by Chris Kocher, Binghamton University
Millions
of people around the world seek mental clarity through meditation, most
of them following or inspired by the centuries-old practices of
Buddhism.
Anecdotally,
those who meditate say it helps to calm their minds, recenter their
thoughts and cut through the "noise" to show what really matters.
Scientifically, though, showing the effects of meditation on the human brain have proved to be tricky.
A
new study from Binghamton University's Thomas J. Watson College of
Engineering and Applied Science tracked how practicing meditation for
just a couple of months changed the brain patterns of 10 students in the
University's Scholars Program.
The
seed for the research came from a casual chat between Assistant
Professor Weiying Dai and lecturer George Weinschenk, MA '01, Ph.D. '07,
both from the Department of Computer Science.
Weinschenk
is a longtime meditation practitioner whose wife worked as an
administrator at the Namgyal Monastery in Ithaca, which is the North
American seat of the Dalai Lama's personal monastery.
"I
developed very close friendships with several of the monks," he said.
"We would hang out together, and I even received instruction from some
of the Dalai Lama's teachers. I took classes there, I read a lot and I
earned a three-year certificate in Buddhist studies."
Dai
has studied brain mapping and biomedical image processing, and while
earning her Ph.D. at the University of Pittsburgh, she tracked
Alzheimer's disease patients using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)
scans.
"I'm interested in brain research to
see how our brains are really functioning and how all different kinds
of disease affect our brain," she said. "I really have zero medical
training, but I pick up all this knowledge or background from reading
the literature and talking with the experts."
The
two faculty members had neighboring offices and shared a conversation
one day about their backgrounds. Weinschenk mentioned that he had been
asked to teach a semester-long class for the Scholars Program on
meditation.
"I
told Weiying, 'Yeah, meditation really can have a transformative effect
on the brain,'" Weinschenk said. "She was a little skeptical,
especially about whether such a short amount of time spent learning how
to meditate, whether that would make any difference. She suggested we
might be able to quantify such a thing with modern technology."
For
the fall 2017 semester, Dai secured grant funding, and their
collaboration began. Near the beginning of the semester, she took the
participants to Cornell University for MRI scans of their brains.
Weinschenk taught students how to meditate, told them to practice five
times a week for 10 or 15 minutes, and asked them to keep a journal
record of their practice. (The syllabus also included other lessons
about the cultural transmissions of meditation and its applications for
wellness.)
"Binghamton
University Scholars are high achievers who want to do the things they
are assigned and do well on them, so they didn't require much prompting
to maintain a regular meditation routine," he said. "To guarantee
objective reporting, they would relate their experiences directly to
Weiying about how frequently they practiced."
The results, recently published in the journal Scientific Reports, show that meditation training led to faster switching between the brain's two general states of consciousness.
One is called the default mode network,
which is active when the brain is at wakeful rest and not focused on
the outside world, such as during daydreaming and mind-wandering. The
other is the dorsal attention network, which engages for
attention-demanding tasks.
The
findings of the study demonstrate that meditation can enhance the brain
connection among and within these two brain networks, indicating the
effect of meditation on fast switching between the mind wandering and
focusing its attention as well as maintaining attention once in the
attentive state.
"Tibetans
have a term for that ease of switching between states—they call it
mental pliancy, an ability that allows you to shape and mold your mind,"
Weinschenk said. "They also consider the goal of concentration one of
the fundamental principles of self-growth."
Dai
and Weinschenk are still parsing through the data taken from the 2017
MRI scans, so they have yet to test other Scholars Program students.
Because Alzheimer's disease and autism could be caused by problems with
the dorsal attention network, Dai is making plans for future research
that could use meditation to mitigate those problems.
"I'm
thinking about an elderly study, because this population was young
students," she said. "I want to get a healthy elderly group, and then
another group with early Alzheimer's disease or mild cognitive
impairment. I want to see whether the changes in the brain from
meditation can enhance cognitive performance. I'm writing the proposal
and trying to attract the funds in that direction."
Though
once skeptical about the subject, "I'm pretty convinced about the
scientific basis of meditation after doing this study," she added.
"Maybe I'll just go to George's class when he teaches it so that I can
benefit, too!"
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