Science Agrees with Buddha...Again
Meditation sharpens our attention so that we notice details we might otherwise have missed, according to a new study, one among a number of recent studies that reveal that, yes, Buddhists have been right all along.
The article, published in LiveScience, says:
In recent years, scientists have found meditation affects brain functions. For instance, research into Tibetan monks trained in focusing their attention on a single object or thought revealed they could concentrate on one image significantly longer than normal when shown two different images at each eye. Another study of people who on average meditated 40 minutes daily found that areas of their brains linked with attention and sensory processing became thicker.
"One of the fundamental mysteries that is now becoming better understood as we go along but which is still a breakthrough area of research is neuroplasticity, the idea that we can literally change our brains through mental training," Davidson [a professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the study's lead researcher] told LiveScience. "Certain kinds of mental characteristics such as attention or certain emotions such as happiness can best be regarded as skills that can be trained."
Indeed, meditation has recently been a hot topic, and research suggests it does more than just increase our mental acuity.
Science writer Sharon Begley recently published a book (The Mind and the Brain) about brain plasticity in which meditation was featured prominently. (You can also read an excerpt from her book in a recent article of hers in Time.) In it, she discusses how Davidson's research challenges the long-held hypothesis that a person's happiness set-point is unmovable. Davidson (with the help of the Dalai Lama) recruited Buddhist Monks--who had spent more than 10,000 hours meditating--for tests in which they meditated under fMRI scans. The scans showed "dramatic changes in the parts of the brain associated with happiness" as compared to the scans from a group of students who had recently undergone a crash course in meditation.
Who knows what else science will reveal about meditation--I am reviewing a book for the upcoming issue of Scientific American Mind that suggests science will soon have a lot more to say about meditation's power to heal and improve our lives.
But many people have proof enough already, I suppose.
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- 5-11-07
- Melinda Wenner's blog
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Are we there yet?
(This is probably going to be a longer answer than the original post, but i suspect the blog format favors grunting neaderthals with 3 word attentention spans. it would be nice to have a real conversation, so please chime in everyone. we don't have to follow these unspoken rules!)
There's one detail though I want to bring up. And quiter possibly, in an effort to keep things brief, it may have been necessary to gloss over.
there's absolutely no realistic way to say any isolated part of the brain is an indicator of happiness.
LeDoux's theory comes to mind. (He talk about in detail in The Emotional Brain, but several books mention it, including, I think, the Begley book.)
The amygdala takes a bunch of raw stimulus info and asseses if there seems to be any immediate danger. Like a sudden slithering shape that might be a snake. Then it starts the process of panic reactions (which is a genius discovery by <a href="http://psychclassics.yorku.ca/James/emotion.htm" target=_new>William James</a> (The site keeps saying HTML tasgs will work here but none appear to. So i've removed most of them, but here are one's you may want.) The amagdala also sends the info to the cortex, which recognizes the "picture". But it doesn't have much feeling about what it reports. So it returns the signal to the amygdala, which creates a feedback loop, which creates emotions. (Regulating that feedback is what many Prozac-like medicines are all about these days.)
Now imagine, in most of us, that feedback loop is at a pretty tolerable level. It would have a lower threshold to survive in Aushwitz than in Disneyland obviously. but too "trigger happy" an amygdala can cause as much problem as not enough. the worry wart at one end of the spectrum, James Bond at the other. Neither behave appropriately in regular life.
So happiness is always in flux. It is more of a lack of fear or mental contendness and comfort, than anything that actually occurs in the brain. The worry wart may actually end up feeling happier when the amygdala, the emotional trigger, isn't doing as much. Meditation doesn't really make people capable of greater happiness. It helps regulate brain functions like the amygdala. If they behave more appropriately to the immediate environment, the end result, is the person (usually) feels better.
actually, the biggest problem though, is merely semantic. The Begley book talks about how slowly science embraced neuroplasticity after 100 year legacy of phrenology has been shoved down our throats. But science has looked at meditation (and its minor variants like hypnosis and trance) for centuries.
Meditation is problematic for science only because it is nearly impossible to define. When am I meditating and when am I not? When does it start and stop? How deep is meditating and is deeper more meditative, or is it longer, steadier, etc?
Bio feedback has for years used the EEG as a measure of theata (about 6-8Hz range) brain waves as an indicator. But it's not a measurement. In mediative states, one's brain tends to create stronger lower frequencies. But it's creating a little all the time. Comparing it to other waves (especially Beta) helps a lot. But still there is no clear end goal to reach.
Not that you were saying that, but the Davidson experiment you refer to can really only really say that "Deeper meditators tend to have more brain activity, and more activity usually indicates stronger and faster neural synapses, which probably mean they can come up with cleverer, more innovative responces to problems a lot sooner."
A good way to understand what is happening between meditation and Neurolgy is to look at trance states induced by music and shamanistic rituals.<br>
Judith Becker's Deep Listeners (2004)
David Alderage's Music and Altered States (2006)
Daniel Levitin's This Is Your rain on Music (2006)
If you are interested in neuroplasticity, check out the experiments by <a href="http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20010901/bob14.asp" target=_new>Paul Bach y Rita</a>.
Jim Robbin's A symphony in the Brain talks about biofeedback and EEGs.
Though VS Ramachandran doesn't take it as far, his book Phantoms in the Brain is a good one about phantom limbs and the re-mapping of the somatosensory region of the cortex.
Neuroplasticity is a good place to start in understanding why meditation has real benefits to how the brain functions.