A Brain Workout

I remember a weekly Friday tradition that I had every Monday during Elementary School.  At the time I absolutely hated it.  Actually, ‘hate’ was an understatement. The principal of my small, country grade school had an idea that at the beginning of the school week we would set aside 15 minutes for a self-meditation session. Being an antsy child, I didn’t particularly enjoy sitting in a circle being quiet for a long period of time.  Honestly, half the time I would just fall asleep and no one would even notice. Meditation just was not my favorite thing to do as a 7 year old. 

Furthermore, I never particularly knew what ‘meditation’ actually encompassed. After listening to a passionate presentation by Dr. Marcia Grabowecky from Northwestern University, I finally connected the dots and understood the purpose behind this “quiet time.”

In the paper Grabowecky presented, “Attention regulation and monitoring in meditation,” she discussed how meditation is composed of both emotional and attentional regulatory training.  This form of art fine-tunes the cultivation of emotional balance and well-being.

Grabowecky discussed two styles of meditation practices that are commonly studied by researchers.  The first style is called focused attention (FA) meditation and it is involved with voluntary focusing of attention on a specific object. Open monitoring (OM) meditation is the other style, which embodies a non-reactive monitoring of experiences from moment to moment.

In contrast to FA meditators, OM meditators have shown a high level of performance on sustained attention tasks. This is most likely due to the fact that OM meditation involves no attentional focus that utilizes brain regions. Furthermore, studies suggest that a long-term practice of OM meditation can lead to changes in brain function.

Clearly, the study of meditation is relatively new.  It is crucial that longitudinal studies be performed to collect more data. The paper discusses an important question that still remains to be answered about meditation: “the impact of mental training on peripheral biological processes that are important for physical health and illness.”

I found a very interesting, related article, “Meditation correlated with structural changes in the brain” on Scientific American. This was an eight-week meditation training course to determine if meditation actually suggests a change in brain structure.

Massachusetts General Hospital engaged 16 individuals in an eight-week mindfulness meditation study. These individuals utilized a nonjudgmental awareness of sensation form of meditation for approximately 30 minutes a day. Images of the participant’s brain were taken before and after the study.

The results after the brain training suggest an increase in hippocampus gray matter, inferring an increase in learning and memory.  Furthermore, the amygdala had a decreased density of gray matter, which suggests a decrease in anxiety and stress.

For decades it has been acknowledged that meditation can improve an individual’s mental and physical health.  Meditation can help eliminate stress, decrease blood pressure, and raise someone’s mood. 

However, only recently have neuroscientists taken a serious look into the positive benefits of meditation on brain structure. As a matter of fact, meditation reroutes and rewires our neural circuits by strengthening useful connections.

To learn more about meditation’s effects on the brain, research studies are heavily focusing on mindfulness meditation because it challenges individuals to concentrate their thoughts, sensations, and emotions in the present moment. These study results are suggesting that a minimal amount of time per day for several weeks can lead to a sharper brain in attention, storing, and manipulation of information. 

Now as I reminisce about the countless hours I spent hating meditation in Elementary school, I realize that this time was more than just simply being quiet. Furthermore, I now view meditation as a form of a brain workout to sharpen cognitive thinking. I am looking forward to reading future research that will uncover the mystery behind meditation’s full effect on the brain.

Lutz, A., Slagter, H., Dunne, J., and Davidson, R. (n.d) Attention regulation and
monitoring in meditation.  Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 163-169.

Nicholson, C. (2011). Meditation correlated with structural changes in the brain.

Scientific America Global RSS. Retrieved from http://www.scientificamerican.com/podcast/episode/mediation-correlated-with-structura-11-01-22/

Olson, E. (2013). Taking a closer look at how meditation improves our brains.

Scientific American Global RSS. Retrieved from http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/2013/10/31/taking-a-closer-look-at-how-meditation-improves-our-brains-video/