A group of UCLA researchers used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to scan the brains of 44 people, half of whom have been meditating for an average 24 years. The researchers published the results of their study on April 15, 2009 in the journal NeuroImage.
The study, "The underlying anatomical correlates of long-term mediation: Larger hippocampal and frontal volumes of gray matter," shows that one of the benefits of meditation might be more gray matter in certain regions of the brain.
Participants in Study on Meditation and the Brain
Of the 44 individuals who participated in the UCLA study, 22 have been meditating from five to 46 years. The types of meditation the participants perform include Zazen, Samatha, Vipassana, and others. Most of these participants meditate between 10 to 90 minutes a day, and over half of them report that deep concentration is an essential part of their meditation practice.
In addition to scanning the brains of the 22 meditators, the researchers scanned the brains of a similar control group, also made up of 22 participants.
UCLA Study on the Benefits of Meditation
Eileen Luders, the lead author of the study, is a postdoctoral research fellow at the UCLA Laboratory of Neuro Imaging. She, along with several other researchers, used a high-resolution, three-dimensional form of MRI to measure the brain's structure. In addition, they took two different approaches to acquiring their measurements.
The first approach divides the brain into several regions, which lets researchers compare the size of specific brain structures. The second approach segments the brain into different tissue types so the researchers can compare the amount of gray matter within specific regions.
Meditation Benefits May Include a Bigger Brain
The researchers found that the participants who were long-term meditators had significantly larger cerebral measurements, compared to those in the control group. Specifically, the study shows larger volumes of the right hippocampus and increased gray matter in the right thalamus, left interior temporal gyrus, and right orbito-frontal cortex. In fact, the study reports no regions in the brains of the control group with larger volumes or increased gray matter than in the brains of the meditators.
Interestingly, the brain regions in meditators that showed larger volumes and increased gray matters are closely associated with emotions. Such findings might point to the neuronal underpinnings that provide meditators with the ability to regulate their emotions more effectively than those who don't meditate, explaining perhaps meditators' abilities to retain emotional stability, cultivate positive emotions, and engage in mindful behavior.
The study, however, is not a longitudinal study. That is, it does not track the meditators from the time they began meditating. As a result, it's possible that people who mediate already had greater volumes and more gray matter in specific brain regions, which is what might have caused them to be attracted to meditation in the first place. Indeed, further study is required before definite conclusions can be reached.
Meditation Benefits and the Brain
Past research has already confirmed the benefits of meditation, such as reducing stress and boosting the immune system. But the UCLA research takes these other studies a step further by looking at the link between meditation and the structure of the brain. And the initial evidence suggests that the brain – with its remarkable plasticity and ability to respond to environmental enrichment – can be structurally impacted by meditation, allowing meditators to respond more effectively to life's many challenges.
R.H. Sheldon - A number of years ago, long before I moved to the Northwest, I hitchhiked with a friend across Washington state to northern Idaho. We got ...
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