Study Suggests Meditation Improves Brain Structure and Function

This is fascinating, and will be of particular interest to anyone interested in our Yoga and Mental Health related training courses. The study authors explain that “SYM, presumably through the regular achievement of the state of mental silence, has shown health benefits in disorders that are often associated with recurrent or repetitive negative thoughts, such as: depression, stress, anxiety, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder. Other studies on SYM have shown beneficial effects in treating physiological and neurological diseases such as asthma, high blood pressure, menopause and epilepsy. Furthermore, the frequency with which the practitioners perceive the state of mental silence has been shown to be associated with better physical and mental health.

Neuroplasticity is one of the most commonly used terms in today’s neuroscience to express the capacity of our human brain to change permanently. One of the key insights over the past 2 decades of neuroimaging research has been that the human brain, even in adulthood, is not static, but on the contrary is a dynamic system that has the ability to shape itself. One of the key fascinating questions that researchers try to answer is hence: how can we improve our brain structure and function? One potential non-pharmacological way to shape our brain could be through meditation.

Neuroplasticity can be measured by changes in grey matter volume (GMV). Many studies have shown that brain areas that are more utilized through practice of a particular skill for example, in music, or high performance sports, can become enlarged. It has even been shown that relatively short periods of training of a particular skill, such as 3 months of training to juggle or 3 months of studying for an exam in students can lead to transient changes in the relevant brain areas such as visual-spatial perception regions for juggling or the hippocampus and parietal lobe for memory storage in medical students preparing for an exam.”

Amongst their conclusions, the researchers suggest “that long-term meditation leads to enlargement of inferior frontal lobe regions possibly due to the fact that meditation which teaches the practitioner to inhibit unwanted thoughts and control their attention is a powerful attention and self-control training which may lead to the enlargement of areas that mediate attention and inhibitory self-control. This would be in line with several studies that have shown that long-term Meditators have better performance in tasks of executive functions, in particular in tasks of sustained attention and inhibitory self-control. Meditation, however, also has shown to lead to better emotional detachment and emotional self-control which is mediated by the orbitofrontal and ventromedial frontal regions”

The autonomic nervous system, brainstem and cortical systems are closely interconnected in their mediation of the regulation of behaviour and cognition. The enlargement of the brainstem in long-term Meditators is therefore potentially a consequence of the long-term practice of achieving the state of thoughtless awareness which leads to enhanced alertness and arousal. It may also be related to the activation of the autonomic nervous system during meditation that is closely interconnected with brainstem regions. Given that the brainstem is closely interconnected with frontal regions. It is also of note that brainstem and the two frontal lobes were also increased in GMV in long-term Meditators.

It is thus possible that regions in the vicinity of the motor cortices, perhaps in their associations with the insula might aid in mediating interoceptive attention and awareness which is typically enhanced in Meditation. There is furthermore evidence that meditation leads to reduced pain sensitivity which is mediated by sensorimotor regions”

You can access the study in full here