MEDITATION EDIT (POSITIVE) STRUCTURE OF THE BRAIN
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The practice of meditation is associated with a sense of tranquility and physical rest. W. Sara Lazar, of Massachusetts General Hospital (Massachusetts, USA), and colleagues studied the role of a program of meditation and awareness about brain structure, and the resulting psychological change.
Sixteen men and women were involved in an eight-week program that meditation and mindfulness. The researchers performed an MRI of the brain of the subjects, two weeks before and after participation in the program of meditation. In addition to weekly meetings that included practice of mindfulness meditation - which focuses on nonjudgmental awareness of sensations, feelings and state of mind - participants received audio recordings for guided meditation practice and were asked to keep track of how much time they practiced each day.
A series of magnetic resonances are carried out in the meantime on a control group of non-meditators in a similar time interval.
The team of researchers found that the participants in the meditation group spent an average of 27 minutes each day practicing awareness exercises, and their responses to a questionnaire on the awareness indicated significant improvements compared with pre-participation responses.
When the researchers analyzed the MRI, they found increased gray-matter density in the hippocampus, known to be important for learning and memory, and in structures associated with self-awareness and introspection.
The participants have reported reductions of stress, related with a decrease of the density of gray matter in the amygdala, which is known to play an important role in the production of anxiety and stress.
Noting that none of these changes was observed in the control group of non-meditators, the researchers conclude: "The participation in and awareness of meditation is associated with changes in the concentration of gray matter in brain regions involved in learning processes and memory, emotion regulation, self-referential processing, perspective taking. "
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