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From TIME MAGAZINE
One recent study found evidence that the daily
practice of meditation thickened the parts of the brain's cerebral
cortex responsible for decision making, attention and memory.
Sara
Lazar, a research scientist at Massachusetts General Hospital,
presented preliminary results last November that showed that the
grey matter of 20 men and women who meditated for just 40 minutes a
day was thicker than that of people who did not.
Unlike in previous studies focusing on Buddhist
monks, the subjects were Boston-area workers practicing a
Western-style of meditation called mindfulness or insight
meditation.
"We showed for the first time that you don't have to do
it all day for similar results," says Lazar. What's more, her
research suggests that meditation may slow the natural thinning of
that section of the cortex that occurs with age.
The forms of meditation Lazar and other scientists
are studying involve focusing on an image or sound or on one's
breathing. Though deceptively simple, the practice seems to exercise
the parts of the brain that help us pay attention.
Paying attention
"Attention is the key to learning, and meditation
helps you voluntarily regulate it," says Richard Davidson, director
of the Laboratory for Affective Neuroscience at the University of
Wisconsin.
Since 1992, he has collaborated with the Dalai Lama to
study the brains of Tibetan monks, whom he calls "the Olympic
athletes of meditation."
Using caps with electrical sensors placed on the
monks' heads, Davidson has picked up unusually powerful gamma waves
that are better synchronised in the Tibetans than they are in novice
meditators. Studies have linked this gamma-wave synchrony to
increased awareness.
Those who had been taught to meditate performed 10%
better — "a huge jump, statistically speaking," says O'Hara. Those who
snoozed did significantly worse. "What it means," O'Hara theorizes,
"is that meditation may restore synapses, much like sleep but
without the initial grogginess."
Meditation directly affects the function and
structure of the brain, changing it in ways that appear to increase
attention span, sharpen focus, and improve memory.
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