Effects of Meditation on the Brain

Mindful Meditation and the Brain Some view meditation as new age, hippie nonsense because it is not a social norm to sit in silence and dig beneath the surface of the mind. Others liken it to tuning an instrument before playing it. I subscribe to the latter; nonetheless, meditation is an ancient practice that can be traced back 2,500 years.

However, neuroscientists are just now beginning to measure the effects that it has on the brain. While there are many types of meditation, they all have the same function; reaching an internal state of consciousness in which one is attending to a specific focal point.The content of this paper will be predominantly about mindful meditation and how it positively affects the brain. The process of mindful meditation involves breath-focused relaxation order to keep the body calm and the mind aware.

It is my hypothesis that mindful meditation can be used as a vehicle for the brain to improve attention, emotional regulation, and reduce anxiety and depression symptoms. The primary goal for neuroscientists investigating mindful meditation is to understand the parts of the brain that are being used during meditative states and the long lasting effects of continuous practice.Meditation is linked to both state and trait-like effects (Didonna, 2009). State effects refer to changes that occur in individuals in the act of meditation.

In contrast, trait-like changes occur over a period time as a consequence of sustained meditation practice. Trait-like effects are thought to result from stable, long-term transformations in brain activity and structure (Didonna, 2009). When studying trait-like versus state effects, scientists will be decipher what affects have clinical applications to help those in need (Didonna, 2009).The ideas behind mindfulness in the ancient context are awareness, attention, and remembering.

Its purpose is to do away with negative schemas by developing comprehensive workings of the mind and how it relates to the material world. The goal of the meditator is to embrace whatever is happening in the present (Didonna, 2009). It is about becoming aware of the present moment without attachment (Austin, 1998). Alertness, love, kindness, and effort are all qualities that can be cultivated through the medium of mindful meditation.As mindfulness takes on the Western world, the implication of the word takes on more meaning. Today, qualities such as nonjudgment, acceptance, and compassion are associated with mindfulness.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, a leading neuroscientist and practitioner of mindful meditation defines mindfulness as “paying attention in a particular way, on purpose in the present moment and nonjudgmentally” (Kabat-Zinn, 1999). Kabat-Zinn’s definition essentially implies one’s intent, not avoiding the now, and the attitude of acceptance.In mindful meditation, these traits are all derivatives of attention. Attention is a blanket term for how we become cognizant among all things sensual, and then focus on that particular sense. It can be achieved through overt and covert methods.

In mindful meditation, we focus on covert orienting by adjusting to the stimulus without moving the sensory receptors. Much like the brain itself, attention is not a unitary function and is comprised of the many components. The first of which is alerting, it triggers the parietal lobe in the right frontal area.Alerting permits one to focus on their breath or the task at hand. The second is re-orienting, and serves to activate the frontal eye field, temporal junction, pulvinar, and superior colliculus.

Re-orienting is exercised when the mind is shifted back to focusing after wandering off. The third component is executive control which excites the anterior cingulated gyrus. Executive control is selectively attending to what the individual wants to focus on and actively inhibits things that are task irrelevant.These three sub-processes of attention were tested in a study done in China.

Eighty undergraduate students were randomly divided evenly into a control and experimental group. The experimental group was assigned to one meditation session of twenty minutes for five consecutive days. Both groups were given a slew of tests one week before and one week immediately after the last session. The test was known as Attention Network Test (ANT) involves responding to an arrow target that is surrounded by flankers that point either in the same or opposite direction.In the past, ANT has been used to measure the ability to reach a resolution when faced with a mental conflict by inducing competing stimuli. It activates a frontal brain network involving the anterior cingulate gyrus and the lateral prefrontal cortex (Tang, 2007).

Before and after the five day meditation sessions there were no significant differences found in alerting or orientating. However, the main effect that the meditation had was in executive control. The control group scored significantly higher on the ANT in the executive control section, proving their hypothesis that hat a short period of training and practice might nfluence the efficiency of the executive attention network related to self regulation. One study wanted to compare the effects of mindful and concentration meditation on sustained attention. The subjects were both beginning and advanced practioners of Zen meditation (Valentine, 1999). All subjects were classified as mindful or concentration style meditation.

The novice meditators were told to concentrate on observing breath, as their ability grew stronger, they were gradually instructed to expand his or her attention to other external or internal stimuli.The meditation participants and a control group were compared on a task in which they had to count rapidly-presented beeps, which is a measure of sustained attention. All meditators performed better than the control in their ability to detect stimuli indicating that both groups developed a heightened attention as a result of their practice. Results also showed that mindful meditators were significantly better at detecting unexpected stimuli, compared to the concentration group (Valentine, 1999).

Another study was done during a three month silent retreat to see if mindful meditation can increase the ability to identify both stimuli in rapid succession, essentially reducing the trend known as “attentional blink” (Slagter, 2007) As cited by Slagter, attentional blink refers to an inability to perceive a second target in rapid sequential visual presentation of stimuli, if a first target was detected within a brief window of time, (500 milliseconds) preceding the second target (Shapiro, 1997).Research indicated that meditators showed less of an attentional blink response than non-meditators after the three month retreat. Electroencephalography (EEG) signals revealed that the individuals that performed the best on the attentional blink task also exhibited the least amount of brain activity at the start of the first stimulus. This implies that those individuals were able to allocate their attentional resources evenly which is in co ordinance with their hypothesis that mindful meditation reduces attentional blink.

Emotional processes involve a great number of diverse, correlated neurological processes.Two parts of the brain, specifically the amygdala and the prefrontal cortex are both the experience and the regulation of emotion (Anderson, 2007). The activation of the amygdala appears to be associated with negative emotional experience, usually fear (Barrett, 2007). Activation in the prefrontal cortex, especially in the lateral dorsal regions, has been associated with both decreased amygdala activation and the lowering of negative emotional responses, also known as emotional regulation, perhaps through the ventral and medial prefrontal cortex regions (Phelps, 2006).

A study regarding these neurological processes was conducted to examine whether more mindful individuals would show less reactivity to an emotionally threatening picture stimulus (Creswell, 2007). This experiment was measured by using fMRI-assessed amgydala activation and stronger regulation of emotional responses through prefrontal cortical mechanisms. Results indicated that, relative to those in lower mindfulness, responses in participants high in mindfulness were less reactive to threatening emotional stimuli; the fMRI indicated less activity in the amygdala response and greater prefrontal cortical activation while labeling the stimuli.Also, those who were reported to be high in mindfulness had a greater inverse correlation of the prefrontal cortex and amygdala (Creswell, 2007).

The lifetime prevalence of social anxiety disorder (SAD) is a little over 12% (Goldin, 2009). It is the third most common psychiatric disorder behind depression and substance abuse and 80% of those with SAD developed it before the age of 18. SAD typically persists unless treated (Goldin, 2009). As cited by Goldin, SAD is a common and recurrent incapacitating condition characterized by intense fear of evaluation in social performance situations (Jefferys, 1997).

There are several psychological processes that characterize SAD, such as fear of negative evaluation, maladapative cognitions regarding one’s self and others, and exaggerated self-focus (Jefferys ,1997). Some newer electrophysiological studies have revealed that adults with SAD have abnormal attentional processes. They tend to have extreme hypervigilance followed by attentional avoidance (characterized as reduced visual processing) of a socially threatening stimulus (Santesso, 2008).In addition to this, adults with SAD have demonstrated diminished recruitment of the brain networks that are used in cognitive regulation (dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and dorsal anterior cingulated cortex) and attetntion regulation (posterior cingulate, inferior parietal lobe, and supramarginal gyrus) during cognitive reappraisal of emotional reactivity to social threat and to negative self beliefs (Goldin 2009).

Essentially, when faced with a socially threatening stimulus, people with SAD do not have the cognitive skills to comfort themselves and or have negative self beliefs. People with ebilitating anxiety tend to come from traumatic backgrounds and have a highly elevated sense of threat. These people have become too reliant on processing from their threat systems (Panksepp, 2006). According to Panskepp, the brain has evolved different types of affect-behavior systems: threat protection system, drive seeking system, and a contentment soothing system. The threat protection system is seen to have certain defense emotions (e.

g. anger anxiety and disgust) with a range of behavior responses (e. g. fight, flight, freeze, and submission), as well as physiological consequences.

When triggered, it creates a physiological pathway that when returned to, becomes more solidified with time, much like a reflex. “Life experiences are coded as emotional memories…associations and conditioning need not to be conscious but still highly influential on how people process and respond to life events and situations” (Didonna, 2009). For example, if a person has a bad experience dining with people, their solution the next day might be to dine at a different time by themselves, if this pattern is sustained and that person runs into the group they had the unpleasant experience with, it may very well trigger some anxiety.It has been repeatedly purposed that mindful meditation can reduce emotional reactivity by modifying attentional processes.

Given that social anxiety disorder can be broken down to emotional and attentional biases and distorted negative beliefs, a study was conducted to examine the effects of the brain-behavior mechanisms of emotional reactivity and attentional regulation of negative self beliefs in patients with SAD. Sixteen participants proceeded to go on an eight week retreat that consisted of mindful meditation for 2. 5 hours a day.Participants were asked to imagine an autobiographical social situation that made them feel uncomfortable (e. g. , “I am ashamed of my shyness and am being judged for it”) for a span of one minute.

The subjects then had to react to the negative self belief for twelve seconds followed by a three second break. Then implementation of attention regulation took place, based on a cue to shift their attention to their breath. The patients in this study underwent functional magnetic imaging (fMRI) while reacting to negative self beliefs while applying a breath-focused mindful attention form of emotion regulation (Goldin, 2009).Out of the fourteen patients that completed the neuroimaging assessment, all of them showed improvement in the areas of anxiety and depression symptoms and self esteem, decreased negative emotion experience, reduced amygdala activity, and increased activity in brain regions implicated in attention during meditation (Goldin, 2009). The future directions of studying mindful meditation can help us explore new territory in human consciousness and how it operates. Mindfulness can help to inform about the nature of consciousness, and how its processes can be attuned for maximum use.

It will be interesting to see within the next coming years if neuroscientists can come out with an “instruction manual” of how the mind interacts with the brain for the most efficient way to reduce stress and increase attention. There are a few limitations that could arise when researching meditation. It is not something can be easily measured using the stimulus response method. Meditation is a very complex practice that can potentially change from moment to moment. Someone who is meditating can go from deep concentration on their breathing to thinking about running and errand in a split second.

Is the thought about running the errand considered part of the meditative state, or is just the focusing on breathing the meditative state, because both of these involve different brain mechanisms, and neuroscientists do not have the technology to distinguish between the two. There are also so many different kinds of meditation that, at the moment it is difficult to differentiate which style would be the best to integrate into a clinical field. In summation, the brain is the body’s most powerful muscle, and just like any other muscle it can be conditioned in such a way that helps one take on tasks more resourcefully.As I have stated throughout this paper, one way to condition the brain is through mindful meditation. Simply by sitting down and concentrating on being aware, we can alter our brain chemistry that better suits us to face the demands of our environment. Attention is a key part of mindfulness, it is needed to sustain awareness which is the basis of mindful meditation.

Several studies provide evidence that suggests mindful meditation improves attention, which in turn increase the ability to regulate emotions by being aware of the environment.Emotional regulation is a key skill in human nature because it allows one to assess how they feel and turn that feeling into a behavior. If that behavior is maladaptive, negative patterns can quickly habituate themselves. Mindful meditation can help bring that pattern to light, and it is up to the individual to change it. Mindful Meditation is not a cure all, but it certainly can be used as a solid foundation on which to cultivate a balanced life. Works Cited Anderson, A.

(2007). Feeling emotional: The amygdala links emotional perception and experience.Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience , 2, 71-72. Austin, J. (1998). Zen and the Brain.

Cambridge: MIT Press. Barrett, L. F. -M. (2007).

The amygdala and the experience of affect. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience , 2, 73-83. Creswell, J. D.

(2007). Neural correlates of dispositional mindfulness during affect labeling. Psychosomatic Medicine , 69, 560-565. Didonna, F. (2009).

Clinical Handbook of Mindfulness. New York: Springer Science. Goldin, P. &. (2009).

Effects of Mindfulness Meditation Training on the Neural Bases of Emotion Regulation in Social Anxiety Disorder. under review) . Jefferys, D. (1997).

Social phobia. The most common anxiety disorder,. Austin Farm Physician , 1064-1067. Kabat-Zinn, J. (1999). Full Catastrophe Living.

New York: Delacorte Press. Panksepp, J. a. (2006).

The neurobilogy of positive emotions. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews Volume 30, Issue 2 , 173-187. Phelps, E. A. (2006).

Emotiona and Cognition: Insights from studies of the human amygdala. Annual Review of Psychology , 57, 27-53. Santesso, D. L. (2008). Electrophysiological correlates of spatial orienting towards angry faces: A source localization study.

Neuropsychologia Volume 46, Issue 5 , 1338-1348. Shapiro, K. L. (1997). 1997. Trends in Cognitive Sciences , 291-296.

Slagter, H. A. (2007). Mental Training Affects Distribution of Limited Brain Resources. PLoS Biology , 5, 6, e138. Tang, Y.

Y. (2007). Short term meditation trainng improves attention and self-regulation. National Academy of Sciences of the USA , 75-102. Valentine, E. S.

(1999). Meditation and attention: a comparison of the effects of cocentrative and mindfulness meditation on sustained attention. Mental Health, Religion, & Culture , 59-70.