Brain systems

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”

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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

Spirituality, Mindfulness and the Brain

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“The notion that science and spirituality are somehow mutually exclusive does a disservice to both.” ― Carl Sagan

Mindfulness training has been shown to alter the brain in profound ways. It activates certain areas of the nervous system and if practiced for a period of time it will alter the brain structurally, increasing the size and connectivity of some areas. These significant changes will be reviewed in an upcomiong post.

 There has also been research into how spirituality and spiritual experiences affect the nervous system. There has been, however, very little study of brain activity during spiritual practice. As a result it is unclear the extent that spiritual and mindfulness practices affect similar or different brain areas.

In today’s Research News article “How similar are the changes in neural activity resulting from mindfulness practice in contrast to spiritual practice?”

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Barnby and colleagues summarize the research on brain activation produced by the practices of mindfulness, spirituality, or both. In this research spiritual practice was defined as focusing on an internal and external sense of connection to a higher entity, or embodiment.

They find that mindfulness practice that is either secular or spiritual or both increase the activity, size, and connectivity of the prefrontal cortex. This area has been associated with executive function including planning, complex thinking, and decision making, all of which improve with mindfulness practice. It is also associated with the regulation of emotions and responses to emotions. These are again traits associated with mindfulness practice. So, regardless of whether the practice is secular or spiritual these same benefits accrue in parallel with similar patterns of brain activation.

In contrast mindfulness practice that is secular produces varying changes in the parietal lobe while spiritual practice tends to reduce parietal lobe activity. The parietal lobe has been implicated in producing a sense of self as distinct from the environment and others. Hence, spiritual practice, by focusing on powers outside of the self, tends to reduce self-referential thinking. Spiritual practitioners think more about a deity than of themselves. This is reflected both in self-reports and behavior and also in their brains.

So, engage in spiritual and mindfulness practices and reap their benefits.

CMCS

Control Thinking and Feeling with Mindfulness

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In a number of posts we’ve presented evidence and discussed the very positive effects of mindfulness on thinking, emotions, health and general well-being. The accumulated evidence makes a compelling case that mindfulness has a myriad of positive effects promoting physical and mental well-being.

It has also been demonstrated with neuroimaging studies that mindfulness training produces enlargement and increased connectivity of the frontal lobes of the brain. This area of the cortex has long been known to underlie executive function and emotional regulation. Executive function regulates cognitive processes, including attention, working memory, reasoning, task flexibility, and problem solving as well as planning and execution. Emotional regulation involves regulation of our experience of emotions, fully experiencing them yet preventing them from spiraling out of control and adversely affecting behavioral responses to the emotions.

It can be speculated that the effectiveness of mindfulness in promoting well-being results from the changes in the frontal lobes producing higher levels of executive function and emotional regulation and theses in turn produce the positive effects of mindfulness. In today’s Research News article “Trait Mindfulness in Relation to Emotional Self-Regulation and Executive Function.”

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Lyvers and colleagues address this very question. They measured indicators of frontal lobe function; prefrontal cortex dysfunction, impulsivity, and alexithymia and correlate them to a measure of trait mindfulness. They find that the higher the mindfulness the lower the levels of prefrontal cortex dysfunction, impulsivity, and alexithymia, clearly suggesting that mindfulness is associated with heightened frontal lobe function.

Prefrontal cortex dysfunction indicates an impairment of attention and planning, impulsivity indicates impairments in controlling and restraining behavior, while alexithymia indicates an inability to identify and describe emotions, lack of emotional awareness, and difficulty with social attachment and interpersonal relationships. In other words, these are measures of the problems that arise with impaired executive function and emotion regulation.

Lyvers and colleagues further show that mindfulness is inversely related to negative moods, depression, anxiety and stress scores. This suggests that mindfulness improves well-being by promoting frontal lobe activity. This results in improved executive function and thereby improves attention and ability to analyze experience and realistically plan for the future, improving our ability to effectively deal with whatever experience we’re having.

The facilitated frontal lobe activity also produces improved emotion regulation with its consequent facilitation of the ability to identify and regulate emotions. Hence, all other factors being equal, negative moods are experienced less often or less intensely and responded to more appropriately compared to someone who has low levels of that emotion regulation.

So, practice mindfulness and improve your frontal lobe function and general well-being.

CMCS

Age Healthily – Protect the Brain with Yoga

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The aging process involves a progressive deterioration of the body including the brain. It actually begins in the late 20s and continues throughout the lifespan. It cannot be stopped or reversed. But, the deterioration can be slowed and to some extent counteracted. This is true for both physical and mental deterioration including degeneration and shrinkage of the nervous system.

Aging healthily to a large extent involves strategies to slow down the deterioration. Meditation has been shown to slow down the deterioration of the nervous system with aging. It acts by increasing the amount of grey matter in the brain through a process referred to as neuroplasticity. Brain areas that are heavily used tend to grow larger while those that are underutilized tend to grow smaller.

In a previous post we described how yoga slowed or reversed age related decline in muscle strength and flexibility (See below). In today’s Research News article “Neuroprotective effects of yoga practice: age-, experience-, and frequency-dependent plasticity”

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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4428135/

Villemure and colleagues demonstrate for the first time that yoga practice also protects the nervous system from deterioration. They showed that with age there was a decline on brain grey matter volume in healthy physically active people, but there was no decline in experienced yoga practitioners.

Interestingly, the more yoga practice the better the protection, the higher the grey matter volume. Yoga consists of postures, breath practice and meditation. It appears that the combination of postures and meditation are the most significant aspects of yoga practice for neuroprotection. It was already known that meditation helped to protect against age related brain deterioration. These results suggest that yoga adds another neuroprotective element in practicing postures.

Yoga practitioners had larger sensory cortex areas than non-practitioners. This is probably because of yoga’s emphasis on paying attention to sensations and visualization techniques used during practice. Also, the largest effects of yoga were seen in the left hemisphere. There is strong evidence that the left hemisphere is responsible for positive emotions. This then suggests that yoga promotes happiness by increasing the size of the left hemisphere. In addition, enlargement was seen in areas responsible for stress management. This provides a potential mechanism for yoga’s ability to relieve stress.

These are exciting findings. The results could provide credence for the long rumored ability of yoga to increase lifespan. They also suggest that the meditative aspects of yoga are very important and that using yoga simply for exercise may be ignoring  very important aspect of yoga for the protection of the brain.

So, practice yoga and age healthily.

CMCS

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Age Healthily – Yoga

The aging process involves a progressive deterioration of the body. This cannot be stopped or reversed. But, the deterioration can be slowed and to some extent counteracted. This is true for both physical and mental deterioration. But, today’s article, “Age related differences of selected Hatha yoga practices on anthropometric characteristics, muscular strength and flexibility of healthy individuals.”

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4278134/?report=printable

https://www.facebook.com/ContemplativeStudiesCenter/photos/a.628903887133541.1073741828.627681673922429/1015482441809015/?type=1&theater

is focused on the physical deterioration in aging.

As we age we increase body fat and loose muscles mass and strength. The bones become less dense and weaker and thereby more prone to breaking. Cartilage that lines the joints tend to thin leading to arthritis and the ligaments that hold the muscles and joints together tend to harden making us less flexible and prone to injury. Inactivity in aging can exacerbate all of these musculoskeletal changes.

Yoga practice appears to help to slow or reverse these changes. Today’s article demonstrates that the increase in fat mass with aging and the consequent increase in body weight are slowed by daily Hatha yoga practice. The decreased muscle strength as well as the decreased flexibility is also slowed in yoga practitioners. Hence, yoga is an excellent practice for maintaining the individual’s strength, flexibility, and body composition all of which are important for healthy aging.

In addition to the direct benefits there are also a plethora of indirect benefits. The individual looks and feels better. This can lead to improved self-image and even higher levels of activity. These in turn can lead to more frequent and better social interactions. This in addition to the social interactions inherent in group yoga practice. The loss of these social interactions are a major contributor to loneliness and depression in aging. Hence, indirectly, yoga practice can lead to improved social and psychological health.

So, age healthily by practicing yoga!

CMCS

Mindfully “Get a Grip”

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Strong emotions often produce behaviors that can be damaging and are regretted later. We overreact to a perceived slight and hurt the ones we care about most. We overreact to a driving incident doing something dangerous in response. We overreact to attractive potential romantic partners, making fools of ourselves. We overreact to restrictions with rebellion. We overreact to a drop in stock prices and unnecessarily sell at a loss. The examples are almost endless.

It is obvious that we need to better control our emotions and our responses to these emotions. Mindfulness can potentially help. It has been well established that mindfulness is associated with improved emotion regulation. Mindfulness does not simply lead to less emotionality, or that mindful people experience less emotion, but rather through a present-moment awareness and acceptance of emotional experience.

Emotions are also important to our happiness. A blunting of emotionality is actually characteristic of depression. The good thing about mindfulness is that emotions aren’t blocked. They are felt and experienced. It just makes us better able to effectively work with them. This allows mindful individuals to detect emotions early on and stop them from spiraling out of control.

In today’s Research News article “Mindfulness and emotion regulation—an fMRI study“

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http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4040090/

Lutz and colleagues demonstrate a neural changes underlying the improved emotion regulation. They demonstrate that when dealing with negative emotions, mindful individuals have increased activity of the prefrontal regions of the brain. They also found that activity was reduced in the amygdala, and parahippocampal gyrus.

The prefrontal area is associated with self-awareness and cognitive control, indicating that mindfulness increases our ability to be aware of the emotions and to exert control over them. Although mindfulness increased the activity in this area it was also found that the higher the level of mindfulness the less the activation. This seemingly paradoxical finding indicates that as people become more mindful they require less energy and effort to effectively regulate the emotion. In other words they get more efficient.

The amygdala, and parahippocampal gyrus are involved in the processing of emotions. So, the reduced activity associated with mindfulness suggests that mindful individuals are less reactive to the emotion. It has been shown that mindfulness reduces the response of the sympathetic nervous system which is involved in producing the physical sensations in emotions. By holding down the emotion’s intensity both centrally and peripherally mindful people are less likely to be overwhelmed by and overreact to their emotions.

Mindfulness actually expands awareness of the emotion even though it tamps down its intensity. Mindful people are very aware of what they’re feeling. This allows the storm of emotions to take its course, feeling it completely, not suppressing or denying it. This allows the individual to effectively process it with reason and understanding and thus deal with it more effectively.

Mindfulness has also been shown to decrease rumination where we try to think our way out of the problem. Rumination is also called fixating, or obsessing and leads to repetitive thoughts such as “Why do I feel this way? What could I have done differently? I’m no good. I’m letting people down. What’s wrong with me?” These tend to amplify the emotion making it more difficult to control it. Being more attuned to the present moment can reduce this tendency making emotion less problematic.

The research findings clearly suggest that mindfulness better equips the individual to regulate their emotions. To experience them fully and process them fully, but react efficiently and effectively and then move on.

So, practice mindfulness and “get a grip” on your emotions.

CMCS