How different types of meditation change the human brain. Helps to understand your inner world

How does meditation affect a person? Research continues, but it is already clear that meditation can radically restructure all body systems and prevent the most serious diseases.

The state of "not mind"

It is not easy to explain the concept of "meditation". There are such characteristics of meditation as relaxation, cleansing the mind, changing consciousness, concentration, knowing oneself, enlightenment.

Everyone puts their own idea into this word. “Meditation is the realization that I am not the mind,” Osho wrote. The mystic noted the most important rule of meditation - achievement pure consciousness, without any content.

Today there are many types and techniques of meditation, but there is a common link inherent in all meditation practices - an object designed to concentrate attention.

It can be a mantra, breath, sky or, like the Buddhists, "nothing." The object's role is to allow the unegocentric type of thinking to dominate the person's mind.

According to scientists, the object for concentration provides the possibility of such a shift by monopolizing the nervous activity of the left hemisphere, involving it in monotonous activity, which allows the right hemisphere to become dominant. So the rational mind gives way to intuitive insight.

Brain and Meditation

It was found that meditation causes changes in the activity of the human brain, correcting its biorhythms. Meditative states are characterized by alpha waves (frequency 8-14 hertz) and theta waves (4-7 hertz).

Interestingly, in the normal state, the biorhythms of the brain are a chaotic pattern of waves.

Meditation makes the waves move evenly. The graphs show that uniformity of frequencies and amplitudes reigns in all parts of the cranium.

A number of Western experts (Livin, Banquette, Walls) have established various forms of coordinated activity of brain waves: the integration of the left and right hemispheres, the occipital and frontal parts, as well as the superficial and deep regions of the brain.

The first form of integration serves to harmonize intuition and imagination, the second form ensures consistency between mental activity and movement, the third form leads to the uninterrupted interaction of body and mind.

In 2005, at Massachusetts Hospital in Boston, scientists used MRI to track all changes in the meditator's brain. They selected 15 people with meditation experience and 15 people who had never practiced meditation.

After analyzing a huge array of information, scientists came to the conclusion that meditation increases the thickness of those parts of the cerebral cortex that are responsible for attention, RAM and sensory information processing.

“You train your brain during meditation, which is why it grows,” said study leader Sarah Lazar.

“It's like a muscle that can be used in many different ways,” echoes Katherine McLean of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "Once perception is relieved, the brain can redirect its resources to concentration."

Extreme relaxation

In 1935, Teresa Brosset, a French cardiologist, traveled to India to study the effects of yoga on the human body. She noticed that experienced Indian yogis slow down their heart during meditation.

In the 1950s and 1960s, scholars continued to work in this direction, studying the monks of Japanese Zen Buddhism.

It turned out that meditation practice, accompanied by specific biocurrents of the brain, significantly slows down the metabolism.

According to scientists, meditation is a special state that differs in its parameters from the state of wakefulness, sleep, or ordinary sitting with closed eyes.

Relaxation during meditation is fuller than in sleep, but the mind remains alert and clear. In this case, the body reaches a state of complete relaxation in a matter of minutes, while in a dream it takes several hours.

The researchers were particularly impressed by the fact that breathing stops spontaneously during phases of deep meditation. Such pauses can last from 20 seconds to 1 minute, which indicates a state of extreme relaxation.

The work of the heart undergoes similar changes. The heart rate slows down by an average of 3-10 beats per minute, and the amount of blood pumped by the heart is reduced by about 25%.

Psyche and meditation

Humanistic psychology, in the study of meditative states, pays Special attention the ultimate sensations experienced by the meditation practitioner.

American psychologist Abraham Maslow noted that meditators combine their inner forces in the most effective way: a person becomes less scattered, more receptive, his productivity, inventiveness, and even a sense of humor increase.

And yet, as Maslow notes, he ceases to be a slave to base needs.

Australian psychologist Ken Rigby tries to explain internal state when meditating in the language of transcendental psychology. At first, according to Rigby, consciousness is in a vigorous state, but gradual concentration allows you to switch to a less active level, where "verbal thinking fades before subtle, mobile spiritual activity."

A number of experiments confirm that meditation leads to peace of mind and harmonizes a person with the world around him.

Researchers from Yale University note that meditation can act as an effective preventive measure for a number of neuropsychiatric disorders.

Scientists using MRI monitored the brain activity of several volunteers. Their conclusion is this: meditation inhibits the work of the neural network of the brain, which is responsible for self-awareness and introspection, which protects the psyche from excessive immersion in the jungle of one's own self. It is the “withdrawal” that is characteristic of such mental disorders as autism and schizophrenia.

Healing by meditation

Until recently, meditation was the practice of individual religious schools and directions, and today doctors state system UK health care professionals are seriously considering prescribing meditation for people with depression.

At least this is the initiative of the British Mental Health Foundation.

The head of the fund, Andrew Makolov, focuses on the fact that according to statistics? doctors prescribe pills to patients, not sure of their benefits, and meditation, he said, has already proven its effectiveness in the fight against depression.

Meditation is becoming more and more popular in Western medical circles. Sharon Salzberg and John Kabat-Zinn at the University of Massachusetts weight loss clinic use some of the techniques of Buddhist mindfulness meditation. Doctors train their patients to observe changes in the mind and openly perceive everything that arises in it. Breath is used as the object of concentration.

Research results show that after going through an 8-week anti-stress meditation program, the body's CD4-T lymphocyte count increases. It is known that CD4-T cells are primarily susceptible to attacks by the immunodeficiency virus.

Science has already proven that meditation by restructuring brain activity allows you to normalize many physiological processes: digestion, sleep, the work of the nervous and cardiovascular systems.

Meditation is a natural prophylactic remedy for many serious illnesses, including cancer.

Scientists from Harvard have found that daily meditation for 8 weeks activates genes responsible for recovery and suppresses genes that lead to disease. A 2005 study by the American Heart Association showed that meditation prolongs life by activating telomerase in the body, which is called the key to cellular immortality.

What is the first thing that comes to your mind when you hear the word "meditation"? Surely, this is calmness, serenity, zen ... We know that meditation helps to clear our minds, improves concentration, calms, teaches us to live mindfully and provides other benefits to both mind and body. But what does meditation actually do to our brains from a physiological point of view in order to get such an effect? How does it work?

You may be skeptical about how others sing the praises of meditation and extol its benefits, but in fact, it is the case that daily meditation for 15-30 minutes has a huge impact on how your life goes, how you react to situations and how you interact with people.

It's hard to describe in words if you haven't tried it. From a technical point of view, meditation allows us to change our brain and do just magical things.

Who is responsible for what

Parts of the Brain Affected by Meditation

Lateral prefrontal cortex. This is the part of the brain that allows you to look at things more rationally and logically. It is also called the "Appraisal Center". It is involved in modulating emotional responses (which come from the fear center or other parts), automatically redefining behaviors and habits, and reducing the brain's tendency to take things to heart by modulating the part of the brain that is responsible for you.
Medial prefrontal cortex. The part of the brain that constantly speaks to you, your point of view and experience. Many people call this the “Self Center” because this part of the brain processes information that relates directly to us, including when you dream, think about the future, reflect on yourself, communicate with people, empathize with others or try to understand them. ... Psychologists call this the Authorized Referral Center.

The most interesting thing about the medial prefrontal cortex is that it actually consists of two sections:

Ventromedial medial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC). She is involved in the processing of information associated with you and with people who, in your opinion, are similar to you. This is the part of the brain that can make you take things too close to your heart, it can make you anxious, anxiety or stress you. That is, you stress yourself when you start to worry too much.
Dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC). This part processes information about people whom you consider to be different from yourself (that is, completely different). This very important part of the brain is involved in empathy and maintaining social connections.

So, we have an islet of the brain and a cerebellar amygdala:

Island. This part of the brain is responsible for our bodily sensations and helps us keep track of how strongly we will feel what is happening in our body. She is also actively involved in experiencing in general and in empathizing with others.
Cerebellar tonsil. This is our alarm system, which, since the days of the first people, has launched the "fight or flight" program in our country. This is our Fear Center.

The brain without meditation

If you look at the brain before a person begins to meditate, you can see strong neural connections within the Self Center and between the Self Center and the regions of the brain that are responsible for bodily sensations and fear. This means that as soon as you feel any anxiety, fear, or bodily sensation (itching, tingling, etc.), you are more likely to react to it as anxiety. And this is because your Center of Self processes a huge amount of information. Moreover, the dependence on this center makes it so that in the end we get stuck in our thoughts and fall into a loop: for example, we remember that we already felt it sometime and whether it can mean something. We begin to sort out situations from the past in our head and do it over and over again.

Why is this happening? Why does our Center I allow it? This is because the connection between our Assessment Center and the Self Center is rather weak. If the Assessment Center were working at full capacity, it could regulate the part that is responsible for taking things to heart, and would increase the activity of the part of the brain that is responsible for understanding other people's thoughts. As a result, we would filter out all unnecessary information and look at what is happening more sensibly and calmly. That is, our Assessment Center can be called the brakes of our Ya Center.

The brain during meditation

When meditation is your constant habit, several positive things happen. First, the strong connection between the Self Center and body sensations is weakened, so you stop being distracted by sudden feelings of anxiety or physical manifestations and do not fall into your thought loop. This is why people who meditate often have less anxiety. As a result, you can look at your feelings less emotionally.

Second, stronger and healthier connections are formed between the Assessment Center and the body sensation / fear centers. This means that if you have bodily sensations that could indicate potential danger, you start to look at them from a more rational point of view (rather than start to panic). For example, if you feel painful sensations, you begin to observe them, for their recessions and renewals and, as a result, make the correct, balanced decision, and do not fall into hysterics, starting to think that something is definitely wrong with you, drawing in your head a picture of almost his own funeral.

Finally, meditation connects the beneficial aspects (those parts of the brain that are responsible for understanding people who are not like us) of the Center of Self with the bodily sensations, which are responsible for empathy, and makes them stronger. This healthy connection enhances our ability to understand where the other person came from, especially people you cannot intuitively understand because you think or perceive things differently (usually people from other cultures). As a result, your ability to put yourself in the shoes of others, that is, to truly understand people, increases.

Why daily practice is important

If we look at how meditation affects our brain from a physiological point of view, we get a rather interesting picture - it strengthens our Assessment Center, calms the hysterical aspects of our Self Center and reduces its connection with bodily sensations and strengthens its strong parts responsible for understanding. others. As a result, we stop reacting so emotionally to what is happening and accept more rational decisions... That is, with the help of meditation, we do not just change our state of consciousness, we physically change our brain for the better.

Why is constant practice of meditation important? Because these positive changes in our brain are reversible. It's like keeping fit - it requires constant training... As soon as we stop practicing, we again return to the starting point and it takes time to recover again.

Just 15 minutes a day can completely change your life in ways you can't even imagine.

How does meditation affect a person? Research continues, but it is already clear that meditation can radically restructure all body systems and prevent the most serious diseases.

The state of "not mind"

It is not easy to explain the concept of "meditation". There are such characteristics of meditation as relaxation, purification of the mind, change of consciousness, concentration, self-awareness, enlightenment.

Everyone puts their own idea into this word. “Meditation is the realization that I am not the mind,” Osho wrote. The mystic noted the most important rule meditation - achieving pure consciousness, without any content.

Today there are many types and techniques of meditation, but there is a common link inherent in all meditation practices - an object designed to concentrate attention.

It can be a mantra, breath, sky or, like the Buddhists, "nothing." The object's role is to allow the unegocentric type of thinking to dominate the person's mind.

Brain and Meditation

Interestingly, in the normal state, the biorhythms of the brain are a chaotic pattern of waves.

Meditation makes the waves move evenly. The graphs show that uniformity of frequencies and amplitudes reigns in all parts of the cranium.

After analyzing a huge amount of information, scientists came to the conclusion that meditation increases the thickness of those parts of the cerebral cortex that are responsible for attention, working memory and sensory information processing.

“You train your brain during meditation, which is why it grows,” said study leader Sarah Lazar.

"It's like a muscle that can be used in many different ways," echoed Katherine McLean of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. "Once perception is relieved, the brain can redirect its resources to concentration."

Extreme relaxation

In 1935, French cardiologist Teresa Brosset traveled to India to study the effects of yoga on the human body. She noticed that experienced Indian yogis slow down their heart during meditation.

In the 1950s and 1960s, scholars continued to work in this direction, studying the monks of Japanese Zen Buddhism.

It turned out that meditative practice, accompanied by specific biocurrents of the brain, significantly slows down the metabolism.

According to scientists, meditation is a special state that differs in its parameters from the state of wakefulness, sleep, or ordinary sitting with closed eyes.

The work of the heart undergoes similar changes. The heart rate slows down by an average of 3-10 beats per minute, and the amount of blood pumped by the heart is reduced by about 25%.

Psyche and meditation

Humanistic psychology, when studying meditative states, pays special attention to the extreme sensations that the practitioner of meditation experiences.

And yet, as Maslow notes, he ceases to be a slave to base needs.

Australian psychologist Ken Rigby tries to explain the inner state of meditation in the language of transcendental psychology. At first, according to Rigby, consciousness is in a vigorous state, but gradual concentration allows you to switch to a less active level, where "verbal thinking fades before subtle, mobile spiritual activity."

A number of experiments confirm that meditation leads to peace of mind and harmonizes a person with the world around him.

Researchers from Yale University note that meditation can act as an effective preventive measure for a number of neuropsychiatric disorders.

Healing by meditation

Until recently, meditation was the practice of individual religious schools and directions, and today doctors of the UK public health system are seriously thinking of prescribing meditation for people suffering from depression.

At least this is the initiative of the British Mental Health Foundation.

The head of the fund, Andrew Makolov, emphasizes that, according to statistics, ¾ physicians prescribe pills to patients, not sure of their benefits, and meditation, according to him, has already proven its effectiveness in combating depression.

Meditation is becoming more and more popular in Western medical circles. Sharon Salzberg and John Kabat-Zinn of the University of Massachusetts weight loss clinic use some of the techniques of Buddhist mindfulness meditation. Doctors train their patients to observe changes in the mind and openly perceive everything that arises in it. Breath is used as the object of concentration.

Science has already proven that meditation by restructuring brain activity allows you to normalize many physiological processes: digestion, sleep, the work of the nervous and cardiovascular systems.

Meditation is a natural prophylactic remedy for many serious illnesses, including cancer.

Review article by Alice Walton from Forbes, translated into Russian for PKI: overcoming social anxiety and addictions, changes in gray matter volumes, passing exams. The picture with blue brains is an appendage.

Research in the field of "meditation and the brain" has been going on steadily for several years; Almost every week, new studies come out that illustrate some new benefits of meditation - or rather, some ancient benefits that have just been confirmed by fMRI and EEG. The practice of meditation seems to have an amazing array of positive neurological effects, from changes in gray matter volume to decreased activity in the self centers of the brain and improved connections between brain regions.

Below are some of the most exciting studies published over the past few years that have shown that meditation does indeed produce measurable changes in our most important organ. Skeptics, of course, may ask: what is the use of several changes in the brain, if the psychological consequences are not simultaneously described?

Fortunately, these psychological effects are also supported by many - research shows that meditation can help reduce our subjective levels of anxiety and depression and improve attention, focus, and overall psychological well-being.

Meditation Preserves Aging Brains

Last week, a study by the University of California, Los Angeles found that those who meditate for a long time have better brains as they age than those who do not.

Participants who meditated for an average of 20 years had more gray matter in all parts of the brain - although older practitioners lost some volume compared to younger practitioners, this loss was not as pronounced as those who does not meditate.

“We expected to find some minor and discrete manifestations centered in areas that had previously been linked to meditation,” says study author Florian Kurt. "Instead, we actually saw the widespread effects of meditation, encompassing areas throughout the brain."

Meditation decreases activity in the brain "center of self"

One of the most interesting studies of the past few years from Yale University found that mindfulness meditation reduces activity on the “default mode network” (DMN), the brain network responsible for wandering the mind and thoughts back to its own "I" - that is, for the "monkey mind". The passive network is “on” or active when we are not thinking about anything in particular, when our minds are simply jumping from thought to thought. Since mental wandering is usually associated with lower levels of happiness, obsessive thinking (rumination), and anxiety about the past and future, the goal of many people is to weaken it. Several studies have shown that meditation — due to its calming effects on DMN — appears to be leading to this; and even when the mind begins to wander, because of the new connections that form, meditators are better able to stop this wandering.

The effects of meditation on depression and anxiety are comparable to those of antidepressants

An expert meta-study from Johns Hopkins University last year looked at the relationship between mindfulness meditation and its ability to reduce symptoms of depression, anxiety and pain. Researcher Madhav Goyal and his team found that the magnitude of the effect of meditation was moderate, with a score of 0.3. If this sounds modest, remember that the antidepressant effect size is also 0.3 - which makes meditation seem like a pretty good option. After all, meditation is an active form of brain training. “Many people have the idea that to meditate is to sit down and do nothing,” notes Goyal. “But it’s not like that. Meditation is actively training the mind to develop awareness, and various meditation programs approach this from different sides". Meditation is not a magic pill for depression (like any other treatment), but one of the tools that can help you manage your symptoms.

Meditation can lead to volume changes in key areas of the brain

In 2011, Sarah Lazar and her team at Harvard found that mindfulness meditation can actually change brain structure: Eight weeks of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) appears to increase the cortical thickness of the hippocampus, which controls learning and memory, and certain areas of the brain. which play a role in managing emotions and self-determination processes. There was also a decrease in the volume of brain cells in the amygdala, which is responsible for fear, anxiety and stress - and these changes were in line with the participants' reports of their stress levels (this shows that meditation not only changes the brain, but also changes our subjective perception and feelings). In fact, in a follow-up study, Lazar's team found that after undergoing meditation training, changes in brain regions associated with mood and arousal were also consistent with how participants described their improvement in well-being - i.e. their psychological well-being. So for those who argue that brain bumps are not necessarily meant to mean anything: our subjective experience of improving mood and well-being through meditation seems to actually change as well.

Just a few days of training improves concentration and attention

Having trouble concentrating is not just a child's problem; it also affects millions of adults, with or without diagnosed attention deficit disorder. Interestingly (but not surprisingly) one of the main benefits of meditation is that it improves attention and concentration: one recent study found that just a couple of weeks of meditation training improved concentration and memory in people (found in GRE verbal tests). logical thinking). In fact, the increase in scores was equivalent to 16 percent - and this is a big deal. Since the powerful focus of attention (on an object, idea, or activity) is one of the key goals in meditation, it’s not surprising that meditation should also enhance the cognitive skills of people at work - but it’s good that science supports this. In addition, a little support in passing the standardized exams would not hurt anyone.

Meditation Reduces Anxiety - And Social Anxiety

Many people start meditating to reduce stress, and there is a lot of evidence to support this logic. There is a whole new subset of meditation mentioned earlier called mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), developed by John Kabat-Zinn at the University of Massachusetts Mindfulness Center and now available throughout the United States. The goal of this method is to reduce stress levels (physical and mental) in a particular person. Research has demonstrated its benefits in reducing anxiety, even several years after the initial 8-week course. Research has also shown that mindfulness meditation - as opposed to observing solely the breath - can reduce anxiety, and that these changes appear to travel through regions of the brain associated with self-referential ("dedicated") thoughts.

Mindfulness meditation has also been shown to help people with social phobia: A team at Stanford University found that MBSR made changes in areas of the brain involved in attention and also found an improvement in symptoms of social phobia.

Meditation Can Help Addicts

A growing body of research demonstrates that meditation, given its effects on the parts of the brain that are responsible for self-control, can be very effective in helping people get rid of addictions of all kinds. One study, for example, pitted mindfulness training against the American Lung Association's Smoke Free Program, and found that people who had mastered mindfulness were much more likely to quit smoking by the end of training and during 17 weeks of follow-up than those who did. usual treatment. The reason for this may be that meditation helps people to "separate" the state of desire from the act of smoking, so that one does not have to lead to the other - instead, you fully experience and ride the "wave" of craving until it passes. Another study found that mindfulness training, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT), and mindfulness-bassed relapse prevention (MBRP) can be helpful in dealing with other types of addiction.

Brief meditation breaks can help children in school

For the developing brain, meditation is just as - or perhaps even more - promising as it is for adults. Educators and researchers are increasingly interested in introducing meditation and yoga to schoolchildren who face common sources of stress in school and often additional stress and trauma outside of school. Some schools have begun introducing meditation into their daily schedules with success: One neighborhood in San Francisco has started a two-time daily meditation program in some of the high-risk schools - and children are less likely to be suspended, and average grades and attendance have improved. Research has confirmed the cognitive and emotional benefits of meditation for schoolchildren, but more work will likely need to be done before it is widely accepted.

Worth trying?

Meditation is not a panacea, but there is certainly ample evidence that it can provide some benefits to those who practice it regularly. Everyone - from Anderson Cooper and Congressman Tim Ryan to companies like Google, Apple and Target - are building meditation into their schedules; and its benefits seem to begin to be felt after a relatively short amount of practice. Some researchers caution that, under certain circumstances, meditation can lead to negative effects (the so-called “ dark night”), But for most people - especially if you have a good teacher - meditation is beneficial, not harmful. It is definitely worth trying: if you have a few minutes in the morning or evening (or both then, and then), instead of turning on your phone or going online, see what happens if you try to calm your mind, or at least give attention to your thoughts and letting them go without reacting to them. If the research is correct, just a few minutes of meditation can make a difference.

When in 2005 the Neurobiological Society invited Tenzin Gyatso (14th Dalai Lama) to its annual meeting in Washington, among 35 thousand people present, several hundred people demanded that the invitation be canceled. They believed that there was no place for religious leaders at a scientific meeting. But it turned out that it was he who asked the audience a provocative and useful question. Tenzin Gyatso asked: "What connection can there be between Buddhism, ancient Indian and religious-philosophical traditions and modern science?"

Before starting a conversation, the Dalai Lama had already done something to find an answer to this question. In the 1980s. he initiated discussions on the prospects for cooperation between science and Buddhism, which led to the creation of the Institute "Mind and Life", aimed at the study of meditative sciences. In 2000, he set a new goal for the project, organizing the direction of "Meditative Neurobiology", and invited scientists to study brain activity in Buddhists who are seriously involved in meditation and have more than 10,000 hours of practice. Over the past 15 years, more than 100 Buddhists, monks and lay people, as well as a large number of recent meditators, have taken part in scientific experiments at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and at 19 other universities. The article you are currently reading is the result of a collaboration between two neuroscientists and a Buddhist monk who originally trained as a biologist. By comparing the patterns of brain activity in people who have meditated tens of thousands of hours in their lives, and those who have been doing it recently, we began to understand why such methods of training consciousness can provide great cognitive benefits.

MAIN PROVISIONS OF THE ARTICLE:

Meditation is found in the spiritual practices of almost all major religions. IN last years it began to be used in secular society to calm down and improve well-being.
The three main forms of meditation - focus, mindfulness, and compassion - are now ubiquitous, from hospitals to schools, and are increasingly becoming the subject of research in scientific laboratories around the world.
During meditation, physiological changes occur in the brain - the activity of some areas changes. In addition, meditation has a good psychological effect: the reaction rate increases and the susceptibility to various forms of stress decreases.

The goals of meditation overlap with many of the goals of clinical psychology, preventive medicine, and education. Everything more Research suggests that meditation can be effective in treating depression, chronic pain, and overall feelings of well-being.

The discovery of the benefits of meditation is consistent with recent findings by neuroscientists that the adult brain retains the ability to change significantly with experience. Changes in the brain have been shown to occur when we learn to juggle or play a musical instrument, for example, in a phenomenon called neuroplasticity. As the violinist's proficiency increases, the areas of the brain that control finger movements increase. Apparently, similar processes occur during meditation. IN environment nothing changes, but the meditator regulates his mental state, creating an inner experience that affects the work and structure of the brain. As a result of ongoing research, evidence is accumulating on the positive effects of meditation on the brain, thinking, and even on the entire body as a whole.

WHAT IS MEDITATION?

Meditation is found in the spiritual practices of almost all major religions, the media. When referring to meditation, this word is used in different meanings. We will talk about meditation as a way to develop basic human qualities such as steadiness and clarity of mind, peace of mind and even love and compassion - those qualities that sleep until a person makes an effort to develop them. In addition, meditation is the process of getting to know a calmer and more flexible lifestyle.

Meditation is simple enough and can be done anywhere. This does not require special equipment or uniforms. To start "training", a person must take a comfortable position, not very tense, but not too relaxed, and wish for changes in himself, well-being for himself and relief of suffering for other people. Then it is necessary to stabilize consciousness, which is often disordered and filled with a stream of internal noise. To control consciousness, it must be rid of automatic thought associations and internal absent-mindedness.

TYPES OF MEDITATION

Attention meditation. This type of meditation usually requires you to focus on the rhythm of your own inhalation and exhalation. Even with experienced meditators, attention can slip away, and then it must be brought back. At Emory University, brain scans have identified different areas involved in the process of switching attention in this type of meditation.

Mindfulness meditation. It is also called free perception meditation. In the process of meditation, a person is exposed to various auditory, visual and other stimuli, including internal sensations and thoughts, but does not allow them to carry him away. Experienced meditators have decreased activity in areas of the brain associated with anxiety, such as the islet and amygdala.

Empathy and loving-kindness meditation. In this type of meditation, a person cultivates a feeling of benevolence towards another person, regardless of whether they are friend or foe. At the same time, the activity of the areas associated with the representation of oneself in the place of another person increases, for example, the activity in the temporo-parietal node increases.

Advances in neuroimaging and other technologies have allowed scientists to understand what happens in the brain during each of the three main forms of Buddhist meditation: concentration, mindfulness, and compassion. The diagram below allows you to see the cycle of events occurring during attention meditation and the activation of the corresponding areas of the brain.

Consider what happens in the brain during three common types of meditation that originated in Buddhism and are now used outside of a religious context in hospitals and schools around the world. The first type of meditation is the so-called meditation concentration: consciousness at the current time is limited and directed, developing the ability not to be distracted. The second type is mindfulness meditation (clear mind) or free perception, during which a person seeks to develop a calm understanding of his own emotions, thoughts and feelings that he is currently experiencing, so as not to allow them to get out of control and bring him to mental disorder... In this type of meditation, a person retains attention to any of his experiences, but does not focus on anything specific. Finally, the third type is known in Buddhist practice as compassion and mercy and promotes an altruistic attitude towards others.

UNDER THE SUPERVISION OF INSTRUMENTS

Neuroscientists have only recently begun to study the phenomena that occur in the brain when different types meditation. Wendy Hasenkamp of Emory University and her colleagues used tomography to identify areas of the brain that are more alert during meditation. While in the tomograph, the subjects focused on the sensations when breathing. Usually, attention begins to slip away, the meditator must recognize this and regain focus on the rhythm of inhalation and exhalation.

In this study, the subject had to use a button to signal a loss of attention.

Researchers have determined that there is a cycle of four stages : withdrawal of attention, moment of awareness of distraction, reorientation of attention and renewal of focused attention. Each of the four stages involves different parts of the brain.

At the first stage when distraction occurs, the activity of the areas that form the network of the passive mode of the brain increases. It unites areas such as the medial prefrontal cortex, the posterior cingulate cortex, the precuneus, the inferior parietal lobe, and the lateral temporal cortex. It is known that these structures are active at a time when we are "in the clouds". They play a leading role in creating and maintaining an internal model of the world based on long-term memory of themselves and those around them.
In the second stage when a distraction is recognized, other parts of the brain are activated - the anterior insula and the anterior cingulate cortex (the structures form a network responsible for cognitive and emotional functions). These areas are associated with subjectively perceived feelings, which can, for example, contribute to distraction while completing an assignment. They are thought to play a key role in detecting new events and switching between different networks of neurons during meditation. For example, they can bring the brain out of a passive mode of operation.

In the third stage additional areas are involved, including the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the inferolateral part of the parietal lobe, which return attention by “detaching” it from the distracting stimulus.

And finally on the last one, fourth stage persists high level activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which allows the meditator to keep the meditator's attention on a given goal, for example, on breathing.

Later, in our laboratory in Wisconsin, we observed differences in brain activity depending on the experience of the subjects. Paradoxically, people who had serious experience of meditation (more than 10 thousand hours), compared with beginners, showed less activity in the areas related to the restoration of attention. As they gain experience, people learn to hold attention with less effort. A similar phenomenon is observed in professional musicians and athletes who perform actions automatically with minimal conscious control.

In addition, to investigate the effects of mindfulness meditation, we studied volunteers before and after a three-month intensive period of at least eight hours a day. They were given headphones, from which sounds of a certain frequency were heard, and sometimes slightly higher sounds. For ten minutes, people had to focus on the sounds and respond to the resulting higher tone. It turned out that people after a period of prolonged meditation had fewer differences in reaction speed from time to time compared to those who did not practice. This means that after prolonged training of consciousness, a person retains attention better and is less likely to be distracted. People with meditation experience had more stable electrical activity in response to high-pitched sounds.

MINDFLOW

In the second, also well studied form of meditation another type of attention is involved. In mindfulness meditation, and free perception, the meditator should notice all sights or sounds and keep track of his feelings, and internal dialogue... A person remains aware of what is happening, not focusing on any one feeling or one thought. And he returns himself to this detached perception as soon as consciousness begins to wander. As a result of these exercises, the usual daily annoying events - an aggressive colleague at work, an annoying child at home - lose their destructive effect and a sense of psychological well-being develops.

Awareness of discomfort can help reduce maladaptive emotional responses, help overcome discomfort, and can be especially helpful in dealing with pain. In our laboratory in Wisconsin, we studied people with extensive meditation experience while they were engaged in a complex form of mindfulness meditation called open presence. With this type of meditation, which is sometimes called pure perception, the mind is calm and relaxed, not focused on anything, but at the same time, a vivid clarity of mind is maintained without agitation or inhibition. The meditator observes without trying to interpret, change, get rid of, or ignore the painful sensations. We found that when meditating, the intensity of pain does not decrease, but this worries the meditator less than people in the control group.

Compared to novices, people with extensive meditation experience showed less activity in the anxiety-related areas of the brain in the period before pain exposure. - islet and tonsil. With repeated painful stimuli in the brains of experienced meditators in areas associated with pain, more rapid addiction was observed than in novice meditators. In other tests conducted in our laboratory, mind training has been shown to increase the ability to control and mitigate basic physiological responses, such as inflammation or hormone release in social stressful situations such as public speaking or verbal counting in the face of a strict commission.

Several studies have shown that mindfulness meditation is beneficial for symptoms of anxiety or depression, and improves sleep. By being able to consciously observe and track their thoughts and emotions, depressed patients can use meditation in anxious situations to manage spontaneously arising and obsessive negative thoughts and feelings.

Clinical psychologists John Teasdale of Cambridge University and Zindel Segal of the University of Toronto in 2000 showed that patients who had previously experienced at least three periods of depression after six months of mindfulness meditation in When combined with cognitive psychotherapy, the risk of recurrence is reduced by about 40% within a year. Segal later showed that meditation worked better than placebo and was comparable in effectiveness to standard antidepressant therapies.

COMPASSION AND MERCY.

Dalai Lama. Dialogue with scholars about compassion (Emory University). Part 1

Dalai Lama. Dialogue with scholars about compassion (Emory University). Part 2

The third type of meditation develops feelings of compassion and mercy towards people. At first, the meditator is aware of the needs of the other person, then he feels a sincere desire to help or alleviate the suffering of others, protecting them from their own destructive behavior.

Upon entering a state of compassion, the meditator sometimes begins to experience the same feelings as the other person. But for the formation of a compassionate state, it is not enough to have just an emotional resonance with the feelings of the other. There must still be disinterested desire to help to the one who suffers.

This form of love and empathy meditation is more than just a spiritual exercise. It has been shown to help preserve the health of social workers, teachers and other people at risk burnout because of the experiences they have, deeply empathizing with other people's problems.

Meditation begins with the fact that a person focuses on unconditional benevolence and love for others and silently repeats a wish to himself, for example: "May all living beings find their happiness and be free from suffering." In 2008, we studied the brain activity of people who practiced this type of meditation for thousands of hours. We let them listen to the voices of the sufferers and found them to have increased activity in some areas of the brain. The secondary somatosensory cortex and islet are known to be involved in empathy and other emotional responses. When listening to the suffering voices, these structures became more active in experienced meditators in comparison with the control group. This means that they were better at sharing other people's feelings without feeling emotionally overwhelmed. Experienced meditators also showed increased activity in the temporo-parietal node, medial prefrontal cortex, and the anterior temporal sulcus. All of these structures are usually activated when we mentally put ourselves in the shoes of another person.

Recently, Tania Singer and Olga Klimencki from the Institute for Human Cognitology and Brain Science of the Society. Max Planck, together with one of the authors of this article (Mathieu Ricard), tried to understand the differences between ordinary empathy and compassion in the meditator. They showed that empathy and altruistic love are associated with positive emotions, and suggested that emotional exhaustion or burnout is, in fact, the "fatigue" of empathy.

In accordance with the Buddhist traditions of contemplation, from which this practice came, compassion should not cause fatigue and despondency, it strengthens inner balance, strength of mind and gives determination to help those who are suffering. When the child is admitted to the hospital, the mother will be more beneficial if she holds his hand and soothes him. with gentle words than if, overloaded with empathy and anxiety, unable to bear the sight of a sick child, she rushes back and forth along the corridor. In the latter case, the case may end in burnout, from which, according to studies carried out in the United States, about 60% of 600 people interviewed who looked after patients suffered.

To further explore the mechanisms of empathy and compassion, Klimecki and Singer divided about 60 volunteers into two groups. In the first group, meditation was associated with love and compassion; in the other group, they developed a sense of empathy for others. Preliminary results showed that a week of loving-kindness and compassion-based meditation resulted in participants, although they had no previous experience, experiencing more benevolent feelings while watching videos of people in distress. Participants from another group, who only trained in empathy for a week, experienced the same emotions as the suffering people in the video. These emotions generated negative feelings and thoughts, and the participants in this group experienced intense stress.

After identifying these devastating effects, Singer and Klimecki conducted a compassion meditation session with the second group. It turned out that additional exercises reduced the negative consequences of empathy training: the number of negative emotions decreased, and the number of benevolent ones increased. This was accompanied by corresponding changes in areas of the brain associated with empathy, positive emotions and maternal love, including the orbitofrontal cortex, ventral striatum, and anterior cingulate cortex. In addition, the researchers showed that training compassion for a week increased prosocial behavior in a computer game specifically designed to measure willingness to help others.

Meditation not only causes changes in certain cognitive and emotional processes, but also helps to increase some areas of the brain. The study found that people with more meditation experience had increased gray matter in the insular lobe and in the prefrontal cortex.

DOORS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

Meditation helps to study the nature of thinking, giving a person the opportunity to explore his own consciousness and mental state. In Wisconsin, we studied electrical brain activity in Buddhist meditators by recording an electroencephalogram (EEG) during compassion meditation.

It turned out that experienced Buddhists could voluntarily maintain a state characterized by a certain rhythm of electrical activity of the brain, namely high-amplitude gamma oscillations with a frequency of 25-42 Hz. This coordination of electrical activity in the brain can go a long way in creating temporary neural networks that combine cognitive and emotional functions during learning and conscious perception, which can lead to long-term changes in the brain.

During the meditation, high-amplitude oscillations continued for several tens of seconds, and the more the meditator's experience was, the greater the number of them. First of all, such EEG features were expressed in the lateral region of the fronto-parietal part of the cortex. They may reflect an increased awareness of the environment and internal thought processes in humans, but more research is needed to understand the role of the gamma rhythm.

Brain Grows

Researchers from several universities studied the ability of meditation to induce structural changes in brain tissue. With the help of MRI, it was possible to show that in 20 people with extensive experience in Buddhist meditation, the volume of tissue in some areas of the prefrontal cortex (fields 9 and 10 according to Brodmann) and in the insular lobe is greater compared to the brain of people from the control group (graphs). These areas are involved in the processing of information related to attention, gut sensations, and sensory signals. Further long-term studies are required to confirm the data.

Meditation not only causes changes in certain cognitive and emotional processes, but also helps to enlarge certain areas of the brain. This is presumably caused by an increase in the number of connections between neurons. A preliminary study by Sara Lazar and colleagues at Harvard University showed that people with extensive meditation experience increased gray matter in the insular lobe and in the prefrontal cortex, more specifically in the Broadman fields 9 and 10, which are often activated with various forms of meditation. These differences were most pronounced in older study participants. It is speculated that meditation may slow the rate of thinning of brain tissue that occurs with age.

In further work, Lazar and colleagues showed that those subjects who, as a result of practicing mindfulness meditation, had the greatest decrease in their stress response, also decreased the volume of the amygdala, an area of the brain involved in the formation of fear. Later, Eileen Luders of the University of California, Los Angeles, together with colleagues, discovered that meditators differ in the number of axons - fibers that connect different parts of the brain. This is thought to be related to an increase in the number of connections in the brain. This observation supports the hypothesis that meditation actually induces structural changes in the brain. An important drawback of these works is the lack of long-term studies in which people would be observed over many years, and the lack of comparative studies of people of the same age and similar biography, which would differ only in whether they meditate or not.

There is even evidence that meditation, and the ability with it to improve one's own condition, can reduce inflammation and other biological reactions that occur at the molecular level. As shown in a study conducted jointly by our group and a group led by Perla Kaliman of the Institute for Biomedical Research in Barcelona, one day of intense mindfulness meditation is enough for the experienced meditator to reduce the activity of genes associated with the inflammatory response and affect the work of proteins that activate these genes. Cliff Saron of the University of California, Davis studied the effect of meditation on a molecule involved in regulating cell lifespan. This molecule is an enzyme called telomerase, which lengthens DNA at the ends of chromosomes. The ends of chromosomes, called telomeres, are responsible for the preservation of genetic material during cell division. During each division, telomeres are shortened, and when their length decreases to a critical value, the cell stops dividing and gradually ages. Compared to the control group, the meditators had a more effective decrease in psychological stress and a higher telomerase activity. Sometimes practicing mindfulness meditation can slow down the cellular aging process.

THE WAY TO WELL-BEING

Over 15 years of research, it has been shown that prolonged meditation not only significantly changes the structure and function of the brain, but also significantly affects biological processes that are critical for physical health.

Further research is needed using clear randomized controlled trials to separate meditation-induced effects from those associated with other psychological factors that may also influence research results. These are, for example, the level of motivation of the meditators and the roles that teachers and students play in the group of meditators. Further research is also needed to clarify the possible negative side effect from meditation, the desired duration of the sessions and how they can be adapted to the needs of a particular person.

But with all the precautions taken, it is clear that as a result of meditation research, we have gained a new understanding of psychological preparation methods that have the potential to improve human health and well-being. Equally important, the ability to develop compassion and other positive human qualities lays the foundation for creating ethical standards not tied to any philosophy or religion. It can profoundly and beneficially affect all aspects of human society.

Richard Davidson(Richard J. Davidson) - Director of the Weisman Laboratory of Neuroimaging and Behavior and the Center for Mental Health Research at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He was the first to begin the scientific study of meditation.

Antoine Lutz(Antoine Lutz) - Research Fellow at the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research, Fellow at the University of Wisconsin and Madison. He headed neurobiological research on meditation.

Mathieu Ricard(Matthieu Ricard) - Buddhist monk. He studied cell biology, and then, about 40 years ago, left France and went to the Himalayas to study Buddhism.