Link between meditation and the brain

Meditation and the Brain

For the purpose of this article, research on meditation concerns research into the psychological and physiological effects of meditation using the scientific method of the western tradition. In recent years, these studies have increasingly involved the use of modern scientific techniques and instruments, such as fMRI and EEG which are able to directly observe brain physiology and neural activity in living subjects, either during the act of meditation itself, or before and after a meditation effort, thus allowing linkages to be established between meditative practice and changes in brain structure or function.

Meditation, in its most basic sense, is clearing your mind of all thought—or at least, trying to. The practice is used in cultures around the globe for both religious and secular purposes. While it may be best known for its spiritual uses, it is this latter purpose that has recently ignited a firestorm of interest, as scientific research seems to indicate that meditation changes your brain on a fundamental, biological level.

Dr. Robert Puff, a licensed clinical psychologist, notes in Psychology Today that descriptions of meditation techniques date back at least some 3,000 years, to Indian scriptures written in approximately 1000 BCE. However, the practice itself appears to be far, far older. Some evidence suggests that individuals were describing the practice as long as 5,000 years ago. Mindfulness meditation also appears to bring about favorable structural changes in the brain.recent study found a significant cortical thickness increase in individuals who underwent a brief -8 weeks- MBSR training program and that this increase was coupled with a significant reduction of several psychological indices related to worry, state anxiety, depression.Another study describes how mindfulness based interventions target neurocognitive mechanisms of addiction at the attention-appraisal-emotion interface. A meta-analysis by Fox et al. (2014) using results from 21 brain imaging studies found consistent differences in the region of the prefrontal cortex and other brain regions associated with body awareness. In terms of effect size the mean effect was rated as moderate. (Cohen's d = 0.46) However the results should be interpreted with caution because funnel plots indicate that publication bias is an issue in meditation research.A follow up by Fox et al. (2016) using 78 functional neuro-imaging studies suggests that different meditation styles are reliably associated with different brain activity. Activation in some brain regions are usually accompanied by deactivation in others. This finding suggests that meditation research must put emphasis on comparing practices from the same style of meditation, for example results from studies investigating focused attention methods cannot be compared to results from open monitoring approaches.

 A 2011 study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, which was conducted by Yale University, discovered that meditation decreases activity in the default mode network (DMN) in the brain. In the paper, the team noted that this reveals the actual biological impact of meditation and helps bring to light “a unique understanding of possible neural mechanisms of meditation.”

There’s little debate in the science regarding the benefits of meditation. According to research published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, meditation has been linked to reduced feelings of depression, anxiety, and physical pain.