14 DAY TRIAL // People who have been practicing meditation for many years seem to be able to shutdown certain parts of their brains, investigators from the Yale University say. Interestingly, these areas are exactly those involved in underlying conditions such as autism and schizophrenia, among others.
The same ability was not detected in practitioners who have been meditated for only short or medium periods of time. This suggests that the ability to tune out certain portions of the brain is hard-won, and requires a lot of practice to get the hang of.
The Yale team adds that the brain areas experienced practitioners targeted are also the ones involved in lucid daydreaming. This may help explain how these individuals remain calm and focused even after hours of meditation.
A region of the brain called the default mode network was found to be directly affected by meditation. Those with a lot of experience and practice were able to turn this network on and off as they pleased.
The reason why this discovery is so important is because this particular region plays a very important role in underlying lapse of attention. Additionally, neuroscientists have indicated in past studies that it plays a role in the development of several mental disorders.
These include, among other, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and anxiety, in addition to Alzheimer’s Disease, a neurodegenerative form of dementia. Apparently, the DMN plays a role in controlling the buildup of beta amyloid proteins in the brain, molecules that underly AD development.
Details of the new research will be published in an upcoming issue of the esteemed journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). The work was led by Yale assistant professor of psychiatry Judson A. Brewer, MD, PD. He was also the lead author of the science paper.
“Meditation has been shown to help in variety of health problems, such as helping people quit smoking, cope with cancer, and even prevent psoriasis,” the investigator says. The team carried out the new study using a brain imaging method called functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI).
The technique works by analyzing blood flow distribution patterns throughout the brain. If a certain region is more active, then it will receive more blood, and this will show on the scans. Conversely, inactive areas appear as dark spots in the data.
“Meditation’s ability to help people stay in the moment has been part of philosophical and contemplative practices for thousands of years,” Brewer says.
“Conversely, the hallmarks of many forms of mental illness is a preoccupation with one’s own thoughts, a condition meditation seems to affect. This gives us some nice cues as to the neural mechanisms of how it might be working clinically,” he concludes, quoted by PsychCentral.