Meditation - Can It Change the Structure of the Brain?

New stud­ies show­ that med­i­ta­tion can modify, lit­er­ally, the structure of brains in ways that could stimulate the con­cen­tra­tion, increase mem­ory and affect emotions pos­i­tively.

The results seem to be entic­ing enough. A large part of this research was done on peo­ple who have med­i­tated for 1000s of hours for many years. Some have done so for 10000 hours or more. Pretty intimidating!

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In addition, a new study provides some hope - and makes the ben­e­fits of med­i­ta­tion seem obtainable even for a beginner like me. The study, published in the Journal of Psy­chi­a­try & Neu­roimag­ing sug­gests that med­i­tat­ing for only 30 minutes per day for 8 weeks can increase the den­sity mat­ter of gray in the regions of the brain asso­ci­ated with mem­ory, stress and empathy.

People who have been par­tic­i­pat­ing in the Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) pro­gram, which leads par­tic­i­pants through med­i­ta­tion exer­cises to strengthen the skills of mindfulness - moment by moment thoughts, feel­ings and sen­sa­tions of bod­y and surrounding environment reported feel­ing less stress and more pos­i­tive emo­tions and people who have chronic ill­nesses that they expe­ri­ence less pain.

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But in this study, researchers were not only ask­ing the par­tic­i­pants how they felt. They had their brains exam­ined, two weeks before and just after the pro­gram for eight weeks. During the same period, they also scanned the brains of the peo­ple who has not received the MBSR training.

Par­tic­i­pants MBSR - none of them were expe­ri­enced meditators - reported spend­ing a little less than half an hour per day on their med­i­ta­tion "home­work." Yet when their brains were scanned at the pro­gram, their grey mat­ter was thicker than before - sig­nif­i­cantly - in several regions.

One of these areas was the hip­pocam­pus, that prior research has found to be involved in the learn­ing, the mem­ory and the reg­u­la­tion of our emo­tions. The hip­pocam­pus grey matter is often reduced for peo­ple which have depres­sion and dis­or­der of post-traumatic stress (PTSD).

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The researchers also found more dense grey mat­ter in the tempero-perietal junction and the posterior cingulate cortex brain med­i­ta­tors - regions involved in empa­thy and tak­ing the per­spec­tive of some­one else - and in the cere­bel­lum, which has been linked to the regulation of the emo­tion.

These changes in the brain may show that med­i­ta­tion improves the abil­ity to reg­u­late emo­tions, con­trol levels of stress and feel empa­thy to oth­ers, says Britta Hölzel, main author of the study and a fel­low of the Mass­a­chu­setts General Hos­pi­tal and the Geis­sen Uni­ver­sity in Ger­many research team. How­ever, it was stressed that these con­clu­sions are still very speculative.

The group who was not receiving the MBSR train­ing showed no pos­i­tive changes in brain structure.
Pre­vious research has shown that the structure of the brain of very expe­ri­enced med­i­ta­tors is dif­fer­ent from non-meditators in cer­tain regions, but it could not be proven that the med­i­ta­tors did not first have exceptional brains. It's the first study to doc­u­ment a dif­fer­ence in the structure of the brain before some­one starts a med­i­ta­tion practice compared to after.

This new study results offer more evidence for the "plas­tic­ity" of the brain, mean­ing it can change its shape over time.  We can fun­da­men­tally improve our cog­ni­tive and emotional capacities.
"I think what is really pos­i­tive and promis­ing about this study is that it sug­gests our well-being is in our hands," said Hölzel.

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It was noted that med­i­ta­tion is not the way only way tested which pro­duced these changes in the brain. Another study published recently concluded that peo­ple's hip­pocam­pus increased in vol­ume after they had travelled around a track three times per week for a year; in comparison to peers who had less exer­cise aer­o­bically.  Their hip­pocam­pus actually became smaller.

The result of this research seems to be that small steps mat­ter. Many of us can bring pos­i­tive effects of increasing brain memory and well-being - and it can be done without HUGE effort.