Mediation: The Painless Medicine

McGreevey,Sue Massachussets General Hospital Public Affairs 2012, Novemeber 13 Harvardgazette Harvard University

In his lecture on the topic of Mindfulness, Meditation, Drug, and Alcohol Use Dr. Thomas Lyons lectured on mindfulness based relapse prevention. Mindfulness refers to a form of meditation entailing a changing mental state from moment to moment. Dr. Lyons refers to it as “a personality trait or disposition preduring over time that can be measuring with personality inventories”(Lyons) He covered the neurobiology of meditation and drug addiction as well as studies done at jails and prisons showing this. Dr. Lyons covered how mindfulness reduces dependence on alcohol among college aged drinkers. Mindfulness is associated with lessened anxiety levels and depression, less gambling outcomes, diabetes self management, and other cross-sectional studies. He also pointed out that mindfulness meditation affects the prefrontal cortex, hippocampus, insulae, amygdale, and functional networks. He points out that meditation shows enhanced activity in the pre frontal cortex, right anterior insulae, and right hippocampus. After meditation training, the activity of the amygdala is reduced. It the amygdala reacts the pre-frontal cortex dampens its effect. In the Harvard University Harvardgazette article Meditation’s positive residual effects, Sue McGreevy points out that a study conducted by investigators at Harvard Medical School, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Boston University found that meditation can impact the functioning of the brain. Gaelle Desboredes, a research fellow at the Athinuola A Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital mentioned that this “is the first time that meditation training has been shown to affect emotional processing in the brain outside of a meditative state.” The study looks to investigate whether or not the meditation reduces reduction in amygdala response to stimuli even after meditation is over. The study measured was measured by Magnetic Resonance Imaging. Participants engaged in two forms of meditation, compassion meditation and attention meditation. Healthy adults participate in the two types of meditation. Mindful meditation focused on developing attention and awareness to breathing, emotions, and thoughts while compassion meditation a form of meditation emphasizing developing kindness and compassion for those around us. In the mindfulness group, the after-training brain scans manifested a decrease in activation in the right amygdala in response to all images, supporting the notion that meditation improves emotional stability and stress response. In compassion meditation right amygdala decreased in response to positive or neutral images. Right amygdala activity geared toward human compassion increased when seeing images of people suffering for those in compassion meditation. Because compassion meditation is aimed toward increasing compassion feelings and the amygdala caused a person to do this when the participant did this when viewing people suffer, one can conclude that meditation may result in lasting positive changes in brain function, especially in regards to emotional processing. This correlates with what Dr. Lyons was speaking of when he said that meditation can alter the structure of the brain, especially in structures such as the amygdala. While we are still pioneering studies in the effects of meditation, we have seen that this efficient and rather approachable stratagem to health care can be to our society’s beneficence if we capitalize on it.