Meditation has been practiced for centuries as a way of
balancing a person’s physical, mental and emotional states.
Previous studies have shown that meditation can produce
profound alterations in brain activity. Similarly,
experienced meditation practitioners have reported
changes in mental function that continue long after
actual meditation ceases, which implies that the practice has
long-term effects. However, the majority of these studies
have been performed on monks and others for whom meditation is a central focus of their lives. As such, the practice of meditation by the general population may yield different results.
To investigate the theory of whether meditation as it is usually practiced in the United States could produce similar changes in the brain, researches performed magnetic resonance imaging tests on 20 meditation practitioners and compared the results to 15 people who had no experience with meditation or yoga. Members of the meditation group practiced Insight meditation, which focuses on the cultivation of attention and “mindfulness” – a specific, nonjudgmental awareness of present stimuli. Each member had practiced Insight for an average of 9.1 years, and currently practiced approximately six hours per week.
Analysis of the MRI images revealed that certain regions of the brain related to somatosensory, auditory, visual and interoceptive processing, such as the right anterior insula, the right middle and superior frontal fulci, and the left superior temporal gyrus, were significantly thicker in meditators than in control patients. The analysis also showed that differences in cortical thickness were more pronounced in older, more experienced meditation practitioners, which suggested that meditation could reduce age-related thinning of the frontal cortex.
“Our initial results suggest that meditation may be associated with structural changes in areas of the brain that are important for sensory, cognitive and emotional processing,” the scientists concluded. “The data further suggest that meditation may impact age-related declines in cortical structure.”
