Say Om

BRAIN research is beginning to produce concrete evidence for something that Buddhist practitioners of meditation have maintained for centuri...

BRAIN research is beginning to produce concrete evidence for something that Buddhist practitioners of meditation have maintained for centuries: Mental discipline and meditative practise can change the workings of the brain and allow people to achieve different levels of awareness.

Now researchers at the University of Wisconsin working with Tibetan monks have translated those mental experiences into the scientific language of high-frequency gamma waves and brain synchrony, or coordination. And they have pinpointed the left prefrontal cortex, an area just behind the left forehead, as the place where brain activity associated with meditation is especially intense.

8216;8216;We found that the long-time practitioners showed brain activation on a scale never seen before,8217;8217; said neuroscientist Richard Davidson. 8216;8216;Their mental practise is having an effect on the brain in the same way golf or tennis practise enhances performance.8217;8217; It demonstrates, he said, that the brain is capable of being trained and physically modified.

Scientists used to believe the opposite8212;that connections among brain nerve cells were fixed early in life and did not change in adulthood. But that assumption was disproved over the past decade with advances in brain imaging and other techniques, and in its place, scientists have embraced the concept of ongoing brain development and 8216;8216;neuroplasticity.8217;8217;

Davidson says his latest results from the meditation study take the concept of neuroplasticity a step further by showing that mental training through meditation and presumably other disciplines can change the brain8217;s circuitry.

The findings are the result of a long collaboration between Davidson and Tibetan spiritual leader, the Dalai Lama. The Dalai Lama first invited Davidson to Dharamsala in 1992 after learning about Davidson8217;s research into the neuroscience of emotions. Buddhists have a centuries-old tradition of intensive meditation and, from the start, the Dalai Lama was interested in having Davidson scientifically explore the workings of his monks8217; meditating minds. Three years ago, the Dalai Lama spent two days visiting Davidson8217;s lab.

The Dalai Lama also dispatched eight of his most accomplished practitioners to Davidson8217;s lab. The Buddhist practitioners had been trained in the Tibetan Nyingmapa and Kagyupa traditions of meditation for an estimated 10,000 to 50,000 hours, over 15 to 40 years. Ten student volunteers with no meditation experience were also tested after one week of training.

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The monks and volunteers were fitted with a net of 256 electrical sensors and asked to meditate for short periods. Thinking and other mental activity are known to produce slight, but detectable, bursts of electrical activity as large groupings of neurons send messages to each other, and that8217;s what the sensors picked up. Davidson was especially interested in measuring gamma waves, some of the highest-frequency and most important electrical brain impulses.

Both groups were asked to meditate, specifically on unconditional compassion. Buddhist teaching describes that state, which is at the heart of the Dalai Lama8217;s teaching, as the 8216;8216;unrestricted readiness and availability to help living beings.8217;8217;

Davidson said that the results unambiguously showed that meditation activated the trained minds of the monks in significantly different ways from those of the volunteers. Most important, the electrodes picked up much greater activation of fast-moving and unusually powerful gamma waves in the monks, and found that the movement of the waves through the brain was far better organised and coordinated than in the students. The meditation novices showed only a slight increase in gamma wave activity while meditating, but some of the monks produced gamma wave activity more powerful than any previously reported in a healthy person, Davidson said.

The monks who had spent the most years meditating had the highest levels of gamma waves, he added. This 8216;8216;dose response8217;8217;8212;where higher levels of a drug or activity have greater effect than lower levels8212;is what researchers look for to assess cause and effect.

LA Times-Washington Post