 17 Jan 2008

Our neurology is freaking amazing, I mean it would be bizarre if our brain couldn't adapt. One of my favorite anecdotes is how they found that London taxi drivers actually have a observably larger hippocampus as a result of having to navigate through (and maintain mental maps of) London.

-- TheodoreSmith - 18 Jan 2008

Also- here is another link to a study showing the effect of transcendental meditation on intelligence in a group of high school students... link

-- TheodoreSmith - 18 Jan 2008

A few years ago I spent some time in Northern India, where I stayed a few nights in a Kagyupa monastery. The monks would wear their robes (just like the one he is wearing in that video) and ONLY their robes, in the single digit Himalayan temperatures. Me and the other Westerner's I was traveling with had on every layer of clothes we owned, and were still freezing cold. I asked one of the monks why they wore no coats and he answered, "The mind is the best coat."

Part of me is still incredulous, even though I saw it with my own eyes. I mean, it is FREEZING COLD there - how is it humanly possible that these men could be comfortable wearing so little? I take it the answer is because they had figured out how to use their minds to regulate their own body temperatures. It still amazes me every time I think about it.

-- JuliaS - 20 Jan 2008

The Mystery of the Monks

The alternate answer to the mystery of the monks is that their bodies were actually acclimatized and yours were not. Swimmers training for long distance ocean swims in cold water will prepare for their swims by swimming in cold water and living in cold conditions. This forces their bodies to adapt to the environment and causes their normal body temperature to drop.

Focusing on what we can do with our minds often causes us to forget what our bodies can do. Though mythical explanations seem attractive, simpler ones will often do the trick.

-- StephenClarke - 22 Jan 2008

• But the monks don't claim a mystery: they think it's just as simple as you do, Stephen, and they're giving the same explanation. It's only that they have a slightly different view of what's being acclimatized. They don't see the mind/body distinction as you do, after all, because they're not culturally required to make that separation. But to the extent they do make it, they think it's the mind being acclimatized. At the biological level, after all, the science would say they're right: natural selection works to improve adaptation to cold climates all the time, but not within the lifetime of an organism. The genetic predisposition of Ashkenazic Jews to high blood sugar, which currently presents clinically as a heightened risk of diabetes, seems to have begun as a relatively sudden adaptation to Northern Europe climate in the last 1900 years, protective against hypothermia; Sephardi communities don't show the same trait. The pathogenic character of the adaptation is a sign of its recency--glucose in the blood is a long-term dangerous form of antifreeze. Yet finding even such a jury-rig adaptation that takes place within a short span of generations, however, is good hunting for the physical anthropologist. But training will inure a person to the effects of cold within weeks or months. That's not, if you want to insist on the distinction, primarily physiological.
  -- EbenMoglen - 22 Jan 2008