Meditators' Brains Process Info Faster

New research at UCLA’s Laboratory of Neuro-Imaging indicates that people who meditate have larger amounts of gyrification ~ the “folding” of the cortex ~ than non-meditators, and this enables their brains to process information faster.

"Rather than just comparing meditators and non-meditators, we wanted to see if there is a link between the amount of meditation practice and the extent of brain alteration," Eileen Luders, an assistant professor at the UCLA lab, told ScienceDaily. "That is, correlating the number of years of meditation with the degree of folding."

According to ScienceDaily.com:

The meditators had practiced their craft on average for 20 years using a variety of meditation types -- Samatha, Vipassana, Zen and more. The researchers applied a well-established and automated whole-brain approach to measure cortical gyrification at thousands of points across the surface of the brain.  

They found pronounced group differences (heightened levels of gyrification in active meditation practitioners) across a wide swatch of the cortex, including the left precentral gyrus, the left and right anterior dorsal insula, the right fusiform gyrus and the right cuneus. 

Perhaps most interesting, though, was the positive correlation between the number of meditation years and the amount of insular gyrification.

Luders cautions that while genetic and other environmental factors could have contributed to the effects the researchers observed, "The positive correlation between gyrification and the number of practice years supports the idea that meditation enhances regional gyrification."

Click here for the complete article.

More Proof: Meditation Conquers Pain

While this particular study may be new, its main conclusion is centuries old. Not only in eastern spiritual beliefs, but also in mind/body research a few decades ago, the ability of meditation to greatly reduce chronic pain has been widely confirmed.

“Only a little over an hour of meditation training can dramatically reduce both the experience of pain and pain-related brain activation,” according to Fadel Zeidan, Ph.D., lead author of the study and post-doctoral research fellow at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center. “We found a big effect ~ about a 40 percent reduction in pain intensity and a 57 percent reduction in pain unpleasantness. Meditation produced a greater reduction in pain than even morphine or other pain-relieving drugs, which typically reduce pain ratings by about 25 percent.”

For the study, 15 healthy volunteers who had never meditated attended four, 20-minute classes to learn a meditation technique known as focused attention, a form of mindfulness meditation where people attend to the breath and let go of distracting thoughts.

Both before and after meditation training, study participants’ brain activity was examined as a pain-inducing heat device was placed on the participants’ right legs. Scans taken after meditation training showed that every participant’s pain ratings were reduced, with decreases ranging from 11 to 93 percent, Zeidan said.

Click here for the complete article.

More Research: Yes, Meditation Changes Brain

A new study on meditation confirms what several previous studies have shown ~ that the practice actually results in physical changes to the brain. The researchers report that those who meditated for about 30 minutes a day for eight weeks had measurable changes in gray-matter density in parts of the brain associated with memory, sense of self, empathy and stress.

Many people like myself who have meditated to some extent over the years and who’ve followed the scientific research have heard these reports before. Now, it seems, the findings are at last moving even farther into the realm of mainstream medicine.

According to the New York Times:

M.R.I. brain scans taken before and after the participants’ meditation regimen found increased gray matter in the hippocampus, an area important for learning and memory. The images also showed a reduction of gray matter in the amygdala, a region connected to anxiety and stress. A control group that did not practice meditation showed no such changes. 

Previous studies have also shown that there are structural differences between the brains of meditators and those who don’t meditate, although this new study is the first to document changes in gray matter over time through meditation.

Britta Hölzel, psychologist at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School and the study’s lead author, said participants practiced mindfulness meditation, a form of meditation that was introduced in the United States in the late 1970s.

Click here for the complete article.

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Study Shows Meditation Improves Attention Span

Ancient mandala with meditation symbols.

Inspired by Buddhist meditation techniques, researchers have determined that meditation improves people’s attention span and in distinguishing small differences in what they are viewing.

The recent study involved selecting 60 participants, then sending half of them to a meditation retreat while the rest waited their turn ~ and essentially functioned as the control group. All 60 were experienced meditators. The retreat for the study lasted about three months.

According to ScienceDaily:

At three points during the retreat, participants took a test on a computer to measure how well they could make fine visual distinctions and sustain visual attention. They watched a screen intently as lines flashed on it; most were of the same length, but every now and then a shorter one would appear, and the volunteer had to click the mouse in response. 

Participants got better at discriminating the short lines as the training went on. This improvement in perception made it easier to sustain attention, so they also improved their task performance over a long period of time. This improvement persisted five months after the retreat, particularly for people who continued to meditate every day. The task lasted 30 minutes and was very demanding. 

"Because this task is so boring and yet is also very neutral, it’s kind of a perfect index of meditation training," Katherine MacLean of the University of California and one of the authors of the study, told ScienceDaily. "People may think meditation is something that makes you feel good and going on a meditation retreat is like going on vacation, and you get to be at peace with yourself. That's what people think until they try it. Then you realize how challenging it is to just sit and observe something without being distracted."

Click here for the complete article.

Meditation Lessens the Hurt of Chronic Pain

New research shows that people who meditate regularly find pain less unpleasant. According to the LiveScience website, scientists recently recruited 12 volunteers with a diverse range of meditation experience in mindfulness meditation, which emphasizes focusing on the present. 

The researchers used a laser to zap the skin on the right forearm and induce pain in each participant. They found those with more meditation experience found the pain less unpleasant than meditators with less experience, while no corresponding age effect was seen among non-meditators.

“The results suggest that meditation doesn't change the raw sensory experience of pain, but rather reduces the emotional response that occurs when pain is anticipated,” researcher Christopher Brown, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Manchester in England, told LiveScience. “This in itself appears to be enough to reduce the unpleasantness of the experienced pain, even though the sensory experience is unchanged.”

“Meditation trains the brain to be more present-focused and therefore to spend less time anticipating future negative events," Brown added. "This may be why meditation is effective at reducing the recurrence of depression, which makes chronic pain considerably worse."

Click here for the complete LiveScience article.

A Meditation for Flu Season

Painting "The Philosopher in Meditation" by Rembrandt, 1632.

I’m gaining a greater appreciation for German-born spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle as I now re-read his landmark The Power of Now after putting it down several years ago. Today I read some easy instructions Tolle says can strengthen your immune system. So, in the spirit of the (flu) season, I pass them along:

There is a simple but powerful self-healing meditation that you can do whenever you feel the need to boost your immune system. It is particularly effective if used when you feel the first symptoms of an illness, but it also works with illnesses that are already entrenched if you use it a frequent intervals and with an intense focus. It will also counteract any disruption of your energy field by some form of negativity. However, it is not a substitute for the moment-to-moment practice of being in the body; otherwise, its effect will only be temporary. Here it is:

When you are unoccupied for a few minutes, and especially last thing at night before falling asleep and first thing in the morning before getting up, “flood” your body with consciousness. Close your eyes. Lie flat on your back. Choose different parts of your body to focus your attention on briefly at first: hands, feet, arms, legs, abdomen, chest, head, and so on. Feel the life energy inside those parts as intensely as you can. Stay with each part for fifteen seconds or so. Then let your attention run through the body like a wave a few times, from feet to head and back again. This need only take a minute or so.

After that, feel the inner body in its totality, as a single field of energy. Hold that feeling for a few minutes. Be intensely present during that time, present in every cell of your body. Don’t be concerned if the mind occasionally succeeds in drawing your attention out of the body and you lose yourself in some thought. As soon as you notice that this has happened, just return your attention to the inner body.

As for the “inner body” he refers to, I liked his explanation, which is something I believe we all experience at times:

Whereas the outer body normally appears to grow old and wither fairly quickly, the inner body does not change with time, except that you may feel it more deeply and become it more fully. If you are twenty years old now, the energy field of your inner body will feel just the same when you are eighty. It will be just as vibrantly alive.

World Peace Depends Entirely on "Know Thyself"

S.N. Goenka, now 85, here presents a familiar message that we all need to be frequently reminded of: Peace and harmony ~ even on a global scale ~ must begin inside of you, the individual. Goenka is one of the world's foremost teachers of Vipassana meditation and here is shown speaking at the United Nations in 2000. This is a much-needed, 4-minute reminder. If you like it, there's a deeper, 11-minute clip also on YouTube.

Dalai Lama Sees East/West Mental Similarities

The Dalai Lama speaking at the Harvard conference.

The Dalai Lama was a star Friday at a Harvard symposium on psychology and mental health, where he responded to questions regarding recent research on mindfulness meditation and related topics.

According to an article on Time.com, the Dalai Lama ~ who has spent years in the company of western scientists on mind/body matters ~ accepted Harvard’s invitation “because he wanted a lively debate about the latest science on mental health. He wanted to play. What he got was an audience of earnest academic worshippers. He played anyway.”

When one Harvard psychologist suggested that Western cultures defy the biological imperative to connect with others and make it more challenging to be compassionate, the Dalai Lama paused for 20 seconds before answering. "Firstly," he said, "some people make a distinction between West and East. And there are some lifestyle differences ... but in the mental area, I don't think there are differences ... At the mental level, I don't think there's any sort of demarcation between East and West."

Click here for the complete Time.com article.
Click here for a Time photo essay on the Dalai Lama at home.

Meditation Improves Depression Therapy

Using a therapy based on mindfulness meditation techniques, researchers at Oxford University were able to improve the mental condition of people who had suffered major depression and suicidal thoughts.

“We are on the brink of discovering really important things about how people can learn to stay well after depression,” Mark Williams, a professor in Oxford’s Department of Psychiatry, told ScienceDaily. “Our aim is to help people to find long-term freedom from the daily battle with their moods.”

Twenty-eight people currently suffering from depression ~ and with thoughts of suicide ~ were randomly assigned into two groups. One received Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) in addition to treatment as usual, while the other received only regular treatment. Treatment with MBCT reduced the number of patients with major depression, while it remained the same in the other group.

The Oxford researchers are carrying out a larger study to compare MBCT with a group form of cognitive therapy to pinpoint which elements of meditation or talking therapies can help which people.

Click here for the ScienceDaily article.

Insight Meditation Can Change Brain's Structure

A new study by leading researchers shows meditation is associated with increased cortical thickness. The structural changes were found in areas of the brain important for sensory, cognitive and emotional processing.

The extensive study on meditation involved researchers from Yale, Harvard, Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. It included 20 participants, all with extensive training in Buddhist Insight meditation, and who meditated an average of 40 minutes a day for the study.

"What is most fascinating to me is the suggestion that meditation practice can change anyone's grey matter," says Jeremy Gray, an assistant professor of psychology at Yale.

Magnetic resonance imaging showed that regular practice of meditation is associated with increased thickness in a subset of cortical regions related to sensory, auditory, visual and internal perception, such as heart rate or breathing. The researchers also found that regular meditation practice may slow age-related thinning of the frontal cortex.

"Most of the regions identified in this study were found in the right hemisphere," researchers said. "The right hemisphere is essential for sustaining attention, which is a central practice of Insight meditation."

Click here for the article in Medical News Today.
Photo at right is microscopy image of cerebral cortex.

Meditation Can Alter Neural Perception

Researchers have found evidence that skills developed by Tibetan Buddhist monks in their practice of a certain type of meditation strongly influences their experience of "perceptual rivalry," dealing with attention and consciousness.

Perceptual rivalry arises when two different images are presented to each eye, and it is manifested as a fluctuation ~ typically over the course of seconds ~ in the "dominant" image that is consciously perceived. The neural events underlying perceptual rivalry are not well understood but are thought to involve brain mechanisms that regulate attention and conscious awareness.

Some previous work had suggested that skilled meditators can alter certain aspects of their brain's neural activity. To gain insight into how visual perception is regulated within the brain, researchers in the new study chose to investigate the extent to which certain types of trained meditative practice can influence the conscious experience of visual perceptual rivalry.

With the support of His Holiness the Dalai Lama, 76 Tibetan Buddhist monks participated in the study, which was carried out at or near their mountain retreats in the Himalaya, Zanskar, and Ladakhi Ranges of India. The monks possessed meditative training ranging from 5 to 54 years.

Two Types of Meditation

The researchers tested the experience of visual rivalry by monks during the practice of two types of meditation:

• “Compassion"-oriented meditation, described as a contemplation of suffering within the world combined with an emanation of loving kindness.

• “One-point" meditation, described as the maintained focus of attention on a single object or thought, a focus that leads to a stability and clarity of mind.

Whereas no observable change in the rate of "visual switching" during rivalry was seen in monks practicing compassion meditation, major increases in the durations of perceptual dominance were experienced by monks practicing one-point meditation.

Within this group, three monks reported complete visual stability during the entire five-minute meditation period. Increases in duration of perceptual dominance were also seen in other monks after a period of one-point meditation.

Click here for the complete Medical News Today article.

Read and Become Luminous

A depiction of Jesus meditating in the desert.

A blog I follow called Quaker Pagan Reflections carries an interesting post on the question of reading the Bible. It reminded me of this quote from the late Indian mystic Osho in his Art of Tea book. Here he’s talking about “meditations to awaken your spirit,” and I quote:

All of the great scriptures of the world are written in sutras, aphorism ~ because the people who wrote them went through this flood of catharsis. When the catharsis was complete, then diamond-like, small sentences ~ simple, aesthetic, beautiful, complete ~ started bubbling in the consciousness. It is from that consciousness that the Vedas were born, and the Koran. And it is from that consciousness that the beauty of the language of the Bible arises. Never has it been surpassed.

Jesus was illiterate, but nobody has ever surpassed that clarity, that penetrating reality of his assertions. Behind it is great meditation. The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali or the Brahma Sutras of Badrayana or the Bhakti Sutras of Naad ~ small sentences, the smallest you can conceive, almost telegraphic ~ but so much is pressed into them that each sentence has atomic energy. If you lovingly take it into yourself, to your heart, it will explode and you will become luminous through it.

Meditation Proven to Reduce Pain

A new study says people who practice Zen meditation have a lower sensitivity to pain ~ meaning they feel less of it ~ when they’re meditating and when they’re not. In other words, meditation can reduce pain.

The study was performed at the Université de Montréal, where scientists recruited 13 Zen meditators with a minimum of 1,000 hours of practice to undergo a pain test, then contrasted their reactions with 13 non-meditators. The subjects were 10 women and 16 men between the ages of 22 to 56.

In the study, a computer-controlled heating plate was pressed against the calves of subjects intermittently at varying temperatures. Heat levels began at about 110 degrees and went to a maximum of 130 degrees, depending on each participant's sensitivity.

Pain Drops 18 Percent

Scientists noticed a marked difference in how the two test groups reacted to pain testing. Zen meditators had much lower pain sensitivity ~ even without meditating ~ compared to non-meditators. During the meditation-like conditions it appeared meditators further reduced their pain partly through slower breathing: 12 breaths per minute versus an average of 15 breaths for non-meditators.

Zen meditators experienced an 18 percent reduction in pain intensity. "If meditation can change the way someone feels pain, thereby reducing the amount of pain medication required for an ailment, that would be clearly beneficial," says Justin Grant, one of the lead scientists.

Click here for the article in Medical News Today.

Transcendence Linked to Prayer, Meditation

A new University of Missouri study contends that spiritual experiences associated with selflessness are related to decreased activity in the brain’s right lobe. The study involved individuals with traumatic brain injury to determine the connection.

Researchers say the implications are that people in many disciplines ~ including peace studies, health care or religion ~ can learn different ways to attain selflessness, to experience transcendence, and to help themselves and others.

The Missouri study, along with other recent neuroradiological studies of Buddhist meditators and Francescan nuns, suggests that all individuals, regardless of cultural background or religion, experience the same neuropsychological functions during spiritual experiences, such as transcendence.

Transcendence, feelings of universal unity and decreased sense of self, is a core tenet of all major religions. Meditation and prayer are the primary vehicles by which such spiritual transcendence is achieved.

Meditation, Prayer are Keys

“The brain functions in a certain way during spiritual experiences,” said Brick Johnstone, professor of health psychology in the MU School of Health Professions. “We studied people with brain injury and found that people with injuries to the right parietal lobe of the brain reported higher levels of spiritual experiences, such as transcendence.”

This link is important, Johnstone said, because it means selflessness can be learned by decreasing activity in that part of the brain. He suggests this can be done through conscious effort, such as meditation or prayer. People with these selfless spiritual experiences also are more psychologically healthy, especially if they have positive beliefs that there is a God or higher power who loves them, he said.

“This research also addresses questions regarding the impact of neurologic versus cultural factors on spiritual experience,” Johnstone said. “The ability to connect with things beyond the self, such as transcendent experiences, seems to occur for people who minimize right parietal functioning. This can be attained through cultural practices, such as intense meditation or prayer or because of a brain injury that impairs the functioning of the right parietal lobe. Either way, our study suggests that ‘selflessness’ is a neuropsychological foundation of spiritual experiences.”

Click here for the complete Science Daily article.

Meditation: Psychotherapy's Ancient New Tool

Psychotherapy is about one hundred years old. The practice of meditation goes back at least three thousand years. And now psychotherapists are saying meditation may be the best thing to happen to psychotherapy, ever.

Specifically, therapists are referring to “mindfulness meditation,” defined by Siddhartha Gautama around 500 B.C. as the key practice of Buddhism.

Since its inception with Sigmund Freud, psychotherapists have relied on patients’ words and then reframing patients’ thoughts to gain insight into the subconscious to alleviate despair, anxiety and many forms of mental illness. Psychotherapists today are discovering what Buddhists worldwide have known for millennia: Meditation bypasses the limitations of language and goes straight to the mind with remedial power.

That power resides mostly in letting things be. Not trying to change everything. Just see it for what it is.

Mindfulness avoids some of the complexities of Transcendental Meditation, which also has bushels of scientific studies to support its value. With mindfulness, you sit comfortably and, for ten minutes or more, you take note of bodily sensations and your breathing. As thoughts enter your mind, you let them pass without judgment. Always bring your attention back to the rhythm of your breathing as a focus.

Eventually you learn to gain control of your attention and reduce the usual brain chatter. Some therapists now say that getting a grip on your attention helps you face troubling thoughts, endure the pain or anger or sadness associated with them, and then let them pass.

The difference from conventional psychotherapy is in not trying to alter the thoughts or feelings – an action that can backfire with damaging results.

According to a recent New York Times article, the National Institute of Health is financing 50 studies testing mindfulness meditation for relieving stress, easing addictions, improving attention and easing despair.

“It’s a shift from having our mental health defined by the content of our thoughts,” said Steven Hayes, a psychologist at the University of Nevada, “to having it defined by our relationship to that content – and changing that relationship by sitting with, noticing and becoming disentangled from our definition of ourselves.”

I encourage your to read the entire Times article.

I encourage you to at least make an attempt to incorporate some form of meditation into your life. It’s not a major investment, though it is a commitment.

In fact, for the post below, I’m going to reprint one of my earliest Quantum Spirit posts, with its link to Peter Russell’s effective three-minute meditation.

Stop for a Minute or Three

(I'm reprinting this post - one of my earliest on Quantum Spirit - because of the simple effectiveness of Peter Russell's approach. Please try it.)

I'm a great believer in meditation. It's capable of accomplishing wondrous things in each of us if we'd just take a few moments to allow it to work. There are probably seven books on meditation on a shelf in my office and you can learn almost everything in any of them in the next three minutes.

Meditation can work on lofty spiritual planes or it can be the simple yet invisible cord that holds your life together. It can cure you of an impressive number of illnesses - mental and physical. I speak from experience.

3-MINUTE MEDITATION

But I've already said enough. Click on the link to Peter Russell's Three-Minute Meditation. He's an English physicist, consciousness researcher, lecturer, and author of a couple of my favorite books. He leads you through about two of minutes of calming instruction and then you can meditate for three or thirty minutes, your call. No need for special positions, special clothing or a special mantra.

You'll see how easy it is and how relaxing yet profound the experience can be, and now you can meditate whenever the desire arises. Thank you, Peter.