Meditation Changes Your Brain!
Meditation changes the way your brain responds to distractions. When you can focus entirely on the present and train yourself to do so consistently, the structure of your brain actually changes.
Mindfulness and meditation training has been somewhat of an enigma in the public eye – until recent years. A report from the 2017 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) revealed that the number of adults who meditate in the U.S. has tripled. The rate of meditating adults went from 4.1% in 2012 to 14.2% in 2017! Perhaps the most significant factor contributing to the rise in meditation’s popularity is the increasing cases of depression. According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), major depression is one of the most common mental disorders in the United States. With 17.3 million adults suffering from a depressive episode in 2017. Our adult population is struggling to maintain a happy, healthy mind!
For much of the 20th century, and even into the 21st, meditation had little to no scientific attention. The Harvard Gazette reports that there was only one clinical study involving mindfulness and meditation conducted from 1995-1997. Between 2004 and 2006, that number increased to 11 clinical studies. Then, from 2013 to 2015, the number of clinical studies on meditation and mindfulness skyrocketed to 216! Why the sudden interest?
Sara Lazar, Ph.D., is an Associate Researcher in Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) and an Assistant Professor in Psychology at Harvard University. While Lazar was in grad school, she and a friend decided to run the Boston Marathon. Unfortunately, Lazar sustained some injuries due to training too hard. Her physical therapist recommended stretching to help the injuries heal, so Lazar started attending yoga classes.
During these classes, the instructor insisted that practicing yoga would change the students’ hearts and minds to be more open. Lazar was skeptical at first but slowly began to notice changes in her everyday behaviors. She found herself responding more calmly to stressful situations. She was able to empathize better and see things from another person’s perspective, and she had more compassion for others. This piqued her curiosity, so she explored what scientific literature she could find on the subject. Lazar discovered evidence that meditation was associated with decreases in depression, anxiety, stress, even pain, and insomnia! These findings were so compelling that Lazar switched her graduate studies from molecular biology to researching meditation and mindfulness practices.
Sara Lazar led the charge at MGH in researching the effects of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) on the physical body. During an eight-week meditation course, Lazar’s team used fMRI to show that an average of 27 minutes per day of meditation caused structural changes in the subjects’ brains!
Since Lazar’s clinical breakthrough was published in 2012, several more studies have been conducted. Theses are to examine the effects of meditation on people’s stress, concentration, anxiety, and more. But does meditation actually change your brain on a structural level?
Your Brain on Meditation
The short answer: yes. Sara Lazar’s team identified five major areas of the brain that are affected by regular meditation training. She explained them in an interview with the Washington Post. Here are the five regions of the brain that physically changed during the study:
- The Amygdala
“Amygdala” is just a big word for the part of your brain that releases feelings of stress, fear, and anxiety – all of the emotions associated with the fight-or-flight response. Believe it or not, the amygdala can fluctuate in size, and our stress response fluctuates with it! An enlarged amygdala is more likely to trigger intense feelings of fear and anxiety. While one of lesser size isn’t as likely to fire off those stress hormones.
People who meditate regularly or teach meditation actually have a smaller amygdala than those who do not meditate! But never fear; the subjects in Lazar’s study reduced their amygdala size – and therefore their stress responses – in just eight weeks of regular meditation practice. Meditation calms your fear and anxiety by targeting the very source of those negative feelings, and you can see results rather quickly!
- The Temporo-Parietal Junction (TPJ)
The TPJ is the part of the brain that supports our feelings of compassion and empathy for others. If you were to look at a brain scan, the TPJ would “light up” or become more active when you empathized with another human being and tried to see things from their perspective.
In Lazar’s 2012 study, subjects had a thicker TPJ at the end of the eight weeks than when they started. This added density and increased activity supported the idea that meditation increases a person’s sense of altruism or selflessness. In other words, meditation can help us become better people!
- The Pons
This part of the brain is especially crucial since it produces neurotransmitters (hormones that carry messages) that help regulate the activity in your brain. The pons helps to control functions like facial expressions, sleep regulation, sensory processing, and some necessary motor skills.
Lazar’s study found that meditation strengthens the pons, which contributes to higher, more efficient brain function and physical functions. This increased efficiency creates a stronger bond between your mind and your body.
- The Left Hippocampus
The hippocampus is a part of the brain that helps us learn new things and acquire new skills. It contributes to memory and cognitive abilities but also helps us regulate our emotions and become more self-aware.
A developed left hippocampus nurtures these cognitive and emotional functions, which helps us reason with the world and draw on past experiences to guide our decision-making skills.
- The Posterior Cingulate
This section of our brains is the one to blame for daydreaming, “spacing out,” and lack of concentration. However, it’s also the part of the brain you can thank for your sense of self! The posterior cingulate helps us focus when processing new information and responding to challenging situations in our unique way.
Because meditation helps us stay focused on the present moment and process emotions that come to the surface, it increases the posterior cingulate density. This helps us become more attune to the world around us and objectively recognize our feelings without becoming caught up in them.
Lazar’s study, and the subsequent ones following it, merely confirmed what experienced meditation teachers have always known: meditation is self-directed neuroplasticity. Whoa! There are a few too many syllables there, right? Stay with me – all it means is that you’re using your thoughts and focus of your mind to change your brain. Like a potter molding a lump of clay, you can use meditation to direct your conscious thoughts and attention in a way that changes your brain’s structure and development.
In a study published in 2008, Richard J. Davidson, a Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, neuroplasticity in the brain was demonstrated by meditation experts: Tibetan Buddhist monks. How did he get the chance to study some of the most meditative minds on the planet?
Luckily for Davidson, the Waisman Laboratory for Brain Imaging and Behavior at UW Madison had a strong working relationship with none other than the Dalai Lama himself! For several years, the Dalai Lama had helped to recruit Buddhist Monks to participate in studies on mindfulness through the University in an effort to show the Western world how meditation practices can benefit body, mind, and soul. Davidson and his team were able to conduct fMRI scans on the brains of the Tibetan monks, much like Sara Lazar’s team did a few years later.
The results from Davidson’s research showed that the monks had altered the function and structure of their brains, confirming that meditation affects the neuroplasticity of the brain. “When the framework of neuroplasticity is applied to meditation,” he writes in his 2008 study, “we suggest that the mental training of meditation is fundamentally no different than other forms of skill acquisition that can induce plastic changes in the brain.”
At the time, Davidson and his team believed that the monks changed their brain’s neuroplasticity by spending thousands and thousands of hours practicing meditation and honing their mindfulness skills with utmost dedication. While this definitely helped, Sara Lazar and team proved that these changes could happen in eight weeks, even with 30 minutes of meditation per day – a much more attainable goal for most of us than thousands of hours.
This proof of self-directed neuroplasticity means that we are can literally direct and control our brain’s evolution – the brain’s structure changes in response to our experiences. So, if we provide positive, focused experiences, our brains will adapt and shift its structure to reflect those constructive encounters. This translates to higher brain function, open minds, compassion, and empathy for others. I guess Sara Lazar’s yoga teacher was onto something!
So we know the major regions of the brain that are affected by meditation, and we know some of the functions those regions are responsible for. But what long-term effects do these structural changes have on our brain and overall mental health? How else does meditation change our brains in the long run? Luckily, the scientific community has asked the same questions and have found that meditation provides even more benefits and positive changes to the brain’s structure. And they have been kind enough to share their results with the world! Let’s dive in a little further.
Meditation Protects Your Brain from Aging
While many people live a long life for many years, our brains typically start to age and mildly deteriorate in our twenties. It’s a natural process as our brain cell production slows and our physical bodies age, but rather than accepting it as an unfortunate fate, we can combat these changes!
In 2015, researchers at UCLA published a study that examined the difference in the gray matter volume between people who practiced meditation for a long time versus people who did not meditate at all. The study revealed that participants who meditated for years prior to the study (20 years was the average) had more grey matter volume in their brains than non-meditating participants! This was a key finding, as grey matter is the substance that contains much of the brain’s cell bodies that process information. The regions of the brain included in this grey matter are the areas responsible for sensory input. Like vision and hearing, emotion regulation, decision-making, speech, and memory – all of which tend to suffer as we age!
More grey matter volume means more cognitive function. While older adults who meditated still showed less grey matter than younger meditators, it was not as bad as the grey matter loss in non-meditating participants. Florian Kurth, one of the researchers and authors of this study, stated, “We expected rather small and distinct effects located in some of the regions that had previously been associated with meditating. Instead, what we actually observed was a widespread effect of meditation that encompassed regions throughout the entire brain.”
Meditation Improves Your Concentration and Awareness of the World Around You
Do you have problems with concentration throughout the day? Do you find your mind wandering aimlessly through a sea of thoughts that have nothing to do with the task at hand? The part of your brain responsible for the daydreaming is called the default mode network (DMN) or the “me center.” It’s the part of the brain that sets everything else on “auto-pilot”. Feeds you wandering thoughts about nothing in particular.
Now, it’s perfectly alright to daydream every once in a while and let your mind roam free. However, wandering thoughts can quickly deteriorate into anxious thoughts, ruminating, and worrying about situations, whether hypothetical or real! When our DMN is highly active and reach this danger zone of mind-wandering, we tend to be less happy, more stressed, and more inward-focused. We only see our problems and worries, rather than seeing the outside world – or even the person sitting next to us!
A study conducted at Yale University found that meditation and mindfulness causes a decrease in the DMN’s activity compared to the DMN activity of non-meditators. Meditation calms this part of the brain to keep wandering thoughts at bay. This allows you to focus on your tasks and the people around you. It helps to increase your awareness of things happening in your world. Not only does meditation keep the DMN from becoming too active. It also forms new connections in your brain that help you “snap out of it” more quickly if you catch your mind wandering! You will have an increased understanding of yourself and increased awareness of living in the present moment.
Another group of researchers decided to take this comparison one step further. In their study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), they examined the difference in the brains of those experienced in meditation and those who practiced but were fairly new to it. The participants with more meditation experience were able to practically deactivate their DMNs during meditation practices! The less experienced meditators were mostly able to quiet their DMNs but did not “turn it off” as well as their veteran counterparts. Those with lots of experience had less distracting thoughts and had a higher level of concentration while they practiced.
If you are fairly new to meditation training and you’re thinking Man, I still have years to go before I see the benefits, think again! Sara Lazar’s 2012 participants experienced structural changes to their brains in just eight weeks, but a study from the University of California found results in only two weeks!
In this study, participants had their memory and focused tested with the verbal reasoning section of the GRE. The researchers found that after two weeks of meditation, the scores increased to the equivalent of 16 percentile points – not too shabby at all! The sooner you start, the sooner you can begin changing your brain and reaping the benefits of meditation.
Meditation Reduces Depression and Anxiety, Helps Us Connect with Others
The DMN is also thought to mediate the effects of meditation on anxiety, since anxious thoughts tend to center around our perception of how we interact with the world. A less active DMN means less swirling thoughts about how we can’t believe we said that thing to our friend years ago, or how we think of bridges collapsing just as our bus is driving over one, or how we didn’t lock the door on the way out of our house, and there’s bound to be a break-in because of it!
Phew. It’s exhausting just thinking about it, right?
Meditation helps to bring our anxious thoughts to a halt and open us up to connecting with other people. A study conducted at Stanford University examined the effects of mindfulness practices on participants with social anxiety disorder (SAD) and specifically used Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) just as Sara Lazar and her Harvard team did in their 2012 study. The researches at Stanford discovered that MBSR helped regulate the negative emotional responses that people with SAD often suffer from in social situations. They also found that there were structural changes in the regions of the brain associated with attention and focus. Supposedly allowing the participants to focus on other people in the social situations, rather than ruminating over their anxious thoughts. The participants could direct their attention away from the fear and overcome their symptoms of social anxiety during their interactions!
Johns Hopkins released another study centered around meditation’s ability to alleviate symptoms of pain, depression, and generalized anxiety. Madhav Goyal, MD, and his team of researchers conducted 47 trials and studied over 3,500 participants, and they discovered that meditation had a moderate “effect size” of 0.3 across all symptoms. Sure, that may seem like a small number, but let me put it in perspective: the “effect size” of antidepressant medications, used to treat severe cases of clinical depression, is a whopping 0.3 as well. Yes, meditation is just as effective as prescription drugs! While there’s no magic potion for treating mental illnesses, and everyone responds differently to different treatments, it’s worth noting that the effects of meditation are just as viable as prescribing medications to a patient. Meditation isn’t just a way to relax – it’s a way to take an active role in your health.
Goyal, the director of the Johns Hopkins study, reaffirms this. “A lot of people have this idea that meditation means sitting down and doing nothing,” he says. “But that’s not true. Meditation is an active training of the mind to increase awareness, and different meditation programs approach this in different ways.”
Remember our friend, the posterior cingulate? One part of the brain that can help us process information? Right in front of the posterior cingulate, is part of the brain called the anterior cingulate. The anterior cingulate, thought close neighbors with its posterior pal, has more of a role in responding to information and influences our impulse control and decision-making.
One study examined the correlation between anterior cingulate activity and cocaine use in drug addicts. Researchers found that those participants with a high instance of cocaine use had low levels of activity in the anterior cingulate. Basically, these participants did not have the self-control feedback from their brain, telling them to resist the addiction. In contrast, those with more activity in that region of the brain were able to mitigate their addictive behaviors or eliminate them altogether.
A group of researchers upped the ante on this theory when they had a “duel” of sorts between mindfulness and the Freedom from Smoking (FFS) program by the American Lung Association.
In their study, researchers found that smokers were much more likely to quit smoking by learning and practicing mindfulness rather than completing the FFS program. Even during the follow-ups, 17 weeks after the study ended, more mindfulness participants had maintained their nonsmoking habits than FFS participants!
The researchers believed that mindfulness meditation changes the way your brain responds to distractions. When you can focus entirely on the present and train yourself to do so consistently, the structure of your brain actually changes. helped the participants disassociate the act of smoking from the cravings of that habit. So, their anterior cingulate was able to step in and “talk them out of” picking up a cigarette. Since mindfulness and meditation can promote focus, self-control, and self-awareness. It’s no surprise that it can be used in different ways. Treatment for addiction, even in those who have been battling the disease for years!
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