[Narz]

http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/daily/2006/01/23-meditation.html

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]Meditation found to increase brain size
Mental calisthenics bulk up some layers
By William J. Cromie
Harvard News Office

People who meditate grow bigger brains than those who don't.

Researchers at Harvard, Yale, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found the first evidence that meditation can alter the physical structure of our brains. Brain scans they conducted reveal that experienced meditators boasted increased thickness in parts of the brain that deal with attention and processing sensory input.

In one area of gray matter, the thickening turns out to be more pronounced in older than in younger people. That's intriguing because those sections of the human cortex, or thinking cap, normally get thinner as we age.

"Our data suggest that meditation practice can promote cortical plasticity in adults in areas important for cognitive and emotional processing and well-being," says Sara Lazar, leader of the study and a psychologist at Harvard Medical School. "These findings are consistent with other studies that demonstrated increased thickness of music areas in the brains of musicians, and visual and motor areas in the brains of jugglers. In other words, the structure of an adult brain can change in response to repeated practice."

The researchers compared brain scans of 20 experienced meditators with those of 15 nonmeditators. Four of the former taught meditation or yoga, but they were not monks living in seclusion. The rest worked in careers such as law, health care, and journalism. All the participants were white. During scanning, the meditators meditated; the others just relaxed and thought about whatever they wanted.

Meditators did Buddhist "insight meditation," which focuses on whatever is there, like noise or body sensations. It doesn't involve "om," other mantras, or chanting.

"The goal is to pay attention to sensory experience, rather than to your thoughts about the sensory experience," Lazar explains. "For example, if you suddenly hear a noise, you just listen to it rather than thinking about it. If your leg falls asleep, you just notice the physical sensations. If nothing is there, you pay attention to your breathing." Successful meditators get used to not thinking or elaborating things in their mind.

Study participants meditated an average of about 40 minutes a day. Some had been doing it for only a year, others for decades. Depth of the meditation was measured by the slowing of breathing rates. Those most deeply involved in the meditation showed the greatest changes in brain structure. "This strongly suggests," Lazar concludes, "that the differences in brain structure were caused by the meditation, rather than that differences in brain thickness got them into meditation in the first place."

Lazar took up meditation about 10 years ago and now practices insight meditation about three times a week. At first she was not sure it would work. But "I have definitely experienced beneficial changes," she says. "It reduces stress [and] increases my clarity of thought and my tolerance for staying focused in difficult situations."
Controlling random thoughts

Insight meditation can be practiced anytime, anywhere. "People who do it quickly realize that much of what goes on in their heads involves random thoughts that often have little substance," Lazar comments. "The goal is not so much to 'empty' your head, but to not get caught up in random thoughts that pop into consciousness."

She uses this example: Facing an important deadline, people tend to worry about what will happen if they miss it, or if the end product will be good enough to suit the boss. You can drive yourself crazy with unproductive "what if" worry. "If, instead, you focus on the present moment, on what needs to be done and what is happening right now, then much of the feeling of stress goes away," Lazar says. "Feelings become less obstructive and more motivational."

The increased thickness of gray matter is not very much, 4 to 8 thousandths of an inch. "These increases are proportional to the time a person has been meditating during their lives," Lazar notes. "This suggests that the thickness differences are acquired through extensive practice and not simply due to differences between meditators and nonmeditators."

As small as they are, you can bet those differences are going to lead to lots more studies to find out just what is going on and how meditation might better be used to improve health and well-being, and even slow aging.

More basic questions need to be answered. What causes the increased thickness? Does meditation produce more connections between brain cells, or more blood vessels? How does increased brain thickness influence daily behavior? Does it promote increased communication between intellectual and emotional areas of the brain?

To get answers, larger studies are planned at Massachusetts General Hospital, the Harvard-affiliated facility where Lazar is a research scientist and where these first studies were done. That work included only 20 meditators and their brains were scanned only once.

"The results were very encouraging," Lazar remarks. "But further research needs to be done using a larger number of people and testing them multiple times. We also need to examine their brains both before and after learning to meditate. Our group is currently planning to do this. Eventually, such research should reveal more about the function of the thickening; that is, how it affects emotions and knowing in terms of both awareness and judgment."
Slowing aging?

Since this type of meditation counteracts the natural thinning of the thinking surface of the brain, could it play a role in slowing - even reversing - aging? That could really be mind-boggling in the most positive sense.

Lazar is cautious in her answer. "Our data suggest that one small bit of brain appears to have a slower rate of cortical thinning, so meditation may help slow some aspects of cognitive aging," she agrees. "But it's important to remember that monks and yogis suffer from the same ailments as the rest of us. They get old and die, too. However, they do claim to enjoy an increased capacity for attention and memory."

[I_Like_Plants]

That, reading good books, listening to classical music, they all help. Why do you think classical music is rare on the radio now? Even classic "art" or "experimental" rock is hard to find, replaced with rap and country, simple repetitive music to make good workers or good thugs.

Why do you think the powers that be are considering eliminating libraries? Why do you think school kids no longer read literature in high school?

Why do you think US kids are indoctrinated with psychadelic, 15-second-soundbite, tripped-out-consumerism on TV from the age of 6 months? Then they graduate to video games where they get to destroy and kill (like Grand Theft Auto, one of the most popular games of all time). Then they get diagnosed with ADHD, and put on Ritalin or other drugs, the most common effects of which are psychosis and hallucinations of bugs and snakes crawling on one's skin.

By this age the kids are in child care, "cared" for by strangers, since both parents are working 60 hours a week, and since the parents are brainwashed into thinking they can have kids without responsibilities, they're still going out to the bar etc evenings instead of being at home, reading to, playing music for/with, and having genuine fun with, their kids.

And I have the consequences of this living next door. I know a few people at the local police station on a first name basis now.

[gg3]

No, but masturbation helps you retain your objectivity toward people of whatever gender you're attracted to.

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Note, trance is not the same thing as a meditative state. Trance involves reorganizing the objects of attention: in essence, paying attention differently than usual. Meditation, of the type practiced for the study, involves a metaprocess of paying attention to the process by which your attention is occupied by content.

This is a subtle but important distinction. By analogy, trance is similar to rearranging the furniture in a room, and meditation is similar to looking at the ways in which you use the furniture.

Both are useful exercises because both can lead to obtaining new information about your cognitive landscape and capabilities. Each can improve certain areas of cognitive functioning. Both improve mental flexibility in a manner analogous to the way in which practice in any field improves one's flexibility of performing tasks within that field.

Note re. religion: This type of meditation, despite having origins in Buddhism, is not an inherently religious exercise, any more than calesthenics or martial arts are inherently religious exercises. It does not entail any particular belief or nonbelief. It is simply a matter of sitting still and being aware of how your attention works, and teaching yourself to not be distracted by the contents of attention. Therefore, people of any faith, and people who are entirely nonreligious, can use these techniques without concern about contradicting or subverting their existing belief systems.

There are other techniques of meditation that do engage with religious and philosophical content. Those involve practices such as using prayer or scripture or philosophical thought as a focus of attention. They can also produce cognitive benefits in terms of increasing one's ability to maintain concentration in the face of distractions (content unrelated to the object of one's intent). And of course they are associated with religious and philosophical insight within their respective traditions.

In the world we are all anticipating, meditation is as relevant as physical exercise in terms of maintaining healthy functioning in order to deal with the crises ahead.

[TWilliam]

Meditation is the only presently known psychological process that has been consistently shown to accelerate one's progress through the psychosocial stages of development.

Interestingly, certain other practices can enhance this effect. One in particular that has shown significant effect in this regard is resistance training (weight lifting, calisthenics, etc.)...

One of the reasons the fundamentalist religions despise meditation is because practitioners tend to literally outgrow their religion, or at the very least they outgrow the fundamentalist, 'herd-mentality' aspects of it in favor of the deeper metaphorical (spiritual) aspects.