Samar Zebian & Aaed Ghanem^[1] (guest columnist) - Last month we explored why Buddhists, psychologists and neuroscientists have collaborated to examine the efficacy and application of meditative practices. Ultimately, both are interested in mind enhancement and ridding the mind of chaotic thoughts, harmful emotions and personal suffering.

Before reading on, please consider the following challenge. In what follows there is a need to invoke lots of brain anatomy and technical terms. It is very important to map out the areas of the brain that seem to accompany meditative states. Without this kind of knowledge we can not go on to consider the therapeutic benefits of meditation and to make full use of the knowledge embodied in ancient systems of meditation. The biological basis of meditation is a significant (but not the only) bottleneck for understanding the most complex biological organism in this universe.Regular, deep and skillfully conducted meditation (all modifiers are up for contestation) seems to change the brain in positive ways^[2]. The studies summarized below examine different meditative practices each of which emphasize different techniques.

The method of Mindful-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) has been used to help chronic pain patients and those with major depression distinguish between primary sensory experience and secondary cognitive reactions to these experiences. These cognitions are important for countering cognitions and behaviors involved in withdrawal and isolation. They are also important for countering habitual aversion responses to physical or psychological pain. Two months of MBSR training followed by MRI scans revealed an increase in cortical thickness^[3] specifically in areas associated with attention and sensory processes. These findings suggest that MBSR changed brain functioning in areas important for primary sensory experience.

Using an EEG, experienced transcendental meditators showed increased rhythmic alpha waves followed by slow frequencies that spread to the prefrontal cortex. The EEG also recorded bursts of theta oscillation. Furthermore and when TM meditators recited mantras there was a decrease in the processing of sensory and motor activity as well as a general decrease in mental activity. These patterns of brain wave activity may underlie meditators’ phenomenological reports that it is easy to block information from coming into awareness. They also report that the mind is relaxed and unoccupied. Meditators with 10,000+ hours of meditation under their belts (no pun intended) who were engaged in focused attention meditation and hooked up to an EEG showed a thirty-fold increase in gamma brain waves compared to novice meditators and university students. These waves are associated with optimal concentration and cognitive functioning. In addition, monks’ brain waves oscillated at 40 cycles/second, an oscillation cycle associated with feelings of happiness, more energy and heightened awareness.  Meditators with similar levels of experience but who were engaged in compassion meditation showed common activation in the striatum anterior insula, somatosensory cortext, anterior cingulated cortex and the left prefrontal cortex –areas involved in feeling states, planning of movement and positive emotion.

Beyond brain anatomy (and if you’ve read this far without skipping over the last 3 paragraphs, we congratulate you!), growing evidence reveals that a “mind-on-meditation” ushers broader mind-body benefits: stress reduction, inner awareness, improved sleep, heightened creativity, expanded learning, physical vitality, lowered blood pressure and feelings of compassion^[4].  Of course nothing close to the full story has been layout in the still embryonic field of brain–based meditation research. Lots of interesting questions remain: how do the brains of long time meditators-or any other wise happy virtuous people, light up the way they do? How are the subjective experiences associated with meditation, such as feelings of compassion, wholeness and peace, nurtured over time? What role does experience and other personality traits play in the efficacy of meditation? Exactly which specific meditative practices are giving rise to brain changes? What dimensions of meditation have not been studied by yet?

We need the answers to these questions to better understand the brain but we also have practical goals. One goal for some is to develop an effective way to technologically induce meditative states. Is it possible to plug into luminous consciousness or nirvana? This is the topic for the next article in this series.