Both Sides Now

[Guest guest]

The thought you can train someone to NOT RESPOND emotionally, when a

baby cried...gives me shivvers. I've met people who took pride in

their self-contained " excellence " -- it is a whole 'nuther kind of

mental/spiritual impairment. I would not want to encourage too much

excellence in the power of emotional distancing!

> >

> > 6/25/07

> > BRAIN SCAN SHOW MEDITATION CHANGES MINDS, INCREASES ATTENTION

> > CONTACT: Dr. son, (608) 265-8189,

rjdavids@...<rjdavids%40wisc.edu>

> >

> > MADISON - For hundreds of years, Tibetan monks and other religious

> > people have used meditation to calm the mind and improve

> > concentration. This week, a new study shows exactly how one common

> > type of meditation affects the brain.

> >

> > Using a scanner that reveals which parts of the brain are active

at

> > any given moment, the researchers found that meditation increased

> > activity in the brain regions used for paying attention and making

> > decisions.

> >

> > The changes were associated with the practice of concentration

> > meditation, says study leader son, professor of

> > psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin School of

> > Medicine and Public Health and the Waisman Center. Practitioners

were

> > instructed to focus attention intently on a stimulus, and when the

> > attention wandered off, to simply bring the attention back to the

> > object, explains son.

> >

> > " In one sense, concentration mediation is ridiculously simple,

but in

> > another, it's extraordinarily difficult, " adds son. " If you

try

> > it for two minutes, you will see that it's not so easy. Minds

have a

> > propensity to wander. "

> >

> > In collaboration with colleagues Brefczynski- and

Antoine

> > Lutz of the UW-Madison W.M. Keck Laboratory for Functional Brain

> > Imaging and Behavior, son compared newly trained meditators

to

> > people with up to 54,000 hours of meditation experience. The

study is

> > being published this week in the online edition of the

Proceedings of

> > the National Academy of Science.

> >

> > After the novices were taught to meditate, all subjects underwent

a

> > magnetic resonance imaging scan of the brain while they were

> > meditating. Among all experienced meditators, the MRI scan found

> > greater activity in brain circuits involved in paying attention.

> >

> > " We found that regions of the brain that are intimately involved

in

> > the control and regulation of attention, such as the prefrontal

> > cortex, were more activated in the long-term practitioners, "

son

> > says.

> >

> > A different picture emerged, however, from looking only at the

most

> > experienced meditators with at least 40,000 hours of experience.

> > " There was a brief increase in activity as they start meditating,

and

> > then it came down to baseline, as if they were able to

concentrate in

> > an effortless way, " says son.

> >

> > Effortless concentration is described in classic meditation texts,

> > adds on. " And we think this may be a neural reflection of

that.

> > These results illustrate one mechanism by which meditation may

act in

> > the brain. "

> >

> > While the subjects meditated inside the MRI, the researchers

> > periodically blasted them with disturbing noises. Among the

> > experienced meditators, the noise had less effect on the brain

areas

> > involved in emotion and decision-making than among novice

meditators.

> > Among meditators with more than 40,000 hours of lifetime practice,

> > these areas were hardly affected at all.

> >

> > " Most people, if they heard a baby screaming, would have some

> > emotional response, " son says, but not the highly experienced

> > meditators. " They do hear the sound, we can detect that in the

> > auditory cortex, but they don't have the emotional reaction. "

> >

> > As son notes, any comparison of average middle-aged

Americans to

> > people who have meditated daily for decades must try to associate

the

> > differences with meditation, and not lifestyle factors such as

> > isolation or religious faith.

> >

> > " This was a highly unusual group of people. Two-thirds of the

> > experienced meditators were Tibetan monks, recruited with the

help of

> > the Dalai Lama, and they all had an extremely long history of

formal

> > practice. "

> >

> > For 15 years, son has had a scientific relationship with the

> > Dalai Lama, spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhists, to investigate

the

> > effects of meditation.

> >

> > Still, the correlation between more meditation experience and

greater

> > brain changes does suggest that the changes were caused by

> > meditation.

> >

> > " If it were simply lifestyle, we would not expect a very strong

> > correlation with hours of practice, " son says.

> >

> > Other evidence for the neurological benefits of meditation came

from

> > a study son reported in May, which showed that three months

of

> > meditation training improved the ability to detect a brief visual

> > signal that most people cannot detect. " That was a more definitive

> > kind of evidence, because we were able to track the same people

over

> > time, " he says.

> >

> > Psychologists have long considered an adult's capacity to pay

> > attention as relatively fixed, but son says: " Attention can

be

> > trained, and in a way that is not fundamentally different than how

> > physical exercise changes the body. "

> >

> > The attention circuits affected by meditation are also involved in

> > attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which son

describes as

> > the most prevalent psychiatric diagnosis among children in our

> > country.

> >

> > " Our findings suggest that it may-I stress may-be possible to

train

> > attention in children with methods derived from these practices, "

he

> > says.

> >

> > son says scientific studies of meditation are proving

> > traditional beliefs about the mental benefits of meditation. Yet

> > although meditation is often associated with monks living a life

of

> > simplicity, poverty, and prayer, " There is nothing fundamentally

> > mysterious about these practices; they can be understood in

> > hard-nosed western scientific terms. "

> >

> > And, he adds, a growing body of " hard-nosed neuroscience

research " is

> > attracting attention to the profound effects of meditation.

> >

> > " This deserves serious scientific attention, " he says. " It also

> > explains why people spend time sitting on the meditation cushion,

> > because of the effects on day-to-day life. "

> >

> > son compares mental practice to physical exercise.

> >

> > " We all know that if an individual works out on a regular basis,

that

> > can change cardiovascular health, " he says. " In the same way,

these

> > data suggest that certain basic mechanisms of the mind, like

> > attention, can also be trained and improved through systematic

practice. "

> >

> > **********

> >

> >

> >

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