Another Debate

Saturday, January 21, 2012, 8:00 pm

This morning the monks engaged in another debate about a neuroethical question.  This time they debated whether knowing about the possibility of contracting a neurological disorder was good or bad.  In other words, would you want to know if you would come down with a neurological disease some time in the future?  Would it depend on the type of disease and whether it could be cured?  Would it depend on the probability of getting the disease or when you might get it?

We again had two people in each of two teams.  Each person gave opening arguments and then had a chance to question the opposing team.  Then each team was challenged by the others in the room who listened to the arguments.  Like our last debate, things got a bit heated, but it was all in a good spirit.

After the debate, we started our discussion of touch and pain.  I explained how environmental stimuli activate different receptors in the skin and how this information is transmitted to the spinal cord.  We also talked about the central pathways involved with touch and the “homunculus.”  By the end of this talk, it was time to break for tea.

The tea break gave me a chance to set up for touch activities and demonstrations.  When everyone got back from tea, we started by attempting to discriminate two grades of sandpaper when they were placed lightly on the skin or when they were rubbed against the skin.  The second experiment was one of tactile threshold.  With a piece of string, the monks and nuns tested various places on their body’s to determine when they noticed the sensation of the string touching their skin.  The final activity was to make raised letters or words using rice and a glue stick.  According to Geshe Lhakdor, there are very few Braille translations of Tibetan.  The monks would create some of the first such materials!  The monastics first wrote Tibetan letters or words on paper with a pencil and then used a glue stick to trace the pencil marks.  Then they used rice grains to raise the outline of their work.  We gave the finished product time to dry and then traded the words and letters to see if others could guess what was written on the paper using only the sense of touch.

Dinner tonight was excellent again:  rice, sauce with tofu-like, cheesy, squares, bitter squash and what else...dal.