Meditation builds up the Brian
Dada krpamayananda
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Meditation builds up the brain
· 11:01 15 November 2005
· NewScientist.com news service
· Alison Motluk
Meditating does more than just feel good and calm you down, it makes you
perform better and alters the structure of your brain, researchers have
found.
People who meditate say the practice restores their energy, and some claim they
need less sleep as a result. Many studies have reported that the brain works
differently during meditation brainwave patterns
change and neuronal firing patterns synchronise. But
whether meditation actually brings any of the restorative benefits of sleep has
remained largely unexplored.
So Bruce O’Hara and colleagues at the University
of Kentucky in Lexington, US,
decided to investigate. They used a well-established “psychomotor
vigilance task”, which has long been used to quantify the effects of
sleepiness on mental acuity. The test involves staring at an LCD screen and
pressing a button as soon as an image pops up. Typically, people take 200 to
300 milliseconds to respond, but sleep-deprived people take much longer, and
sometimes miss the stimulus altogether.
Ten volunteers were tested before and after 40 minutes of either sleep,
meditation, reading or light conversation, with all subjects trying all
conditions. The 40-minute nap was known to improve performance (after an hour
or so to recover from grogginess). But what astonished the researchers was that
meditation was the only intervention that immediately led to superior performance,
despite none of the volunteers being experienced at meditation.
“Every single subject showed improvement,” says O’Hara. The
improvement was even more dramatic after a night without sleep. But, he admits:
“Why it improves performance, we do not know.” The team is now
studying experienced meditators, who spend several
hours each day in practice.
Brain builder
What effect meditating has on the structure of the brain has also
been a matter of some debate. Now Sara Lazar at the Massachusetts
General Hospital in Boston, US,
and colleagues have used MRI
to compare 15 meditators, with experience ranging
from 1 to 30 years, and 15 non-meditators.
They found that meditating actually increases the thickness of the cortex in
areas involved in attention and sensory processing, such as the prefrontal
cortex and the right anterior insula.
“You are exercising it while you meditate, and it gets bigger,” she
says. The finding is in line with studies showing that accomplished musicians,
athletes and linguists all have thickening in relevant areas of the cortex. It
is further evidence, says Lazar, that yogis “aren’t just sitting
there doing nothing".
The growth of the cortex is not due to the growth of new neurons, she points
out, but results from wider blood vessels, more supporting structures such as glia and astrocytes, and
increased branching and connections.
The new studies were presented at the Society for Neuroscience annual meeting,
in Washington DC, US.
Related Articles
· If meditation is good, God makes it better
· http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18725154.300
· 02 September
2005
· Does inner peace lead to longer life?
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg18624984.600
Sohail Inayatullah
Professor, Graduate Institute for Futures Studies, Tamkang
University, Taiwan; Transcend Peace University (www.transcend.org); Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences,
University of the Sunshine Coast, Australia; and, Centre for Social Change
Research, Queensland University of Technology, Australia. Co-editor,
Journal of Futures Studies.
Address:
29 Meta Street,
Mooloolaba, 4557, Queensland
Fax:886-2-2622-9756 (Taiwan). Fax 61-7-5430-2880 (Australia)
s.inay...@qut.edu.au. soh...@mail.tku.edu.tw
www.metafuture.org, http://www2.tku.edu.tw/~tddx/jfs/,
www.ru.org
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