Is reducing beta waves actually a good thing? It might allow for focus and relaxation, but I wonder if that might do something like clear your working memory and make you less able to make connections between things. Could anyone that has a good grasp on this comment on whether this might be true?
"I wonder if that might do something like clear your working memory and make you less able to make connections between things."
Your list is sometimes in internal conflict with itself. I have excellent conscious concentration ability and food memory leading to sometimes getting stuck in local maxima for a given situation. Clear the working memory, remove the "stuck" and suddenly free to snap onto the global maxima for a given situation. Or sometimes not. Complex tools are not like screwdriver; sometimes you can't even tell what the right tool for the job is, much less expect it to work. Often enough, using a different tool works better than trying harder with one thats already not working.
Perhaps it's analogous to CPUs? Perhaps it's better to power down your brain when you're not really using it rather than keeping it running hot at full frequency? The idle mind being the devils workshop and all...
Perhaps (and again speculating) it allows currently active pathways to cool down, allowing different ones to activate. This is especially useful if you're trying to solve a difficult problem and seem to be going in circles along the same line of thought. Your inability to break out of the line of thought might at times be more neurological than cognitive.
The benefits of meditation (and any potential problems) do not result in permanent physiological changes. It's like makeup that purports to reduce the signs of aging - it only works if you keep applying it.
