For thousands of years’ people have practiced meditation for spiritual, emotional and physical well being, yet without much evidence of its effects. It is known that meditation can relieve stress, lower blood pressure and lift someone’s mood. But it is only in the last 15 years have neuroscientists taken a serious look at the changes in brain structure underlying some of meditations benefits.
Image from: bulletproofexec.com
Like during everything we do, meditation rewires our neural circuits, pruning away the least used connections and strengthening the ones we exercise the most. Studies looking for signs of these changes focus on ‘mindfulness meditation’, which challenges people to keep their attentions fixed on their thoughts and sensations in the present moment. Earlier on, scientists acknowledge that many of these studies are small and not ideally designed. But now, researches have gathered enough evidence to be confident that their findings are not just a fluke. Experiments suggest that Buddhist monks have more robust connection between scattered regions of their brains, which allows for more synchronized communication. Expert meditators also seem to develop an especially wrinkly cortex (the brains outer layer), which we depend on for abstract thought and introspection. Several studies have confirmed that meditation can increase the volume and density of the hippocampus, which is crucial for memory.
Studies show that 10-20 minutes of meditation a day sharpens the mind. When scientists compared the brains of the monks to those of new meditators, they found the region of the brain associated with empathy to be much more pronounced in the monks. These studies also show that prolonged meditation can alter your brainwave frequencies, exhibiting higher levels of Alpha waves that help reduce feelings of negative mood, tension and sadness.
In an 8-week study meditators showed increase in the density of grey matter in brain regions involved in learning, memory processing and emotion regulation. While in the amygdala, which deals with stress blood pressure and fear, grey matter decreased. In these studies, meditators scored higher on tests of attention and working memory, which is the ability to store and manipulate information in one’s mind. Although areas of the brain involved in sustaining attention deteriorate as we age, meditation counteracts this decay.
Meditation not only affects the mind but the body as a whole. In a study where both meditators and non-meditators were given the flu virus, meditators had produced a greater number of anti-bodies and had increased immune function. Meditation also showed advantages on the cellular level where lower levels of stress increased the function of the enzyme telomerase that counteract the shortening of DNA telomeres, which are linked to cardiovascular diseases, diabetes, cancer and aging.
Of course meditation is not a substitute for other medical advice or a healthy life style, but much like hitting the gym can grow your muscles and increase your overall health, it seems like meditation is a way to workout your brain with extra health benefits.
