A Little Peace of Mind...

Well...I was rather impressed by the yoga physiology group research project. So I looked into more ways meditation can affect our physiology and guess what? Meditation appears to produce long lasting changes in  the emotional response of the brain!

Crazy right...a little peace of mind can have LONG lasting affects on our emotional state after meditation. Researchers from Massachusetts and Boston University and several other research institutes found that differences in the emotional response of the brain depend on the specific type of meditation practiced.

There were two types of meditation tested in this particular study.

There are two different meditation routines and they affect the amygdala differently. As you all remember the the amygdala is the part of the brain that has been associated with memory and  emotion and it's the part of the brain that reacts to emotional content. 

What is amazing about this study is that it is the first time meditation has been shown to impact emotional processing OUTSIDE of a mediation state. 

According to Science Daily, the study showed through neuroimaging that:

 "meditation training appeared to decrease activation of the amygdala -- a structure at the base of the brain that is known to have a role in processing memory and emotion -- those changes were only observed while study participants were meditating."

Study participants who completed an 8-week meditation training course had reduced activity in the right amygdala (highlighted structure) in response to emotional images, even when not meditating. (Credit: Gaëlle Desbordes, PhD, Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, Mass. General Hospital) (Science Daily)

The researchers from BU hypothesized that their will be a decrease in the amygdala's response to emotional stimuli, seen through fMRI.

So what did the researchers do? 

healthy adult participants participated in an 8 week  meditation course in either 1) mindful attention meditation, which is the most commonly studied form that focuses on developing attention and awareness of breathing, thoughts and emotions;

 and the other group did the other type of mediation which is called  compassion meditation, a less-studied form that includes methods designed to develop loving kindness and compassion for oneself and for others. 

A third group the control group participated in an 8-week health education course.

The results? after the 8 week course the groups participated in a test, a sequence of emotionally charged either positively, negatively or neutral pictures and their brains were scanned fMRI.

The group that was trained int he mindful attention meditation showed a DECREASE  in right amygdala response to ALL images. This shows that meditation can regulate the emotional stability and the response to stress!

but that's not all!!

In the compassion meditation trained group the right amygdala also decreased during the neutral and positive images, however there tended to be an increase in right amygdala activity when viewing the negative images. 

There was no significant difference to the control group.

Gaëlle Desbordes, PhD, a research fellow at the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at MGH and at the BU Center for Computational Neuroscience and Neural Technology, corresponding author of the report states that,:

"We think these two forms of meditation cultivate different aspects of mind. Since compassion meditation is designed to enhance compassionate feelings, it makes sense that it could increase amygdala response to seeing people suffer. Increased amygdala activation was also correlated with decreased depression scores in the compassion meditation group, which suggests that having more compassion towards others may also be beneficial for oneself. Overall, these results are consistent with the overarching hypothesis that meditation may result in enduring, beneficial changes in brain function, especially in the area of emotional processing."

References:

 Meditation Appears to Produce Enduring Changes in Emotional Processing in the Brian. Science Daily. Nov. 12, 2012. retrieved from:http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121112150339.htm