Blissful Brain

The Blissful Brain is published by Gaia Thinking. For more information on how to order your copy, please click here.

Guardian G2: Mind over matter by Andy Darling

"Neuroscientist Shanida Nataraja has proven meditation does more than clear your head, it can put both halves of your brain to work, improving your concentration, memory, and decision-making...". To read more, please click here.

The Times: Calm down dear by Angela Pertusini

"Claims by the neuroscientist Shanida Nataraja regarding the benefits of meditation have been backed up by rigourous scientific research and are explained in her acclaimed book The Blissful Brain: Neuroscience and Proof of the Power of Meditation". To read more, please click here.

Just this Day event: A Day of Silence and Stillness at St Martin's in the Field on 23rd of November 2011

Shanida Nataraja will be participating in this exciting event that aims to explore the power of silience and stillness in our busy world. For more information, please click here or visit the Just This Day website.

Mindfulness in the Workplace: Brain based approaches to improving employee resilience and productivity at Robinson College, Cambridge on 10 February 2012

Shanida Nataraja will be speaking at this day event that brings together leading experts in mindfulness to discuss how it could help organisations improve productivity & resiliance. Speakers include Professor Mark Williams, Michael Chaskalson, Ruby Wax, Margaret Chapman, and more (for more information, please see click here.

Ghost Particles and Coherent Superposition

At a quantum level, therefore, electrons can be seen to exist, not as concrete particles, but as standing waves representing a state of coherent superposition, in which all the possible outcomes exist simultaneously, one on top of each other. A state of coherent superposition can be likened to a state of limbo, and therefore matter is often described in terms of exhibiting ghost-like properties at a quantum level. In this state of coherent superposition, the quantum particles are thought to express the full range of potential outcomes, and it is the choice of experimental set-up that determines which of these potential outcomes become actuality. Some researchers have interpreted this to mean that it is the interaction with the consciousness of the observer that acts to limit the electrons behaviour to only one of these possible outcomes.

Let us examine this issue further in the following hypothetical experiment. Consider an electron heading towards a target. When it hits the target, we know that there is a 50% probability that it will be deflected to the left and a 50% probability it will be deflected to the right. Now, before the act of measurement, we cannot of course say with any certainty what the electron is doing or where it is located; however, it has been proposed that the electron exists in a hybrid reality, appearing as a “ghost” on both the left and the right. The act of measurement abolishes this hybrid world, and the electron will be found on either the left or the right. Since the ghost-like hybrid world collapses into a single, concrete reality, the process of observation is often referred to as “collapsing the probability wave”. It is perhaps easier to imagine this concept, if we turn again to the image of our wave packet that describes the possible location of an electron in its orbit around the atom’s nucleus. If we measure the location of the electron precisely i.e. make the wave packet infinitely small in size, essentially we have collapsed Schrödinger’s probability wave into a single, concrete reality. The entire spectrum of possible outcomes is therefore replaced by a single actual outcome.

This concept has been most famously illustrated by Schrödinger’s cat paradox. In a theoretical experiment, a cat is placed in a sealed chamber, together with a glass vial containing cyanide. A quantum process triggers the release of the cyanide, and therefore there is a 50:50 chance that the poison is released and the cat killed. It is proposed that, until a measurement is made (i.e. an observer looks into the chamber to see if the poison has been released), the cat exists in a hybrid reality, in which it is both alive and dead. The act of observation forces this ghost-like existence to collapse, and thus the cat is seen to be either alive or dead. This experiment is open to misinterpretation. It certainly should not be taken literally; the concrete cat does not become two ghost-like apparitions, one alive and the other dead. It merely illustrates the point that quantum processes are probabilistic in nature, and that they exhibit the full range of possible outcomes until the point at which a measurement is made.

There is much controversy surrounding the issue of the collapsing of the probability wave. The physicist John Wheeler postulated that the precise nature of reality was dependent on the participation of a conscious observer i.e. someone to design and implement the experiment.

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