Change the Brain for Healthy Aging with Meditation
By John M. de Castro, Ph.D.
“With recent neuroscientific findings, meditation as a practice has been shown to literally rewire brain circuits that boost both mind and body health. These benefits of meditation have surfaced alongside the revelation that the brain can be deeply transformed through experience – a quality known as “neuroplasticity.”” – Quora
The nervous system is a dynamic entity, constantly changing and adapting to the environment. It will change size, activity, and connectivity in response to repeated or prolonged experiences. For example, the brain area that controls the right index finger has been found to be larger in blind subjects who use braille than in sighted individuals. Similarly, cab drivers in London who navigate the twisting streets of the city, have a larger hippocampus, which is involved in spatial navigation, than predefined route bus drivers. These changes in the brain are called neuroplasticity. Over the last decade neuroscience has been studying the effects of contemplative practices on the brain and have identified neuroplastic changes in widespread areas. In other words, meditation practice appears to mold and change the brain, producing psychological, physical, and spiritual benefits.
The seemingly simple behavior of meditation is actually quite complex. Adding to the complexity is that there are a variety of different meditation techniques. To begin to understand exactly how meditation works to produce its benefit, it is important to determine what various contemplative techniques do. So, there is a need to test and compare the effects of a variety of techniques and variations. There are a number of different ways to classify contemplative techniques including focused attention techniques such as breath meditation of loving kindness meditation and active meditations such as yoga or tai chi. All of these techniques, even though very different, have been shown to improve the physical and mental health of the individual. A comparison of the effects on the brain of these different techniques could reveal what neural changes are in common that might explain the common benefits and which are unique to the specific techniques.
In today’s Research News article “The Neural Mechanisms of Meditative Practices: Novel Approaches for Healthy Aging.” See:
or see summary below or view the full text of the study at:
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5110576/
Acevedo and colleagues review the published research literature on the changes to the brain produced by focused meditation and active meditation. In particular, they compared the results for meditation practices that have a single focus, such as breath meditation or loving kindness meditation, versus those that active meditations that involved multiple foci of attention, such as chanting, active postures, breathing practices, or working with a partner. They discovered 7 studies in the literature that investigated the neural changes produced by focused type meditation practices and 6 studies that investigated active meditation practices.
They report that the research has identified a set of brain structures that are involved in attention, memory, conscious awareness, reward, and emotional regulation that are affected in common with both focused and active meditative practices. These are the same areas that tend to deteriorate with aging, This may explain why meditation tends to slow down the mental deterioration that occurs even in healthy aging.
Focused meditation uniquely activated areas involved in sensory and emotional integration, self-control, body awareness, and movement. So, focused meditation may have greater effects on emotion regulation and conscious awareness of the body and movement resulting in greater self-control. On the other hand, active meditations appeared to uniquely affect brain regions that are involved in “willful acts,” language, and movement, as well as social processes. Hence the two forms of meditation have benefits in common and some benefits that are unique to the type of meditation practice.
These results are reasonable given the natures of the meditation types, where focused meditation appears to benefit internal awareness while active meditation appears to benefit control of willful behavior of language and movement. Both types appear to have extensive positive benefits and appear to counteract the degenerative changes occurring with healthy aging. But their differences suggest that each may be better for different kinds of people and different disorders. Future research should explore the utility of each for targeted physical or psychological weaknesses in the individual.
So, change the brain for healthy aging with meditation.
“The impact that mindfulness exerts on our brain is borne from routine: a slow, steady, and consistent reckoning of our realities, and the ability to take a step back, become more aware, more accepting, less judgmental, and less reactive. Just as playing the piano over and over again over time strengthens and supports brain networks involved with playing music, mindfulness over time can make the brain, and thus, us, more efficient regulators, with a penchant for pausing to respond to our worlds instead of mindlessly reacting.” – Jennifer Wolkin
,CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies
This and other Contemplative Studies posts are also available on Google+ https://plus.google.com/106784388191201299496/posts
Study Summary
Acevedo, B. P., Pospos, S., & Lavretsky, H. (2016). The Neural Mechanisms of Meditative Practices: Novel Approaches for Healthy Aging. Current Behavioral Neuroscience Reports, 3(4), 328–339. http://doi.org/10.1007/s40473-016-0098-x
Abstract
Objectives: Meditation has been shown to have physical, cognitive, and psychological health benefits that can be used to promote healthy aging. However, the common and specific mechanisms of response remain elusive due to the diverse nature of mind–body practices.
Methods: In this review, we aim to compare the neural circuits implicated in focused-attention meditative practices that focus on present-moment awareness to those involved in active-type meditative practices (e.g., yoga) that combine movement, including chanting, with breath practices and meditation.
Recent Findings: Recent meta-analyses and individual studies demonstrated common brain effects for attention-based meditative practices and active-based meditations in areas involved in reward processing and learning, attention and memory, awareness and sensory integration, and self-referential processing and emotional control, while deactivation was seen in the amygdala, an area implicated in emotion processing. Unique effects for mindfulness practices were found in brain regions involved in body awareness, attention, and the integration of emotion and sensory processing. Effects specific to active-based meditations appeared in brain areas involved in self-control, social cognition, language, speech, tactile stimulation, sensorimotor integration, and motor function.
Summary: This review suggests that mind–body practices can target different brain systems that are involved in the regulation of attention, emotional control, mood, and executive cognition that can be used to treat or prevent mood and cognitive disorders of aging, such as depression and caregiver stress, or serve as “brain fitness” exercise. Benefits may include improving brain functional connectivity in brain systems that generally degenerate with Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and other aging-related diseases.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5110576/