Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you
don’t need to be told about the relaxing effects of meditation. The
practitioners vouch for it; and those who don’t, do not dispute it
either. Those in the Far East have known for centuries that meditating
brings mental peace and spiritual bliss. Now scientists claim that
meditation can even alter the brain’s chemistry and functionality.
Over the years, neuroscientists have carried out brain imaging tests on long-term practitioners of meditation,
including several Tibetan monks. According to the results of these
studies, not only sustained meditative practices but also short-term
meditation can produce profound physical, biochemical, and functional
changes in the brain.
The Dalai Lama, Meditation, and the Neuroplasticity of the Brain
The slew of research studies into the neural effects of meditation is believed to have been influenced by His Holiness the Dalai Lama. Buddhists have
a long tradition of intensive meditation. The Dalai Lama sent some of
his most accomplished meditation practitioners to the University of
Wisconsin to have their meditating brains probed into by neuroscientist
Richard Davidson. What followed was a revolutionary experiment that
eventually proved the phenomenon of “neuroplasticity” – the ability of the human brain to continuously evolve structurally and functionally.
Davidson conducted his experiment on two groups of subjects. The
Dalai Lama’s disciples had undergone extensive meditation training for
5,000-10,000 hours, spanning periods between 15 and 40 years. The other
group consisted subjects who had no prior experience with meditation but
were made to go through a week-long meditation training session before
the experiment.
The brain scan and EEG results of these two groups showed that the monks had greater gamma wave
activity in their brains than the non-meditating subjects. The
non-meditating subjects, however, recorded a slight increase in gamma
wave activity in their brains after undergoing the meditation training.
The Role of Gamma Waves
Electrical activity in the brain manifests as waves. These waves have
different frequencies, and at greater than 40 Hertz, gamma waves have
some of the highest frequencies of all brain waves. High-frequency gamma
waves have frequencies greater than 80 Hertz. Gamma wave activity is
associated with higher mental processes like thinking, cognition, and
memory formation and recall.
Sustained meditative practices can result in improved brain functionality by increasing the gamma wave activity. Here’s how:
When nerve cells “fire” synchronously, there is improved
communication between the different regions of the brain. This aids
higher mental processes. High gamma wave activity in the brain indicates
thousands of neural cells are firing in unison and sending out signals
to different parts of the brain at great speeds. Synchronized neural
activity not only improves cognitive functioning but also keeps the
brain active and energized to prevent age-related neural degeneration.
According to one study published this year, the brains of long-term
meditation practitioners can produce very high frequency gamma waves,
ranging between 100 and 245 Hertz. In particular, the increased gamma
wave activity is seen in areas of the brains involved in monitoring
(dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex), focused attentiveness (superior
frontal sulcus, intraparietal sulcus, and the supplementary motor
region), and engaging attention (visual cortex). These areas of the
brain are associated with awareness and
attention that are crucial to perform higher mental tasks like learning
new skills. The studies indicate that long-term meditation practice
improves attention in the practitioners that translates into more
efficient learning.
Another recent study has reported that long-term meditation
practitioners are generally able to process information more efficiently
than non-practitioners.
Researchers have found that the ability to attend to a task with full
focus is also greater in long-term meditation practitioners than
novices because the former show less activity in the amygdala region in
response to distracting sounds. This finding suggests that advanced
meditation practitioners have greater control over how they react to
emotions rising within them. Emotionally reactive behavior hampers
steady concentration.
The Long-Term Effects of Meditation
The above-mentioned experiments were conducted on subjects while they
were meditating. But those who have just made the foray into meditation
or are contemplating embarking on the journey would be pleased to know
that the effects of meditation continue well after they get up from
their mats and change out of their robes!
It was recently demonstrated that experienced meditation practitioners exhibit higher gamma wave activity in the parietal-occipital
region of the brain even when they are asleep. This proves that
long-term meditation alters the pattern of spontaneous activity in the
brain and the effects are long-lasting. This is one of the seminal
studies on the neuroplasticity of the brain.
Implications of the Meditation Studies
Neuroscientists have brought into the limelight the benefits of
meditation that Eastern seers, mystics, and monks knew from time
immemorial. But the discovery of the phenomenon of neuroplasticity of
the brain has turned everything neuroscientists believed about the
workings of the brain on its head (pun not intended). Earlier
scientists believed the neural connections become fixed when an
individual reaches adulthood and remain so throughout his life. The
connections that get lost due to any trauma or a disease can never be
replaced. Fortunately, they have been proved wrong.
The concept of neuroplasticity of the brain and the effects of
meditation give hope to countless victims of traumatic brain injury or
those suffering from potentially debilitating psychological conditions
like ADHD.
These people can now dream of restoring the connections in their
brains, rediscovering memories, and re-learning the skills they had
forgotten. Educationists, teachers, and parents can consider introducing
children to meditative practices at a young age. In fact, child
psychologists and school counselors can explore meditation as a way to
help children with learning disabilities acquire new skills and apply
these successfully.
Meditation is an ancient Eastern practice, and it seems that Tibetan
monks living in secluded monasteries high up in the mountains had
decoded the secrets of the human brain long before EEGs and MRIs came along.
