By Tara MacIsaac, Epoch Times | May 18, 2015
Your brain may be
shrinking you may be losing as much as 0.4 percent every year.
(Vladgrin/iStock; edited by Epoch Times)
The universe is
full of mysteries that challenge our current knowledge. In "Beyond
Science" Epoch Times collects stories about these strange phenomena
to stimulate the imagination and open up previously undreamed of
possibilities. Are they true? You decide.
Meditation isn’t
just about being “zen” or something ideological. It has physical
impacts on the brain, and thus great potential in preventing
diseases of the brain. Here’s a look at changes in the brain due to
meditation as they’ve been observed in various studies over the
years.
Everyone experiences
brain shrinkage as they age, sometimes starting as early as the age
of 30 but usually after the age of 40. By the end of your life, the
volume of your brain tissue will probably be
close to that of a 7-year-old child. A higher rate of shrinkage
can contribute to dementia, premature death,
depression, risk of stroke, and more.
Neuroscientist
Richard Davidson tested the Dalai Lama’s most advanced monks,
each with 15 to 40 years of meditation practice. In his 2004 study,
he found meditation could prevent the loss of gray matter in the
brain. The loss of gray matter has an impact on many mental
functions, such as the control of emotions, impulses, thoughts, and
movements.
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A
2011 study at the University of California–Los Angeles
also found that meditation could slow brain shrinkage due to aging.
Eileen Luders, who led the study, said in a press release: “If
practiced regularly and over years, meditation may slow down
aging-related brain atrophy, perhaps by positively affecting the
immune system.”
She considered,
however, that her results may have an alternative explanation:
perhaps people who choose to meditate already have brains slightly
different than those who do not choose to meditate.
Meditation not only
strengthens gray matter, it also strengthens white matter (a
network that connects the gray matter). A University of California–Davis article describes
white matter: “[If the brain] were a computer network, gray
matter—a … portion that contains nerve cells and capillaries—would
be the computers and white matter the cables.”
“Long-term meditators have white-matter fibers that are
either more numerous, more dense or more insulated throughout the
brain.” — Eileen Luders, UCLA Brain Mapping
Center
Luders said: “Our
results suggest that long-term meditators have white-matter fibers
that are either more numerous, more dense or more insulated
throughout the brain. … We also found that the normal age-related
decline of white-matter tissue is considerably reduced in active
meditation practitioners.”
In addition to
preventing brain shrinkage, meditation can help you emit a
supernormal level of gamma waves.
Gamma waves are
described as “some of the highest-frequency and most important
electrical brain waves.” The production of gamma waves requires
thousands of nerve cells to act at extremely high speeds in
unison.
Some of the
monks in his study produced gamma wave activity more powerful and
of higher amplitude than any documented case in history.
Davidson found some
of the monks in his study produced gamma wave activity more
powerful and of higher amplitude than any documented case in
history. The movement of the waves was also far better organized
than the non-meditating test volunteers.
In 2012,
neuroscientists at the University of Wisconsin attached 256 sensors
to the skull of Tibetan monk Matthieu Ricard. They found that when
he meditated on compassion, he also emitted gamma rays at a level
that shot off the charts, according to Smithsonian Mag.
Ricard has been
dubbed the “world’s happiest man.” Researchers could tell by
looking at the activity in different parts of his brain, that he
has “an abnormally large capacity for happiness and a reduced
propensity towards negativity,” according to Smithsonian. The study
found similar effects—though not so pronounced—even in people who
only meditated for 20 minutes per day over the course of three
weeks.
Researchers from
Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), the University of
Massachusetts, and Germany’s University of Giessen, published
a study in 2011 showing the peacefulness
experienced by meditators as reflected in the brain.
MGH’s Sara Lazar,
Ph.D., said in a press release that the study demonstrates changes
in brain structure consistent with the improvements experienced by
the participants, such as “a sense of peacefulness.”
Concentration of gray matter changed in brain regions associated
with learning and memory, emotion, self-referential processing, and
perspective taking.
Over the course of
eight weeks, Lazar observed that the concentration of gray matter
changed in brain regions associated with learning and memory,
emotion, self-referential processing, and perspective
taking.