A recent study was done @ Mass General Hospital with an 8 week, 30 minutes/day, mindfulness meditation course, which is "non judgmental awareness of sensations and feelings", that demonstrated that even such a short meditation program can create measurable changes in the structure of key regions of the brain.
Surprisingly for such a short program, significant increases in gray-matter density were found in the hippocampus (which is responsible for memory and learning) and a decreased density in the amygdala (which is responsible for fear and emotions.)
However, there was no significant change in density in the insula (which is one of the areas associated with self-awareness). Presumably a longer meditation program would be required for significantly modifying the insula.
David Maniaci forwarded an excellent short article, and podcast, on the study titled Meditation Correlated With Structural Changes.
James Lough forwarded a detailed article on the same study from a NYTimes blog on "How Meditation May Change the Brain".
An abstract for the article, which will appear in Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging on Jan 30 is @ Mindfulness practice leads to increases in regional brain gray matter density.
No comments:
Post a Comment