ScienceDaily: Mindfulness meditation training changes brain structure in 8 weeks

[likeprestige]

Title: Mindfulness meditation training changes brain structure in 8
weeks
Date: January 21st, 2011
Journal: Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging

Source: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110121144007.htm


Excerpts -

"Participating in an 8-week mindfulness meditation program appears to
make measurable changes in brain regions associated with memory, sense
of self, empathy and stress."

Experienced = "thickening of the cerebral cortex in areas associated
with attention and emotional integration."

"Meditation (experimental) group participants reported spending an
average of 27 minutes each day"

MR images revealed (experimental group) =

1. "Participant-reported reductions in stress also were correlated
with decreased grey-matter density in the amygdala, which is known to
play an important role in anxiety and stress."

2. "Although no change was seen in a self-awareness-associated
structure called the insula, which had been identified in earlier
studies, the authors suggest that longer-term meditation practice
might be needed to produce changes in that area."

"They demonstrate that the first-person experience of stress can not
only be reduced with an 8-week mindfulness training program but that
this experiential change corresponds with structural changes in the
amydala, a finding that opens doors to many possibilities for further
research on MBSR's potential to protect against stress-related
disorders, such as post-traumatic stress disorder."


_______________likeprestige______________

[Arkanj3l]

My question is what this newly found thickness is. Glial cells? More
neurons? What?

[YadgaJack]

Sounds like fun, can one take or do on their own, what they did in the
study?