Meditation: A Bench Press for the Brain?

by Nina

Two recent articles in the NY Times suggest that practicing meditation may increase our cognitive abilities. The first article, How Meditation Might Boost Your Test Scores, discussed a study published last month in the journal Psychological Science  by University of California, Santa Barbara researchers. The UCSB researchers found that after a group of undergraduates went through a two-week intensive mindfulness training program, their mind-wandering decreased and their working memory capacity improved. They also performed better on a GRE reading comprehension test. Students in the control group had no similar improvement.

Granted, this study was on young adults, but increasing memory capacity in general sounds real good to me! Richard J. Davidson, a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who has studied brain function in long-term and novice mindful meditators, explained it this way, “You can improve the signal-to-noise ratio by reducing the noise. Decreasing mind-wandering is doing just that.”

The second NY Times article, In Sitting Still, a Bench Press for the Brain, discussed the many possible benefits of meditation in older people, citing several different studies. One study that intrigued me was The unique brain anatomy of meditation practitioners: alterations in cortical gyrification published in the Frontiers in Human Neuroscience journal in February, which looked at the extent to which meditation may affect neuroplasticity (the brain’s ability to make physiological changes) Previous studies found that the brains of long-term meditators had increased amounts of gray matter—believed to be involved in processing information and white matter—believed to be the “wiring” of the brain’s communication system.

In the recent University of California, Los Angeles study, M.R.I. scans were used to measure the features of the subject’s brains and compare them to a control group of non-meditators. The meditators had a median age of 51 and had all been practicing meditation of various types for an average of 20 years. The oldest subject was 71 and the longest practitioner had been meditating regularly for 46 years. The study concluded that “the degree of cortical gyrification appeared to increase as the number of years practicing meditation increased.” The Times quotes the lead scientist of the study:

“We used to believe that when you were born, your brain would grow and reach a peak in the early 20s and then start shrinking,” Dr. Luders said. “It was thought there was nothing we could do to change that.”

Now it appears that we can! Although this study does not provide conclusive proof that meditation caused the brain adaptations or that the increased folds meant improved cognitive performance for these older adults, the results were certainly intriguing and I’m sure there will be more research in this area to come.

I don’t know about you, but keeping my cognitive abilities in good shape as I age is pretty high on my priority list! And these two articles at least give me some hope that there is something that I can actually do about it—something completely free, with no dangerous side effects, mind you.

Meditation and Brain Strength

by Nina

Recently I read an article on Science Daily called “Evidence Builds That Meditation Strengthens the Brain.” Naturally I was hoping that Brad would comment on the article (see here) and the original research (see here). But until then—oh, I live in hope!—I thought I’d share the links with you and let you know some of my own thoughts about it.

According to the article on Science Daily, Eileen Luders, an assistant professor at the UCLA Laboratory of Neuro Imaging, and her colleagues, have found that long-term meditators have larger amounts of gyrification (“folding” of the cortex, which may allow the brain to process information faster) than people who do not meditate. They also found a direct correlation between the amount of gyrification and the number of meditation years, possibly providing further proof of the brain's neuroplasticity (its ability to adapt to environmental changes).

Particularly interesting was the positive correlation between the number of meditation years and the amount of insular gyrification. Luders said:
 
The insula has been suggested to function as a hub for autonomic, affective and cognitive integration. Meditators are known to be masters in introspection and awareness as well as emotional control and self-regulation, so the findings make sense that the longer someone has meditated, the higher the degree of folding in the insula.

The intriguing idea that your thoughts can affect the physiology of your brain is not a new one, however. Reading this article immediately made me think of the way Stephen Cope described samskaras in his book Yoga and the Quest for the True Self.

Yogis discovered that consciousness is dominated by highly conditioned patterns of reactivity—patterns that are deeply grooved, and very difficult to change once established.

Every action based on craving or aversion leaves a subliminal impression on the mind. These impressions are called samskaras, or literally, “subliminal activators.” Yogis sometimes think of these subliminal activators as being pressed into the “hot wax of the mind.”

Samskaras are like little tracks, little vectors, little ruts in the muddy road. The next time the car travels that road, these muddy ruts will have hardened into permanent fixtures, and the car wheels will want to slide into them. Indeed it’s easier to steer right into them than to try to avoid them.

Tide Between Rocks by Brad Gibson

Cope believes that with tapas, which he defines as “the energy of restraint,” we can start to avoid some of our harmful patterns of reactivity or samskaras.

I have said that samskaras are like ruts in a road, and that as the ruts deepen through repetition, it becomes inevitable that the car will slide into them unawares. Any intentional effort to restrain the car from slipping into the rut is called tapas.

Tapas requires a particular kind of attention—precisely the kind required when driving on a rutted road. We need to be awake. We need to be concentrated in order to avoid the edges of the ruts. And sometimes we need to pull the car wheels—with considerable effort—out of the ridges in the road.

And tapas, which is also a “burning effort,” is exactly what we need to establish and maintain a regular meditation and yoga practice, the very practice that may help us strengthen our brains as well as our bodies. To be continued....