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Empty Brain – Happy Brain
Find the happiness of emptiness.
Few things scare us more than inner emptiness. The presumed emptiness of coma or dementia scares us so much that we even sign living wills to avoid these states. Yet as Zen masters have long known, inner emptiness can also be productive and useful. We can reach this state through meditation, concentration, music, or even during sex. In fact, our brain loves emptiness — it makes us happy.
Leading brain researcher Niels Birbaumer investigates the pleasure in emptiness and how we can take advantage of it. He explains how to overcome the evolutionary attentiveness of your brain and take a break from thinking — a skill that’s more important than ever in an increasingly frantic world.
253 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 15, 2022
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234 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
June 6, 2018
Your Brain on Empty
In this permanent-stress society, there are two ways to escape: overkill and emptiness. Overkill is taking psychedelic drugs that open the mind to every possibility, while suppressing ego (control) and reality. Emptiness is removing all the external inputs and seeing only what is essential - and from inside. Empty Brain - Happy Brain is about emptiness. We used to have it when life was simpler. We lost it, and now we’re trying desperately to get it back. But be careful what you wish for.
Niels Birbaumer is a neurological scientist who is obsessive with his science. He has injected himself with curare, jumped out of planes, talked to the locked-in, all in the quest for self-knowledge. This book is a very strong collection of stories, experiments, studies and analysis of the upsides and downsides of emptiness. Because the line between them, as he clearly demonstrates, is so fine as to be essentially invisible. The old saw about genius and madness is on display throughout the book.
As with psychedelics, emptiness is a dissolving of the ego, a dissipating of the line between the body and the world. The self no longer matters. For locked-ins, verbs have lost their meanings. Actions become an alien concept. The affairs of the world are irrelevant. By their thinking “yes” or “no” to specific questions, Birbaumer has been able to communicate with people unable to move even their eyes. Among other things, they seem to be content and even happy. They don’t want the television on because it interferes with their contentment. They are not miserable. They don’t want to end it all. They just want peace.
Birbaumer and his co-author Jorg Zittlau have structured the book around the many ways of achieving emptiness, because it occurs both through effort and through mental conditions or diseases. They examine the differences in brainwaves between Indian Yogis and Japanese Zen masters (and find that the Indians were not so much in a state of profound emptiness as asleep). They looked at psychopaths, thrill-seekers, schizophrenics, and borderlines. They also looked at dementia, near-death experiences and locked-in, where people remain alive but unable to move a muscle. Sex, religion and epilepsy have similar effects on us, and originate in the same cranial areas.
Even music comes under the microscope, as the book analyzes the differences between classical and jazz, vs. pop and rock. Music that is more rhythm-based engages significantly less brain power, speaks to the listener at a more basic level, and puts them on a path to emptiness, where nothing else matters. This has been shown right down to newborns. The love of rhythmic music is an innate appeal to emptying the brain and swaying with the flow.
They measured the size of brain components, and found that a slight increase or decrease made all the difference in the world. For example, the amygdala is enlarged in people who live in fear, because fear plays a larger role in their lives and the amygdala is fear central. Enlarged amygdalae are also present in autistics, as well as people who spent their childhoods in unsafe family environments “The same is true of voters who regularly choose candidates who espouse conservative social values. When people feel they are unsafe or under threat, they tend to want to cling on to the status quo and to that which is familiar and therefore comforting to them. In this respect, conservative voters and autistic children are remarkably similar.“ This kind of insight makes Empty Brain – Happy Brain a riveting read.
We spend 47% of our time daydreaming – thinking of things other than what we are supposed to be focused on. The energy used for this is far higher (in higher IQ people) than in concentrating on something relevant. But our brains run more smoothly on empty. We seek ways to achieve that, through sensory-deprivation float tanks, meditation and chemicals. In a lot of ways, the harder we try, the more elusive the goal. And yet, mental illnesses provide it boldly, in many different ways, with less than attractive results. Lack of empathy is a facet of emptiness, and people with borderline personality disorder spend their lives trying to fill it, while narcissists and psychopaths glory in being free of it.
Clinical depression, Birbaumer says, is not a deep sadness. Depressives think they have been given the keys to the kingdom. They know with certainty that this is all for nothing, that nothing matters, that nothing they do can possibly make a real difference. So prescription drugs don’t fix that. They don’t change minds; they twist them into another shape.
Meaninglessness has an interesting relationship to memory. Because our brains store associations of meaningful things (events, objects, acts), there is no real place for the storage of meaningless things. Those who meditate successfully often show memory gaps (and hemorrhoids, from sitting in the lotus position for hours daily).
Those locked-in to their unresponsive bodies may not be suffering the way we fear, from our perspective of constant action. We are discovering they don’t care, and actually enjoy their lives free of day to day concerns. It is their very hopelessness that has opened up this new appreciation. The authors cite a Zen saying: “A life without hope is a life full of peace, joy, and compassion.”
So emptiness is a double-edged sword, and while it is easy to cut yourself, it is a tool worth trying: “We can behave as if emptiness will come to us of its own accord, since it opens itself up only to those who place no hope in it.”
David Wineberg
In this permanent-stress society, there are two ways to escape: overkill and emptiness. Overkill is taking psychedelic drugs that open the mind to every possibility, while suppressing ego (control) and reality. Emptiness is removing all the external inputs and seeing only what is essential - and from inside. Empty Brain - Happy Brain is about emptiness. We used to have it when life was simpler. We lost it, and now we’re trying desperately to get it back. But be careful what you wish for.
Niels Birbaumer is a neurological scientist who is obsessive with his science. He has injected himself with curare, jumped out of planes, talked to the locked-in, all in the quest for self-knowledge. This book is a very strong collection of stories, experiments, studies and analysis of the upsides and downsides of emptiness. Because the line between them, as he clearly demonstrates, is so fine as to be essentially invisible. The old saw about genius and madness is on display throughout the book.
As with psychedelics, emptiness is a dissolving of the ego, a dissipating of the line between the body and the world. The self no longer matters. For locked-ins, verbs have lost their meanings. Actions become an alien concept. The affairs of the world are irrelevant. By their thinking “yes” or “no” to specific questions, Birbaumer has been able to communicate with people unable to move even their eyes. Among other things, they seem to be content and even happy. They don’t want the television on because it interferes with their contentment. They are not miserable. They don’t want to end it all. They just want peace.
Birbaumer and his co-author Jorg Zittlau have structured the book around the many ways of achieving emptiness, because it occurs both through effort and through mental conditions or diseases. They examine the differences in brainwaves between Indian Yogis and Japanese Zen masters (and find that the Indians were not so much in a state of profound emptiness as asleep). They looked at psychopaths, thrill-seekers, schizophrenics, and borderlines. They also looked at dementia, near-death experiences and locked-in, where people remain alive but unable to move a muscle. Sex, religion and epilepsy have similar effects on us, and originate in the same cranial areas.
Even music comes under the microscope, as the book analyzes the differences between classical and jazz, vs. pop and rock. Music that is more rhythm-based engages significantly less brain power, speaks to the listener at a more basic level, and puts them on a path to emptiness, where nothing else matters. This has been shown right down to newborns. The love of rhythmic music is an innate appeal to emptying the brain and swaying with the flow.
They measured the size of brain components, and found that a slight increase or decrease made all the difference in the world. For example, the amygdala is enlarged in people who live in fear, because fear plays a larger role in their lives and the amygdala is fear central. Enlarged amygdalae are also present in autistics, as well as people who spent their childhoods in unsafe family environments “The same is true of voters who regularly choose candidates who espouse conservative social values. When people feel they are unsafe or under threat, they tend to want to cling on to the status quo and to that which is familiar and therefore comforting to them. In this respect, conservative voters and autistic children are remarkably similar.“ This kind of insight makes Empty Brain – Happy Brain a riveting read.
We spend 47% of our time daydreaming – thinking of things other than what we are supposed to be focused on. The energy used for this is far higher (in higher IQ people) than in concentrating on something relevant. But our brains run more smoothly on empty. We seek ways to achieve that, through sensory-deprivation float tanks, meditation and chemicals. In a lot of ways, the harder we try, the more elusive the goal. And yet, mental illnesses provide it boldly, in many different ways, with less than attractive results. Lack of empathy is a facet of emptiness, and people with borderline personality disorder spend their lives trying to fill it, while narcissists and psychopaths glory in being free of it.
Clinical depression, Birbaumer says, is not a deep sadness. Depressives think they have been given the keys to the kingdom. They know with certainty that this is all for nothing, that nothing matters, that nothing they do can possibly make a real difference. So prescription drugs don’t fix that. They don’t change minds; they twist them into another shape.
Meaninglessness has an interesting relationship to memory. Because our brains store associations of meaningful things (events, objects, acts), there is no real place for the storage of meaningless things. Those who meditate successfully often show memory gaps (and hemorrhoids, from sitting in the lotus position for hours daily).
Those locked-in to their unresponsive bodies may not be suffering the way we fear, from our perspective of constant action. We are discovering they don’t care, and actually enjoy their lives free of day to day concerns. It is their very hopelessness that has opened up this new appreciation. The authors cite a Zen saying: “A life without hope is a life full of peace, joy, and compassion.”
So emptiness is a double-edged sword, and while it is easy to cut yourself, it is a tool worth trying: “We can behave as if emptiness will come to us of its own accord, since it opens itself up only to those who place no hope in it.”
David Wineberg
February 21, 2021
Wann hast du das letzte mal nichts getan? - dieses Buch regt dazu an einfach mal nichts zu tun. Geistige Leere ist ein Zielzustand der gegen unser Verlangen nach immer mehr widerstrebt. Das ist ein zwanghaftes Wollen, was zu leid führen kann. Leere hingegen Freiheit. Das Buch führt zu mehr Freiheit und Ruhe.
June 9, 2022
komisches buch, das erst am ende seine haupthese vorlegt. die 250 seiten voher fragt man sich, was das eig alles soll.
June 20, 2018
Am Empty now.
March 11, 2020
Niel Birbaumer möchte in diesem Buch herauszufinden, was Leere für das Gehirn bedeutet, und nimmt den Leser mit auf eine faszinierende Reise.
Los geht es mit der überraschenden Beobachtung, dass sich Zustände wie tiefe Meditation, Sex, Tanzen, Marschieren oder religiöse Rituale vom neurowissenschaftlichen Standpunkt aus ähneln. Das kritische Denken ist ausgeschalten und was übrigbleibt ist eine Erfahrung, die sehr unterschiedlich beschrieben wird.
Um genauer zu verstehen, was "Leere" bedeutet, geht der Autor den umgekehrten Weg und erklärt zuerst, was beim normalen Wachzustand passiert. Stück für Stück werden dann die einzelnen Bereiche abgeschaltet und beobachtet, was der Gegenüber erlebt. Häufig müssen dabei spezielle Krankheitsfälle herhalten, wo bestimmte Hirnregionen gestört sind. Aber nicht immer. "Floating Tanks" simulieren z.B. das Abschalten von äußeren Eindrücken und mit Hilfe von EEGs kann man recht leicht die Gehirnströme messen.
Obwohl es nicht das Kernthema des Buches war, ist für mich die wichtigste Erkenntnis, dass das Ganze ein komplexes Gleichgewicht ist. Dazu zählt soziale Empathie genauso wie Körperempfinden, kritisches Denken, Schwellwerte für das Belohnungszentrum usw. Bei jedem Menschen unterscheidet es sich und wird zusätzlich von persönlichen Erfahrungen geprägt.
Anscheinend werden durch die Evolution die "besten" Werte selektiert, wodurch sich die verschiedenen Menschentypen herauskristalliert haben. Wie der Autor meint, gibt es weltweit ca. 10% Psychopathen. Wenn sie evolutionäre Nachteile hätten, wären sie schon längst ausgestorben. Wobei zuviele auch nicht gut für die Gemeinschaft sind, wie jeder weiß.
Ein interessanter Punkt ist, dass ausgerechnet der Schlaf gar nicht mit Leere verglichen werden kann, ganz im Gegenteil. Es passiert eine Menge im Gehirn während wir schlafen und Experimente mit Schlafentzug waren sehr aufschlussreich.
Man muss dem Autoren hoch anrechnen, dass seine Erklärungen immer verständlich sind. Begriffe werden erklärt, wenn sie gebraucht werden, und zwischendurch gibt es immer wieder interessante Anekdoten. Eine faszinierende Lektüre, die ich jedem wärmstens empfehlen kann.
Los geht es mit der überraschenden Beobachtung, dass sich Zustände wie tiefe Meditation, Sex, Tanzen, Marschieren oder religiöse Rituale vom neurowissenschaftlichen Standpunkt aus ähneln. Das kritische Denken ist ausgeschalten und was übrigbleibt ist eine Erfahrung, die sehr unterschiedlich beschrieben wird.
Um genauer zu verstehen, was "Leere" bedeutet, geht der Autor den umgekehrten Weg und erklärt zuerst, was beim normalen Wachzustand passiert. Stück für Stück werden dann die einzelnen Bereiche abgeschaltet und beobachtet, was der Gegenüber erlebt. Häufig müssen dabei spezielle Krankheitsfälle herhalten, wo bestimmte Hirnregionen gestört sind. Aber nicht immer. "Floating Tanks" simulieren z.B. das Abschalten von äußeren Eindrücken und mit Hilfe von EEGs kann man recht leicht die Gehirnströme messen.
Obwohl es nicht das Kernthema des Buches war, ist für mich die wichtigste Erkenntnis, dass das Ganze ein komplexes Gleichgewicht ist. Dazu zählt soziale Empathie genauso wie Körperempfinden, kritisches Denken, Schwellwerte für das Belohnungszentrum usw. Bei jedem Menschen unterscheidet es sich und wird zusätzlich von persönlichen Erfahrungen geprägt.
Anscheinend werden durch die Evolution die "besten" Werte selektiert, wodurch sich die verschiedenen Menschentypen herauskristalliert haben. Wie der Autor meint, gibt es weltweit ca. 10% Psychopathen. Wenn sie evolutionäre Nachteile hätten, wären sie schon längst ausgestorben. Wobei zuviele auch nicht gut für die Gemeinschaft sind, wie jeder weiß.
Ein interessanter Punkt ist, dass ausgerechnet der Schlaf gar nicht mit Leere verglichen werden kann, ganz im Gegenteil. Es passiert eine Menge im Gehirn während wir schlafen und Experimente mit Schlafentzug waren sehr aufschlussreich.
Man muss dem Autoren hoch anrechnen, dass seine Erklärungen immer verständlich sind. Begriffe werden erklärt, wenn sie gebraucht werden, und zwischendurch gibt es immer wieder interessante Anekdoten. Eine faszinierende Lektüre, die ich jedem wärmstens empfehlen kann.
December 10, 2023
Very interesting and applicable to daily life in surprising ways. Educational instead of directive.
April 10, 2020
A penetrating look into some neuroscience of consciousness, and specifically the state of 'emptiness'. This book is worth reading if you feel there may be something genuinely beneficial in meditation and mindfulness type practices but are unsure about where some of the real value of it might lay.
There is tons of stuff out there about meditation these days, and it is not always immediately apparent what is worth looking into, what is pure hokum and what is a mixture - where terminology is interchangeable or conflated with other concepts. So, it was good to get behind some of this, with a scientific lens.
A unique slant here is that emptiness itself is a pleasurable subjective state to be in and that people will seek it out in various ways.
Birbaumer, one of the authors, is a psychologist and neurobiologist. We hear of a skydive at the beginning that thrust the author into such a state; where he experienced a loss of self and disrupted memory processes—two things often correlated with emptiness. It is understandable why people would seek out such experiences because of these transcendent effects.
"It was only the 'original' Zen practitioners, from Asia, whose brain activity showed that they were neither asleep nor awake in the everyday sense. These meditation experts detached from the front part of their brains from the rear, thus also severing the link between their sensory perceptions and the meaning of those percpetions. In other words, they were able to render the world empty of meaning and observe it as it really is, in a dispassionate, functionless, and objective way".
While I'm not an authority on the history of contemplative type practices (and neither is the author, I believe), but I loved how this chapter differentiated between different types of mediative 'effects'. And how different cultural traditions practice certain ways, with specific effects that can be measured with ECG and EEG equipment.
The author recounts an episode where he ingested a drug called 'curare' in order to probe at emptiness, by shutting down his proprioceptive senses. Curare is a derived plant 'muscle relaxant', which essentially shuts down the connections in the brain which produces the sense of an embodied self.
There is tons of stuff out there about meditation these days, and it is not always immediately apparent what is worth looking into, what is pure hokum and what is a mixture - where terminology is interchangeable or conflated with other concepts. So, it was good to get behind some of this, with a scientific lens.
A unique slant here is that emptiness itself is a pleasurable subjective state to be in and that people will seek it out in various ways.
Birbaumer, one of the authors, is a psychologist and neurobiologist. We hear of a skydive at the beginning that thrust the author into such a state; where he experienced a loss of self and disrupted memory processes—two things often correlated with emptiness. It is understandable why people would seek out such experiences because of these transcendent effects.
"It was only the 'original' Zen practitioners, from Asia, whose brain activity showed that they were neither asleep nor awake in the everyday sense. These meditation experts detached from the front part of their brains from the rear, thus also severing the link between their sensory perceptions and the meaning of those percpetions. In other words, they were able to render the world empty of meaning and observe it as it really is, in a dispassionate, functionless, and objective way".
While I'm not an authority on the history of contemplative type practices (and neither is the author, I believe), but I loved how this chapter differentiated between different types of mediative 'effects'. And how different cultural traditions practice certain ways, with specific effects that can be measured with ECG and EEG equipment.
The author recounts an episode where he ingested a drug called 'curare' in order to probe at emptiness, by shutting down his proprioceptive senses. Curare is a derived plant 'muscle relaxant', which essentially shuts down the connections in the brain which produces the sense of an embodied self.
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