Noted rationalist Narendra Nayak has written to the American Medical Association (AMA) asking them to initiate action against author and medical doctor Deepak Chopra for “promoting quackery” by endorsing the midbrain activation ‘scam’. Narendra Nayak, who is the President of the Federation of Indian Rationalist Associations has pointed to a video published by Deepak Chopra on his social media handles in which he is seen interacting with two blindfolded teens. In the video, Deepak Chopra makes a few gestures which the first teen imitates while blindfolded. He is later seen writing some text on a notepad, and it is shown that the second teen is supposedly able to read it while blindfolded.
“I wanted to share this beautiful video demonstrating the extraordinary capabilities of the students of BrighterMinds, a special intuition and cognitive development program at Kanha Shanit Vanam,” Deepak Chopra said.
Narendra Nayak, who has been working against this technique which used to be called ‘midbrain activation’, has asked AMA to question Deepak Chopra for the ‘unethical conduct’.
“From around 2010, I have been following a scam called midbrain activation which claims that children can see blind folded, that is without light from the object to be visualised falling on the retina. After a major exposure in 2015, the purveyors of this scam started changing the names, yet retaining the same old tactic of alleged blind folded seeing. A number of people with backgrounds allegedly in medicine, science and such other disciplines have endorsed the same. Latest in this is who I presume to be one of your members or at least a person who is registered with any of the boards of the states of the USA. His name is Dr Deepak Chopra MD who has been promoting quackery. The latest among these is something like mindfulness, a technique by which children can see blind folded objects without light from the object falling on the retina which goes against all principles of known science,” Narendra Nayak has said in his letter.
The two private institutes, Heartfulness Institute and Brighter Minds, that Deepak Chopra has thanked for the demo, have been opposed by Narendra Nayak earlier too. The two institutes had conducted an event at the Indian Institute of Management in Bengaluru in 2019. At the time, they had denied that it was midbrain activation and instead called it a developing science called ‘neuroplasticity’.
“This has nothing to do with midbrain activation or anything paranormal. This is a developing science. Some children develop a strong sense of intuition through brain training and these methods help enhance cognitive abilities like focus, observation, comprehension, memory, and intuition. It is based on neuroscientific principles," NS Nagaraja, the then Director at Brighter Minds had told TNM.
Narendra Nayak and other rationalists have been opposing these programmes for years, at one point Nayak had issued a challenge and one such ‘midbrain activation’ tutor pulled out at the last minute. Popular magician Gopinath Muthukad too has spoken out against such techniques several times. “It is a magic trick 100% and I can prove that. These types of programmes can mislead our future generation,” he told the media a few years ago.