Brain systems

Aging the Brain Healthily with Mindfulness

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Aging the Brain Healthily with Mindfulness

 

“He who is of a calm and happy nature will hardly feel the pressure of age, but to him who is of an opposite disposition, youth and age are equally a burden.” – Plato (427-346 B.C.)

 

If we are lucky enough to survive long enough we’ll all have an opportunity to experience the aging process. It is a systematic progressive decline in every system in the body. It cannot be avoided. But, there is evidence that it can be slowed. Contemplative practices such as meditation, yoga, and tai chi or qigong have all been shown to be beneficial in slowing or delaying physical and mental decline with aging (see links below).

 

Using modern neuroimaging techniques, scientists have been able to view the changes that occur in the nervous system with aging. In addition, they have been able to investigate various techniques that might slow the process of neurodegeneration that accompanies normal aging. They have found that contemplative practices of meditation and yoga restrain the loss of neural tissue with aging. The brains of practitioners degenerate less than non-practitioners.

 

The hippocampus is a large subcortical structure that has been shown to decrease in size and connectivity with aging. It also has been found that long-term meditators are somewhat protected from this deterioration. A part of the hippocampus known as the subiculum is of particular interest because it decreases in size with aging and is associated with memory and spatial ability, both of which decline with aging. In addition, the subiculum appears to be larger in long-term meditators. But it has yet to be seen if the age related deterioration of the subiculum is spared with meditation.

 

In today’s Research News article “Reduced age-related degeneration of the hippocampal subiculum in long-term meditators”

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Kurth and colleagues investigate this question by looking at the size of the subiculum in meditators and non-meditators ranging in age from 24 to 77 years. They found that the non-meditators showed the expected decrease in size of the subiculum with aging. But there was no significant decline in the subiculum size on the left side with aging with the meditators.

 

Hence, the findings of Kurth and colleagues suggest that meditation practice protects an important part of the brain from deteriorating with age. This is interesting and important and could reflect the mechanism by which meditation decreases the aging individual’s loss of memory and spatial ability.

 

Meditation is known to decrease the physiological and psychological responses to stress. In addition, stress including childhood trauma is known to produce a reduction in the size of the subiculum on the left side. It follows then the neuroprotective effects of meditation on the age related deterioration of the left subiculum may result from meditations known ability to reduce stress. Further research will be required to test this idea. Regardless, the results clearly demonstrate that meditation can result in less deterioration with aging of an important part of the brain.

 

So, meditate to reduce brain loss with aging.

 

“There are no drugs that will make you immune to stress or to pain, or that will by themselves magically solve your life’s problems or promote healing. It will take conscious effort on your part to move in a direction of healing, inner peace, and well-being.” – Jon Kabat-Zinn

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

Mindfulness practices are known to increase the activity, size, and connectivity of neural structures (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/08/01/this-is-your-brain-on-meditation/ and http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/19/spirituality-mindfulness-and-the-brain/ and http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/08/03/make-the-brain-more-efficient-with-meditation/).

Yoga practice has been shown to decrease age related brain deterioration. ( See http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/age-healthily-protect-the-brain-with-yoga/).

 

Meditation improves sleep in aging http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/08/31/age-healthily-sleep-better-with-meditation/

Mindfulness improves emotions in aging http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/age-healthily-mindfulness/

Qigong improves responses to stress in aging http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/09/28/age-healthily-with-qigong-soothing-stress-responses/

Yoga practice improves the symptoms of arthritis http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/08/14/age-healthily-yoga-for-arthritis/

Yoga practice can reduce indicators of cellular aging http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/aging-healthily-yoga-and-cellular-aging/

Yoga decreases musculoskeletal deterioration in aging http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/age-healthily-yoga/

Tai Chi reduces inflammation and insomnia in aging http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/08/06/age-healthily-treating-insomnia-and-inflammation/ and http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/aging-healthily-sleeping-better-with-mindful-movement-practice/

 

 

 

Develop a Better Brain Mindfully

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The nervous system changes dramatically during development. It is a time when the brain is greatly affected by the environment and experiences of the individual. This is what neuroscientists call neuroplasticity. It is present in adulthood, but is particularly evident and important during development. The nervous system is molded to efficiently analyze the environment presented.

 

Studies of the development of the nervous system during adolescence have revealed marked changes occurring throughout the teen years. The brain doesn’t look like that of an adult until the early 20s. Over the course of childhood the outer layer of the nervous system, the cortex, increases in thickness and then during adolescence thins. Late adolescence is a time of brain development when the highest levels of intellectual development are being produced by refinements in the structures of the nervous system. The thinning of the cortex is thought to reflect a pruning of cortical systems making processing more and more efficient. It is making the nervous system more efficient and tuned to the environment in which it is immersed.

 

It is thought that many of the emotional and behavioral problems during adolescence occur due to the fact that the neural systems underlying emotional reactivity and expression are fully developed well before the development of the higher processes that regulate and control the emotions and the responses to the emotions. As a result, adolescent behavior can be overly determined by emotion. This can potentially explain the high rates of teen suicide, reckless, thrill seeking behavior, and social anxiety. The erratic emotion driven behavior of the teen years is reflected in the teen nervous system.

 

Mindfulness has been shown to be associated with emotion regulation. The higher the level of mindfulness the better able the individual is in experiencing emotions at a manageable level and responding to them adaptively and appropriately (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/09/10/take-command-and-control-of-your-emotions/). Hence, it makes sense to study the development of the brain, mindfulness, and emotion regulation during adolescence. Perhaps mindfulness can compensate for some of the emotional dominance of behavior in the teen.

 

In today’s Research News article “Dispositional mindfulness is predicted by structural development of the insula during late adolescence”

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Friedel and colleagues use MRI neuroimaging to measure brain structure of males and females at age 16 and again at age 19 to view the changes occurring during late adolescence. They also measured mindfulness, emotional self-regulation, attention, inhibitory control, frustration, as well as behavioral aggression and depressive mood. High levels of mindfulness were found to be associated with higher levels of cognitive reappraisal, attention and inhibitory control, and lower levels of self-reported frustration, aggression and depressive mood. In other words, the adolescents who were very mindful were in better control of their emotions.

 

Friedel and colleagues then compared the brains at 16 years to those at 19 years and observed the expected thinning of cortical regions over this period. They found that mindfulness was associated with less thinning of an area called the Insula and that this was also associated with intelligence. They also found that the higher the level of mindfulness the less thinning of the Insula occurred and the higher the IQ test score.

 

These are intriguing findings. The Insula is an area of the cortex that has been found to be associated with interoceptive awareness, that is with the individual’s sensitivity to and awareness of their internal state. This is important for regulating emotions as the first step in regulating is actually becoming aware that they are occurring. Hence, the results suggest that the improved emotion regulation that is associated with mindfulness during late adolescence may be due to improved awareness of the emotional state and that this is due to less thinning of the Insula region of the cortex.

 

So, develop the brain mindfully and develop a more in-control teen.

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

Get Connected with Mindfulness

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“The human brain has 100 billion neurons, each neuron connected to 10 thousand other neurons. Sitting on your shoulders is the most complicated object in the known universe.” – Michio Kaku
There are billions of cells in the nervous system that you are born with. Since the number of cells doesn’t increase as we mature, in fact it decreases, it should be obvious that our increased mental capacity is due to the development of connections between these cells. Indeed, the intelligence of a normal individual human is not related to the number of cells in the brain, but rather to how they are connected. It should be clear that the connectivity of the brain is a key to its capacity to perform mental functions.

 

Mindfulness is known to increase the number of cells in certain areas of the nervous system and decrease the number of cells in other areas and also increase the connectivity of some areas to others (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/08/01/this-is-your-brain-on-meditation/). Since the interactions between neural areas is so central to determining the capabilities of the nervous system it is important to investigate exactly what areas and systems are activated together and which do not.

 

In today’s Research News article “Mindfulness is associated with intrinsic functional connectivity between default mode and salience networks”

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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4548211/

Doll and colleagues investigated the relative activities of the intrinsic brain networks. Research has identified three distinct interconnected areas, networks that are associated with different mind states during meditation. When the meditator is focused on present experience the dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex, the central executive network (CEN) was activated. During mind wandering the default mode network (DMN) was activated. When the individual became aware of mind wandering the salience network (SN) was activated.

 

Doll and colleagues found that the higher the mindfulness of the individual the greater the inverse relationship between the networks respective activities. That is, they found that the higher the activity of one network the lower the activity of the others. In other words the three networks had tendencies to inhibit each other’s activity. So, when areas associated with increased focus on the present moment were activated there was a reduction in activity in areas associated with mind wandering and detecting salience and visa-versa. The higher the individual’s level of mindfulness the greater the negative relationship.

 

Hence, mindfulness is associated with greater mutual inhibition between the three neural networks. The more mindful the individual is the greater the difference between the networks’ activities. This suggests that mindfulness is associated with neural system interactions, such that their activities become more distinct. When focused on the present moment mind wandering is much less in a mindful individual. Similarly, when mind wandering is present in that mindful individual, focus on the present moment is lower.

 

Thus the neural systems reflect the observations that mindful people have more focused attention on their mental state than less mindful people. Their brains appear better able to separate out and focus on specific mental states. Hence the brains of mindful people are tuned to and probably underlie their abilities to pay attention in the present moment nonjudgmentally.

 

So, practice mindfulness and get your neural networks more connected.

 

“The brain is like a muscle. When it is in use we feel very good. Understanding is joyous.” – Carl Sagan
CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

Do Spiritual Experiences Reveal Ultimate Truth or Merely Brain Activity?

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Spiritual experiences, be they called awakenings, mystical experiences, or enlightenments, involve a shift in how the individual perceives reality. This could be viewed as a spiritual revelation. But it could also be viewed as a change in the neural systems integrating and interpreting experiences. So, are spiritual awakenings revelations of a reality beyond physical reality or are they simply hallucinatory experience evoked by changes in the nervous system?

 

One way of investigating this question is to study the brain-spirituality connection. Research along these lines has revealed that there is a clear association between spirituality and the brain. Modern neuroscience has developed methods, such as neuroimaging, to investigate the relationship. Applying these techniques it has been demonstrated that spirituality is associated with changes in the size, activity, and connectivity of the frontal and parietal lobes of the brain (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/19/spirituality-mindfulness-and-the-brain/). So spirituality and changes in neural systems co-occur. But, this does not demonstrate a causal connection, whether spirituality alters the brain or brain alteration causes spirituality, or some third factor is responsible for both.

 

A better way to demonstrate if brain activity cause spiritual experiences is to investigate what happens to spirituality when the brain changes. One place to look at this is with accidental brain injuries incurred by humans that afford an opportunity to glimpses associations between brain change and spirituality. In general people who have incurred damage to the right inferior parietal area show an increase in spirituality. So, brain alteration affects spirituality. But, increased spiritual beliefs and spiritual seeking is not the same thing as spiritual experiences. So, we cannot conclude that these changes in the brain are responsible for awakening experiences.

 

Another manipulation of the brain occurs with drugs. Indeed, various hallucinogenic drugs such as mescaline, LSD, psilocybin, etc. have been shown to produce experiences that are extremely similar to spiritual experiences. These drugs have been shown to alter the activity in specific neurochemical systems in the brain and when that happens, experiences that are very similar to spiritual awakenings are evoked. Many people who have used these drugs are altered spiritually but vast numbers of people find hallucinatory drugs as fun recreation but are not affected spiritually.

 

Spiritual seekers who have used psychedelic substances report that they experience something like but not the same as spiritual awakening experiences. The following quote from Alan Watts is illustrative.

“Psychedelic experience is only a glimpse of genuine mystical insight, but a glimpse            which can be matured and deepened by the various ways of meditation in which drugs   are no longer necessary or useful. If you get the message, hang up the phone. For psychedelic drugs are simply instruments, like microscopes, telescopes, and telephones.             The biologist does not sit with eye permanently glued to the microscope, he goes away        and works on what he has seen…”

Also a quote from Ralph Metzner

            “While psychedelic use is all about altered states, Buddhism is all about altered traits,        and one does not necessarily lead to the other.”

Hence, it appears that although there are great similarities between manipulation of brain chemistry with drugs and the experiences occurring with spiritual awakenings, they are in fact quite different.

 

So, what should we conclude regarding the clear relationship between the brain and spiritual experiences? It has been established that spirituality changes the brain and that changes in the brain are associated with spiritual experiences. Does this indicate that spirituality is nothing but a brain function? This would suggest that spirituality and spiritual experiences are nothing but physical events and don’t represent experience of true transcendence or an indication of a god. If this were true then it would suggest that there is nothing beyond the physical, that spiritual awakenings are nothing other than evoked changes in the nervous system.

 

It should be noted that reported spiritual experiences most frequently involve changes in sensory experiences. We know that sensory experiences are produced by the nervous system. So, it would be expected that if a spiritual experience occurs then there would be changes in the nervous system. As a result it is not surprising that nervous system changes would accompany spiritual experiences.

 

Neural changes may represent the effects of spiritual experiences on the physical body. After all, when we become aware of any kind of remarkable occurrence we react emotionally, physically, and thoughtfully. This would imply that the neural changes occur after the spiritual experience and not before it as a causal relationship would demand. In addition, changing the brain with drugs may simply induce the same effects as the sequela of spiritual experience and not the spiritual experiences themselves.

 

The most common report of spiritual experience is that everything is perceived as one. This oneness experience is not reported to be a change in the actual sensory information, but rather as a perception of the interconnectedness of all things such that they are seen as all a part of a singular entity, like seeing individual waves as all being part of one ocean. The more modern science studies events and their interconnections the more that the truth of oneness is revealed. The entire science of ecology has developed to study the interconnectedness among biological entities, meteorology has determined that atmospheric conditions over the entire planet are interconnected, and geology has revealed the interconnectedness of all movement of the planet’s surface and interior. Just think how interconnected everything is with sunlight. Without this energy, life could not exist and even the weather would not be changing. Everything about us and our planet is interconnected to the sun’s energy.

 

So, perhaps the oneness revealed in spiritual experiences may actually be a more accurate glimpse of the truth of existence. Perhaps, the changes observed in the brain may simply be the effect of this revelation rather than the cause. At this point we cannot reach a clear conclusion as to whether spiritual experiences are material and physical or true revelation of a non-physical reality. But the research is exciting and will continue to explore these ultimate questions regarding existence.

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

Calm your Mind and Brain with a Mantra

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“Chanting a mantra at the beginning of your meditation helps you clear the mind and takes you deep within the self. Chanting a mantra at the end of meditation helps you seal the meditation. It helps you bring the awareness of the meditation down into your daily life.” – Rama

 

Mantras are a very common component of many contemplative practices. Transcendental Meditation for example emphasizes mantras. Mantra is a Sanskrit word for “sound tool.” It is literally a tool employing sounds used in contemplative practice. It is a sound, e.g. “om”, or a phrase, e.g. “Love is the only miracle there is” that is repeated over and over and over during a contemplative practice.

 

Mantras are claimed to be helpful in contemplative practice and to help improve physical and mental well-being. But, there is very little empirical research on mantras or their effectiveness. One problem in studying mantras is that they are embedded in a contemplative practice. It is difficult then to separate the effects of the mantra from that of the overall practice. So, it is important to study mantras while extracting them from the practices.

 

In today’s Research News article “Repetitive speech elicits widespread deactivation in the human cortex: the “Mantra” effect? Brain and Behavior”

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Berkovich-Ohana and colleagues do just this. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4511287/

They study the effects of repetitive speech, devoid of its spiritual or meditative context, on the activity of the brain. They simply had participants repeat the word “one” over and over again for 8-minutes while resting in an f-MRI scanner. They found that during repetitive speech there was an overall reduction in brain activity. In studies of meditation it has been reported that there is a reduction of activity in some areas and an increase in others. So, it is remarkable to observe a reduction without an increase elsewhere.

 

They found that the reduction in brain activity was particularly focused on a set of structures that has been labelled as the default mode network (DMN). The DMN has been found frequently in the past to be the areas that are active during mind wandering and internalized self-referential activity. In support of this, they obtained reports of the participants experience during repetitive speech and found that there was a marked reduction in thoughts and sensations experienced. Hence it appears that the repetitive speech reduced brain activity in association with reduced mental activity.

 

These results clarify why mantras are so often used in contemplative practices. They quiet the mind and they quiet the brain. This is exactly the initial goal of contemplative practice. So, mantras can be of great help in establishing the exact mental and physical state desired in contemplative practices.

 

So, incorporate mantras in your contemplative practice and calm your mind and brain.

 

“You are a cosmic flower. Om chanting is the process of opening the psychic petals of that flower.”  ― Amit Ray

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

Change Your Brain for Better Health with Yoga

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“The autonomic nervous system is divided into the sympathetic system, which is often identified with the fight-or-flight response, and the parasympathetic, which is identified with what’s been called the relaxation response. When you do yoga – the deep breathing, the stretching, the movements that release muscle tension, the relaxed focus on being present in your body – you initiate a process that turns the fight or flight system off and the relaxation response on. That has a dramatic effect on the body. The heartbeat slows, respiration decreases, blood pressure decreases. The body seizes this chance to turn on the healing mechanisms.” – Richard Faulds

 

The practice of yoga has many benefits for the individual’s physical and psychological health. Yoga has diverse effects because it is itself diverse having components of exercise, mindfulness meditation, and spirituality. So, yoga nourishes the body, mind, and spirit. As a result, yoga practice would be expected to produce physical changes. These include the relaxation response and stress relief as suggested in the above quote. These should be obvious in the muscles, tendons and joints, but, less obvious in the nervous system.

 

The nervous system changes in response to how it is used and how it is stimulated in a process called neuroplasticity. Highly used areas grow in size and connectivity. Mindfulness practices in general are known to produce these kinds of changes in the structure and activity of the brain (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/08/01/this-is-your-brain-on-meditation/). Indeed, yoga practice has been shown to protect the brain from age related degeneration (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/age-healthily-protect-the-brain-with-yoga/).

 

In today’s Research News article “Effects of yoga on brain waves and structural activation: A review.”

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Desai and colleagues review the literature on the effects of yoga practice on the structure and activity of the nervous system. They found that the published evidence indicates that there is an overall increase in brain wave activity. This increased nervous system activity may explain the decreases in anxiety and increases in focus that are evident after yoga training programs.

 

They also found that there were reported changes in brain structure. There were reported increases in the gray matter volume overall and also increases in volume of specific areas. There was reported to be increased gray matter in the insula which may explain decreased pain perception with yoga. There was reported to be an increase of hippocampal volume which is associated with spatial ability and memory. In addition, increases in amygdala and frontal cortex activation were evident after a yoga intervention. This was suggested to be associated with improved emotion regulation.

 

Regardless of the specific structure-function relationships, it’s clear that yoga practice alters the brain, increasing overall activity and increasing the volume of gray matter in areas of the brain that underlie emotion regulation, memory, spatial ability, pain, and attentional mechanisms.

 

So, practice yoga and change your brain for better physical and psychological health.

 

“The beauty is that people often come here for the stretch, and leave with a lot more.” – Liza Ciano

 

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

 

This is the Brain on Meditation – Major Depressive Disorder

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Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) is a severe mood disorder that includes mood dysregulation and cognitive impairment. It is estimated that 16 million adults in the U.S. (6.9% of the population suffered from major depression in the past year and affects females (8.4%) to a great extent than males (5.2%). It is second-leading cause of disability in the world following heart disease.

The usual treatment of choice for MDD is drug treatment. In fact, it is estimated that 10% of the U.S. population is taking some form of antidepressant medication. But a substantial proportion of patients (~40%) do not respond to drug treatment. In addition the drugs can have nasty side effects. So, there is need to explore other treatment options. Mindfulness meditation is a safe alternative that has been shown to be effective for major depressive disorder even in individuals who do not respond to drug treatment. (see http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/dealing-with-major-depression-when-drugs-fail/ ).

In today’s Research News article “The effect of body-mind relaxation meditation induction on major depressive disorder: A resting-state fMRI study”

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Chen and colleagues explore potential brain mechanisms for meditation effects on depression. They observed neural activity in patients with MDD before and after a mindfulness meditation exercise. They observed decreased activity in the frontal pole and increased connectivity between the right side dorsal medial prefrontal cortex (r-dmPFC) and both the left side dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex (l-dlPFC) and the left side orbitofrontal cortex (l-OFC).

The frontal pole area of the brain has been shown to be heavily involved in evaluation, monitoring, or manipulation of internally generated information, basically thinking without an external referent. One of the characterizing features of depression is rumination, which is a repetitive thought pattern involving worry about past troublesome events. Hence rumination comprises negative internal thoughts without external referents. This has the effect of amplifying the depression as worry about depression produces more depression which produces worry about the depression, etc. So, decreased activity of the frontal pole would signal that after meditation there is a reduced tendency for rumination. This suggests that meditation may in part reduce depressive symptoms by reducing frontal pole meditated rumination.

The increased connectivity between the r-dmPFC and both the l-dlPFC and the (l-OFC is significant as these areas have been implicated in cognitive reappraisal, a strategy to regulate emotions by reinterpreting their meaning from a negative interpretation to a more positive one. For example rather than the feeling surrounding an emotion signaling that the individual is upset and unhappy, it is reinterpreted to mean that the individual is sensitive and empathetic toward other people. So, meditation by improving communications between these areas helps the individual to better and more positively interpret the feeling that they’re experiencing, moving them away from thoughts about depression toward thoughts about more uplifting characteristics.

Hence it appears that even a brief meditation practice can alter the activity of the brain in such a way as to relieve depression.

So, meditate and induce your brain to relieve depression.

CMCS

Get the Brain to Reduce Anxiety with Meditation

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Anxiety is a very common emotional state. It is a state characterized by feelings of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome. For most people occasional anxiety is manageable. But for many it is chronic or extreme in magnitude and can have a major disruptive effect on their lives.

Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the U.S. It is estimated that 40 million people or 18% of the population will experience impairment due to of an anxiety condition this year. Although treatable only about a third will receive treatment. About 5% of the U.S. population takes anti-anxiety prescription medications. But many self-medicate as alcohol and recreational drugs are frequently used to cope with anxiety. To make matters worse people who experience anxiety and stress have a very high propensity for drug abuse and addictions. In addition, anti-anxiety medications are frequently used, especially by young people, for recreational purposes

Hence, it is important to find an alternative to drugs for the treatment of anxiety. Contemplative practices would appear to be well suited for the role. Anxiety is a concern about a potential negative occurrence in the future. By training the individual to focus on the present moment contemplative practices can mitigate the importance of the future and thereby reduce anxiety. Indeed, contemplative practices have been found to be quite effective for treating anxiety (See previous post http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/07/17/the-mindfulness-cure-for-social-anxiety/)

Contemplative practices are known to have profound effects on the structure and function of the nervous system. So, it would be expected that the anti-anxiety effects of meditation would have associated changes in the brain. In today’s Research News article “Neural correlates of mindfulness meditation-related anxiety relief”

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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4040088/

Zeidan and colleagues found that mindfulness meditation reduced anxiety by activating a network of brain regions including anterior cingulate and prefrontal cortex and insula while reducing activity in the posterior cingulate cortex.

The anterior cingulate and prefrontal cortex and insula have been shown to be involved in emotion regulation. So, it is no surprise that they should be activated as meditation lowers anxiety. The posterior cingulate cortex is a part of what is called the default mode network that is involved in mind wandering and ruminative thinking. Again, it is no surprise that the area responsible for rumination and worry would have its activity decreased in concert with meditation induced reduction in anxiety. Both of these mechanisms would be expected to enhance self-awareness processes particularly of the present moment, increase emotion regulation and decrease rumination and thereby produce anxiety relief.

Hence, meditation would appear to be an ideal treatment for anxiety. It is safe and effective and appears to act by altering nervous system activity. Continued meditation practice has been shown to produce lasting changes in these areas. So, meditation would appear to not just be a quick fix but a lasting treatment for the scourge of anxiety.

So, change the brain with meditation and reduce anxiety.

CMCS

 

Make the Brain more Efficient with Meditation

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Meditation has been shown to alter the nervous system. It changes the size of brain areas, their connectivity, and their activity. It even appears to protect the brain from the degeneration that normally occurs with aging. These changes are thought to underlie meditation effects on physical and psychological health. These effects of meditation were reviewed in a previous post

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http://contemplative-studies.org/wp/index.php/2015/08/01/this-is-your-brain-on-meditation/

The increased connectivity between brain areas implies that meditation may make the nervous system more efficient, processing information faster and more effectively. But, the prior studies do not directly measure information processing efficiency. In today’s Research News article “Neurophysiological Effects of Meditation Based on Evoked and Event Related Potential Recordings”

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http://www.hindawi.com/journals/bmri/2015/406261/

Singh and colleagues review studies that have used the electrical signals from the brain to track how fast and effectively sensory information is processed in the brain during meditation. They report that the research indicates that indeed the brain processes this information more efficiently while engaged in meditation.

There were two different types of improvements reported with meditation. The first is simple processing on sensory events, sending the signals from the sensory organs to the cortex where complex processing occurs. They found that this simple level processing was improved during meditation.

The second type of processing is more complex and involves making decisions about the sensory information. This type of processing was also found to be improved in meditators. There was improved attention and switching of attention, greater perceptual clarity, lower automatic reactivity to the information and its emotional content, greater emotional acceptance, and lower anticipation and fear of pain. These results are remarkable and suggest that meditation increases the efficiency of the brain, improving the distribution of limited brain resources.

How can such a simple practice such as meditation have such profound effects upon the nervous system. In meditation, information processing is greatly simplified and focused. By reducing intrusions and the onslaught of complex sensory experiences, thoughts, implicit speech, and ruminations, meditation may allow the brain to focus on a reduced number of tasks and thus learn to process them simply and more efficiently.

It is also the case that the nervous system adapts to the kind of processing that it’s asked to do in a process called neuroplasticity. By reducing the complexity of processing the brain may improve and allocate its resources to focused tasks, improving its speed and effectiveness in processing them. Simply put, by making the world simpler, with fewer distraction or discursions the nervous system can better learn how to effectively make sense of what’s present.

So, meditate and make the brain better.

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies

This is Your Brain on Meditation

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“Our minds have the incredible capacity to both alter the strength of connections among neurons, essentially rewiring them, and create entirely new pathways. (It makes a computer, which cannot create new hardware when its system crashes, seem fixed and helpless).” ― Susannah Cahalan

There has accumulated a large amount of research demonstrating that meditation has significant benefits for psychological, physical, and spiritual wellbeing. Its positive effects are so widespread that it is difficult to find any other treatment of any kind with such broad beneficial effects on everything from mood and happiness to severe mental and physical illnesses. This raises the question of how meditation could do this.

The nervous system is constantly changing and adapting to the environment. It will change size, activity, and connectivity in response to experience. 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 has identified neuroplastic changes in widespread areas.

In today’s Research News article “The Meditative Mind: A Comprehensive Meta-Analysis of MRI Studies”

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1060975617259697/?type=1&theater

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4471247/

Boccia and colleagues summarize the current state of research on the effects of meditation on the nervous system. They show that meditation activates a network of brain areas that over time, in experienced meditators, increases in size and in the ability of these areas to interact (increased connectivity).

The particular parts of the brain that are affected by meditation are areas that have been demonstrated previously to be involved in self-referential processes, including self-awareness and self-regulation, attention, executive functions, and memory formations. The altered structures have functions that align perfectly with the types of changes observed in expert meditators. These include increases in present moment awareness of the self and the environment, sustained attention, cognitive ability, memory ability, the abilities to regulate emotions and responses to emotions.

Hence, it appears that meditation alters the nervous system in important ways that result in changes in the individual’s psychological and physical makeup that in turn affect health and wellbeing.

So, meditate and improve your brain.

CMCS – Center for Mindfulness and Contemplative Studies