Can Anyone Prove That Meditation Works?

Some of the most frequently asked questions are "can you prove that meditation works?" and "how long will it take me to get results?".

One of the most cited papers in cognitive neuroscience and meditation was published by Farb, et. al. in 2007 titled "Attending to the present: mindfulness meditation reveals distinct neural modes of self-reference". Farb and his largely Toronto-based group used a standard "mindfulness meditation" typically used for "stress reduction" and approved by everyone from the American Cancer Society to the NIH.

They proved that with only 45 minutes/day for 2 months, it was possible to dramatically shift the brain functional patterns. Initially folk were in the "narrative" (blah-blah, it's all about me) brain centers in the deep interior centerline - front and back (blue in A fMRIs above). With meditation, brain operation shifted to "experiential" (now, now, now) on the exterior right side - front, middle and back (red and yellow in B fMRIs above).

The abbreviations are DMPFC (dorsal/top medial/middle prefrontal cortex), VMPFC (ventral/bottom medial prefrontal cortex), LPFC (lateral/side prefrontal cortex), insula, PCC (posterior/back cinculate cortex), PP (posterior parietal cortex), IPL (inferior/lower parietal lobe), SII (secondary somatosensory area). you can c/o the areas in Wikipedia.



They then looked at each of these areas and saw how it was different for novices ("a" fMRI scans - bars on left), who hadn't done any meditation, and meditators, who had done the 2 mo/45 min/day practice ("b, c, d" fMRI scans - bars on right). The green line through the fMRIs shows which center was measured for both novices and meditators.

As you can see, the meditators had significantly increased the activation in the "experiential" centers, and decreased it in the "narrative" centers. The novices had much less in the "experiential centers".

An important learning to take away is that the brains of all of these folk solved the problem in the same way. When given the objective in the mindfulness meditation, given 2 months of 45 min/day to work on the "problem", the brains of all of the folk reconfigured their operational patterns in the same way.

None of the meditators even knew what those centers were, let alone how to directly manipulate them, yet the brains figured it all out "by themselves".

The original paper is @ Attending To The Present

Mindfulness meditation.