Sublime

Melanie Boly, a neurologist and neuroscientist at the Medical School of the University of Wisconsin, Madison, is painstakingly collecting EEG data from long-term Buddhist meditators during a state known as pure presence, an experience with no self, no discursive thoughts, and no perceptual content except for a luminous expanse, an empty mirror.

At their best, “video games are controlled training regimens delivered in highly motivating” ways that result in “enduring physical and functional neurological remodeling,” says Michael Merzenich, a neuroscientist at the University of California, San Francisco, who has led the design of games meant to retrain the brains of older people with