The Effects of Meditation on Your Brain and Your Life. Part 3 of 3.
Let’s now look at the contemplative brain, highlighting the area’s most noticeably changed by consistent meditation practice and explaining some of the changes that take place and how they may affect your life.
Due in large part to the ground-breaking work of Jon Kabat-Zinn, the focus of meditation research started to change from TM to mindfulness meditation in the 1980s and 1990s. Molecular biologist, professor of medicine, and longtime Zen practitioner Kabat-Zinn founded the first Stress Reduction Clinic at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in 1979. He also started teaching a specific form of mindful hatha yoga called mindfulness-based stress reduction or MBSR. People with a range of health issues and stress-related issues have been taught by Kabat-Zinn and his colleagues at the clinic throughout the years. According to further research, those who finish the eight-week MBSR programme see a considerable decrease in stress, pain, and other symptoms and an improvement in their immune system performance. The clinic and other MBSR training programmes have trained thousands of facilitators worldwide. From a scientific standpoint, the good news about MBSR is that it quantifies, standardises, and purges mindfulness teaching of its overtly mystical components. As a result, scientists have a real point of comparison that enables them to contrast and analyse their findings.
Electroencephalograms (EEGs), electrocardiograms (EKGs), and blood pressure monitors are used to observe patients while meditating. The data show solely what occurs to the body during the actual meditation process. In other words, only mental or physical states that change after the session is over are measured by the results. However, when subjects are observed over time to see if, for instance, their blood pressure stays lower between meditation sessions or if they report being happier even after they completely stop practising, the results show the acquisition of traits that remain more or less constant throughout the meditator's life. Early studies of the long-lasting health effects of meditation largely focused on moods. In contrast, later studies highlighted the formation of characteristics. For instance, Transcendental Meditation (TM) research demonstrating that meditators live longer on average, utilise healthcare services less frequently and have lower cortisol and cholesterol levels implies that meditating transmits features that last between meditation sessions.
Studies that demonstrate genuine structural changes in the brain, such as an increase in inter-regional connectivity or the expansion of grey matter, also suggest that the related alterations in cognition, emotion and behaviour persist and develop into characteristics. Given the remarkable brain plasticity that scientists have discovered, it stands to reason that if you stop meditating for a prolonged time and substantially divert your attention, your brain may change back, and those hard-earned qualities may go.
Even though many different parts of the brain are often engaged, the following are the principal areas that appear to be stimulated by meditation
• Prefrontal cortex: This part of the brain is in charge of sophisticated planning, personality expression, judgement, deferred pleasure, moderation of social conduct, and control and suppression of emotions. As its name suggests, the prefrontal cortex is located at the front of the cortex.
• Cingulate cortex anterior: The anterior cingulate cortex, which is located around the corpus callosum (the part of the brain that connects the left and right hemispheres), allows you to pay attention, including attention to attention itself and serves as a link or mediator between thoughts and emotions. Therefore, it is crucial to control emotion and the empathetic social brain.
• Amygdala: An essential portion of the limbic system, sometimes known as the emotional brain, the almond-shaped amygdala is crucial for processing and storing emotional reactions, especially fear, and learning emotionally driven behaviours. The amygdala mostly controls the fight-flight-or-freeze response, which meditation helps control.
• Hippocampus: This area is crucial for consolidating short-term memory into long-term memory, creating new memories based on experienced events, and spatial navigation. One of the early causes of Alzheimer's disease is damage to the hippocampus.
Studies have found that the left prefrontal cortex (LPFC) activity strongly corresponds with the feeling of good emotion - the happier you are, the more your LPFC lights up — maybe as a result of the LPFC's ability to temper the amygdala's production of unpleasant emotions. On the other hand, negative emotions are associated with right prefrontal cortex (RPFC) activity. In the early 2000s, research on Tibetan Buddhist monks discovered how engaged their LPFCs had become. Further research then determined whether regular individuals might reach comparable outcomes. These ground-breaking studies showed that participants in an eight-week MBSR treatment had higher levels of left-sided activation at rest and in response to emotional stimuli. They also reported considerable decreases in anxiety and other unpleasant feelings, which persisted long after the training was over. the consequences? Learn to meditate if you want to be happier
Researchers have been examining the connections between meditation, the activation of various brain regions, and modifications in behaviour, cognition, and emotion using the most current knowledge on how the brain functions. The findings are by no means conclusive; rather, they offer tantalising glimmers of a vast new field that needs to be explored. Nevertheless, they highlight the enormous potential of meditation to advance human psychological and neurological development by activating, integrating, and coordinating different brain regions. Every year, significant new research examining the effects of meditation on the brain is published. Without question, as brain-mapping technology advances and the relationship between specific brain areas and cognitive and behavioural processes becomes clearer, this area of study will expand over the coming decades.
Be well.
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