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Journal of Clinical Case Reports | ISSN: 2165-7920 | Volume 8
Clinical and Medical Case Reports
10
th
Orthopedics & Rheumatology Annual Meeting & Expo
10
th
International Conference on
&
August 31-September 01, 2018 | Toronto, Canada
Denis Larrivee
Loyola University Chicago, USA
Contemplative revelations: Higher faculties in global nervous system integration
C
ontemplative meditation reveals a latent capacity for personal integration that enhances mental and physical health
through relational and transcendent ordering. Studies of a related meditative practice, mindfulness, reveal, for example,
not only positive phenomenological benefits but also substantive physical changes in underlying neural and bodily factors,
which are correlated with the duration and frequency of meditative practice. The extended intentional focus of contemplative
meditation acquired from the Christian legacy, and then evolved in its later development, implicates an even greater breadth
of neural deployment that assists personal integration. They suggest, thereby, a scope of disciplinary consolidation that
exceeds that of mindfulness and so likely activates a broader and corresponding range of integrative processes that are latent
for implementation as needed. The role played by the brain and nervous system in the self-integration of higher faculties,
however, is neglected in current philosophy of science models that guide empirical neuroscientific praxis; this latter, rather,
are premised on the brain's mediation of coherent and coordinative operation instead of the systemically mediated, mutually
constraining influences of peripheral and central neural networks. Indeed, results from contemplative meditation suggest that
body and brain are unified through their ordering to higher systemic and ontological ends. Bodily performance in and through
intentional actions, for example, shapes the brain and body's neural architecture to yield an integral performance unit. In like
manner, higher faculties, like personal identity and intention, emerge from the extended peripheral network throughout the
body to unify the whole individual in actions, such as those promoted in contemplative meditation. This paper will pursue an
evidence-based presentation, discussing the underlying neural events through which self-autonomous actions promote and
assist personal integration.
Biography
Denis Larrivee is a Visiting Scholar at Loyola University Chicago and has held professorships at the Weill Cornell University Medical College in New York City
and Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana. A former fellow at Yale University's Medical School and Department of Biology he received the Association for
Research in Vision and Opthalmology's first place award for studies on photoreceptor degenerative and developmental mechanisms. He is the current editor of
a text entitled Brain-Computer Interfacing and Brain Dynamics with InTech Publishing and an editorial board member of the journals Annals of Neurology and
Neurological Sciences (USA) and EC Neurology (UK). An International Neuroethics Society Expert he is the author of more than 50 papers and book chapters in
such varied journals/venues as Neurology and Neurological Sciences (USA), EC Neurology (UK), Journal of Neuroscience, Journal of Religion and Mental Health,
and IEEE Explore.
sallar1@aol.comDenis Larrivee, J Clin Case Rep 2018, Volume 8
DOI: 10.4172/2165-7920-C1-016