Meditation builds up the brain

Nature News ^ | 15 nov | Alison Motluk

[S0122017]

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 * 07 May 2005 * The colour of happiness * http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=mg17823965.200 * 24 May 2003

Weblinks

* Society for Neuroscience annual meeting * http://apu.sfn.org/am2005/index.cfm?pagename=home * Bruce O'Hara, University of Kentucky * http://ukcc.uky.edu/cgi-bin/phq?def=ukt&field=deptcode&value=102&field=name&value=O'Hara,+Bruce * Massachusetts General Hospital * http://www.researchmatters.harvard.edu/program.php?program_id=127

[Revolting cat!]

Oh yes, I almost forgot.

The meditation (at the Buddhist priory), was stopped after a long half hour by loud bells and then the allergic monk, played a harmonium or some other strange instrument (I didn't see it, since like everyone else I was staring at the dark wall), and the people, all of them white, in this multi-ethnic community, chanted some gibberish, which, I thought, none understood, if there was anything to understand. So that was my first and last experience with meditating on nothing. I was dragged to go there and never had a reason to go back or practice whatever I learned that evening.

[little jeremiah]

Deep prayer is meditation. Real meditation (not just invented new age stuff) is not different than prayer.

It's called food for the soul. The daily bread that is just as important, if not more so, as bread for the body.

[The Ghost of FReepers Past]

Christian contemplation is zen, at least by today's definitions. And yes, it is very discouraging (understatement). I'm still in shock.

[little jeremiah]

Real meditation is not blanking the mind (which can never be done, anyway). Traditional meditation involves meditating on God. That's what the ancient Vedas teach. There is no possiblity of ever successfully meditating on "nothing".

And just picking any old thing to concentrate on? Everyone does that all the time anyway. Can be called "obsessing"!

:-)

[little jeremiah]

Actually the new age crapola (MacLaine and all that) is invented and bogus and has nothing to do with real Hinduism.

[Cicero]

Christian contemplation is defined by writers like St. Augustine, St. Bonaventura, St. Teresa, and St. John of the Cross.

Things evidently started to go wrong around the time of Thomas Merton. I enjoyed his first books, including "Seeds of Contemplation," but he went off the rails. As you may know, he was killed by an electric shock in his hotel room while attending a Buddhist convention in Asia in the interests of ecumenism.

In fact I know one scholar who wrote an excellent book on the mystical poetry of Henry Vaughan, then got involved with LSD, and wrote a second book comparing Christian contemplation with acid trips. No, they are not the same.

[The Ghost of FReepers Past]

I thought New Age was paganism without the War gods and hunting gods traditonaly assocated with paganism.

Go to ShirleyMacLaine.com and you can see what it is. View her pages on mediation and you will get the basics of what so-called evangelical churches are into. Many Catholics do it too. Also Jewish Kabbalists. It's the cross-over spirituality you see. It's the "all paths lead to God" concept. You search for the divine within. Go to www.explorefaith.com and see how the Episcopals practice and define it. They are finding "god" within, just like Shirley MacLaine.

[i.l.e.]

At the time, Cardinal Ratzinger predicted that Buddhism would replace Marxism as the Catholic church's main enemy.

Now he can as Islammm to the list.

[The Ghost of FReepers Past]

You're a great story teller, lol! Good that you didn't go back. It's a very bad practice.

[i.l.e.]

There is a certain sense of focus when Rita Rizzo leads the Rosary on EWTN.

[The Ghost of FReepers Past]

It isn't bogus. It wouldn't be so popular if it were bogus. Read their material. They are finding the god within them, just like the Christian contemplatives. They have a mantra, or they use they use their own breath to help get in the altered state. It is entirely the same thing.

[cryptical]

In 1997 Ratzinger called Buddhism an "autoerotic spirituality" that offers "transcendence without imposing concrete religious obligations." Hindusim, he said, offers "false hope," in that it guarantees "purification" based on a "morally cruel" concept of reincarnation resembling "a continuous circle of hell." At the time, Cardinal Ratzinger predicted that Buddhism would replace Marxism as the Catholic church's main enemy.

I've never had a Buddhist try to recruit me to their faith, unlike other denominations. If a faith that attracts rather than promotes can become your main enemy, that doesn't bode you well against more active opponents.

[The Ghost of FReepers Past]

Christian contemplation is defined by writers like St. Augustine, St. Bonaventura, St. Teresa, and St. John of the Cross. Things evidently started to go wrong around the time of Thomas Merton. I enjoyed his first books, including "Seeds of Contemplation," but he went off the rails. As you may know, he was killed by an electric shock in his hotel room while attending a Buddhist convention in Asia in the interests of ecumenism. In fact I know one scholar who wrote an excellent book on the mystical poetry of Henry Vaughan, then got involved with LSD, and wrote a second book comparing Christian contemplation with acid trips. No, they are not the same.

That's because the practice itself is a bad practice. You might as well try to reach God with a ouija board or a crystal ball. It's basically divination, a practice forbidden in Scripture.

[The Ghost of FReepers Past]

What threat is promotion minus attraction?

[Mrs. Shawnlaw]

My preference: 2 tylenol and a glass of warm red.

[Mrs. Shawnlaw]

What threat is promotion minus attraction?

Nobodies watchin

[The Ghost of FReepers Past]

For the record, I am not questioning the motives of all of the contemplatives. Some have good motives, and otherwise excellent teachings. But the pracitice is basically Christian divination. It's a seance for God. Only that's not the Scriptural way to pray or to meditate. We do not conjure up God's presence for ourselves (defined as: : to summon a devil or spirit by invocation or incantation b : to practice magical arts").

[Revolting cat!]

There is an interesting book out there:

"The Monk and the Philosopher is a collection of father-son dialogues between Jean-François Revel, a French philosopher and journalist famous for his leadership in protests of both Christianity and Communism, and Matthieu Ricard, his son, who gave up a promising career as a scientist to become a Buddhist monk in the Himalayas."

Its strength is that the elder Revel, is a Western sceptic. That is also its weakness, as he identifies himself an atheist. (Reading it one wishes for a dialogue between religious thinkers from these two traditions.) But they are both highly educated and articulate Western men with many great insights. For example, the monk, does claim that with (years of) practice one can empty the mind of thought. Check it out.

[Chode]

Om Mani Padmi Hum...