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

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

The state of "not mind"

Explaining the concept of “meditation” is not easy. There are such characteristics of meditation as relaxation, purification of the mind, change of consciousness, concentration, self-knowledge, enlightenment.

Everyone puts their 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 - the achievement of 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.

It can be a mantra, breath, sky, or, like the Buddhists, "nothing." The role of the object is to allow the non-egocentric type of thinking to occupy a dominant position in the human 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. Thus, the rational mind gives way to intuitive insight.

Brain and meditation

It has been established that meditation causes changes in the activity of the human brain, adjusting its biorhythms. Alpha waves (frequency 8-14 hertz) and theta waves (4-7 hertz) are characteristic of meditative states.

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

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

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

The first form of integration serves to harmonize intuition and imagination, the second form provides a coherence between mental activity and movements, the third form leads to uninterrupted interaction of the body and thought.

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

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

“You train the brain during meditation, which is why it grows,” commented research leader Sarah Lazar.

“It's like a muscle that can be used in different ways,” echoed Katherine Maclean of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. “As soon as perception is facilitated, the brain can redirect its resources to concentration.”

Extreme relaxation

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

In the 1950s and 60s, scientists continued to work in this direction, exploring 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 condition that differs in its parameters from the state of wakefulness, sleep or normal sitting with eyes closed.

The relaxation in meditation is fuller than in a dream, 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.

Researchers were particularly impressed by the fact that breathing during the phases of deep meditation spontaneously stops. 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 per minute by an average of 3-10 beats, and the amount of blood pumped by the heart decreases by about 25%.

Psyche and meditation

In the study of meditative states, humanistic psychology pays particular attention to the extreme sensations experienced by a meditation practitioner.

American psychologist Abraham Maslow noted that in meditators, internal forces combine in the most effective way: a person becomes less scattered, more receptive, he improves productivity, ingenuity, and even a sense of humor.

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

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

A series of experiments confirms that meditation leads to peace of mind and harmonizes a person with the world.

Researchers at Yale University note that meditation can act as an effective prophylactic of a number of neuropsychiatric disorders.

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

Meditation healing

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

At the very least, the British Mental Health Foundation has taken such an initiative.

Fund Head Andrew Makolov focuses on what is statistically? Doctors prescribe pills for patients who are not sure of their benefits, and meditation, he said, has already proven effective in combating depression.

Meditation is becoming increasingly popular in Western medical circles. Sharon Salzberg and John Kabat-Zinn of the University of Massachusetts use some of the techniques of Buddhist awareness meditation in a weight loss clinic. Doctors teach their patients to observe changes in the mind and openly perceive everything that occurs in it. As an object of concentration, breathing is used.

The research results show that after passing through an 8-week anti-stress meditation program in the body, the number of CD4-T lymphocytes increases. It is known that CD4-T cells are primarily susceptible to attacks of the immunodeficiency virus.

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

Meditation is a natural preventive measure against many serious illnesses, including cancer.

Scientists at Harvard found that daily meditation for 8 weeks activates the genes responsible for healing and inhibits the genes that lead to disease. A study by the American Cardiology Association, conducted in 2005, showed that meditation prolongs life by activating telomerase in the body, which is called the key to cellular immortality.

What first comes to your mind when you hear the word "meditation"? Surely, this is peace, tranquility, zen ... We know that meditation helps to cleanse our consciousness, improves concentration, calms, teaches to live consciously and gives other benefits to both mind and body. But what does meditation with our brain from a physiological point of view actually do in order to get such an effect? How does she work?

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

It is difficult to describe in words if you haven’t even tried. 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 that meditation affects

Lateral prefrontal cortex. This part of the brain that allows you to look at things more rationally and logically. She also calls her "Assessment Center." It participates in the modulation of emotional reactions (which come from the center of fear or other parts), automatically redefines behavior and habits, and reduces the brain’s tendency to take things “close to the heart” by modulating the part of the brain that is responsible for your “I”.
Medial prefrontal cortex. The part of the brain that constantly refers to you, your point of view and experience. Many people call this the "Center of I" because this part of the brain processes information that directly relates to us, including the time when you dream, think about the future, think about yourself, communicate with people, sympathize with others or try to understand them. . Psychologists call this an Auto 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 processing information related to you and to people who, in your opinion, are like you. This is just the part of the brain that can make you take some things too close to your heart, it can make you worry, cause anxiety or put you in stress. That is, you drive yourself into stress when you start to worry too much.
Dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (dmPFC). This part processes information about people whom you consider different from yourself (that is, completely different). This very important part of the brain is involved in empathy and maintaining social connections.

So, we still have an islet of the brain and cerebellar tonsil:

Island. This part of the brain is responsible for our bodily sensations and helps us keep track of how much we will feel what is happening in our body. She is also actively involved in experiences in general and in empathy with others.
Cerebellar tonsil. This is our alarm system, which since the time of the first people has launched the “fight or run” program with us. This is our Center of Fear.

Brain without meditation

If you look at the brain before a person begins to meditate, you can see strong neural connections within the Center of the Self and between the Center of the Self and the parts of the brain that are responsible for bodily sensations and for the feeling of fear. This means that as soon as you feel any anxiety, fear or bodily sensation (itching, tingling, etc.), then most likely you will react to this as anxiety. And this happens because your Center of I processes a huge amount of information. Moreover, 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 recall that we already felt this once and whether it can mean something. We begin to sort out the situations from the past in our heads and do it again and again.

Why is this happening? Why does our Center I allow it? This is because the connection between our Evaluation Center and the Self Center is rather weak. If the Evaluation Center worked at full capacity, it could regulate the part that is responsible for taking things close to the 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 Center I.

Meditation Brain

When meditation is your constant habit, several positive things happen. Firstly, the strong connection between the Center of the Self and bodily sensations weakens, so you stop being distracted by sudden feelings of anxiety or physical manifestations and do not fall into your mental loop. That is why people who often meditate reduce anxiety. As a result, you can not look at your feelings so emotionally.

Secondly, stronger and healthier connections are formed between the Evaluation Center and the bodily sensations / centers of fear. This means that if you have bodily sensations that may indicate a potential danger, you begin to look at them from a more rational point of view (rather than start to panic). For example, if you feel pain, you begin to observe them, their recessions and renewal and, as a result, make the right, balanced decision, and don’t fall into hysteria, starting to think that something is definitely wrong with you, drawing in your head a picture of almost their own funeral.

And finally, meditation connects the beneficial aspects (those parts of the brain that are responsible for understanding people who are not like us) of the Self with the bodily sensations that are responsible for empathy, and makes them stronger. This healthy connection increases 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 place of others, that is, to really understand people, is growing.

Why daily practice matters

If we look at how meditation affects our brain from a physiological point of view, we get a rather interesting picture - it strengthens our Evaluation Center, calms the hysterical aspects of our Self Center and reduces its connection with bodily sensations and strengthens its strong parts, which are responsible for understanding others. As a result, we cease to react so emotionally to what is happening and make 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 meditation important? Because these positive changes in our brain are reversible. It's like maintaining a good physical shape - 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 a way you cannot even imagine.

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

The state of "not mind"

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.

It can be a mantra, breath, sky, or, like the Buddhists, "nothing." The role of the object is to allow the non-egocentric type of thinking to occupy a dominant position in the human mind.

Brain and meditation

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

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

“You train the brain during meditation, which is why it grows,” commented research leader Sarah Lazar.

Extreme relaxation

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

In the 1950s and 60s, scientists continued to work in this direction, exploring 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 condition that differs in its parameters from the state of wakefulness, sleep or normal sitting with eyes closed.

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

Psyche and meditation

In the study of meditative states, humanistic psychology pays particular attention to the extreme sensations experienced by a meditation practitioner.

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

A series of experiments confirms that meditation leads to peace of mind and harmonizes a person with the world.

Researchers at Yale University note that meditation can act as an effective prophylactic of a number of neuropsychiatric disorders.

Meditation healing

At the very least, the British Mental Health Foundation has taken such an initiative.

The head of the fund, Andrew Makolov, emphasizes that, according to statistics, ¾ doctors prescribe pills for patients, not being sure of their benefits, and meditation, he said, has already proved its effectiveness in combating depression.

Meditation is a natural preventive measure against many serious illnesses, including cancer.

A review article by Forbes Alice Walton, translated into Russian for the FCI: overcoming sociophobia and addictions, changes in the amount of gray matter, passing exams. The picture with blue brains is in the appendage.

Research in the field of "meditation and the brain" has been steadily conducted for several years; almost every week new studies come out illustrating some new types of benefits from meditation - or rather, some ancient types of benefits that have just been confirmed through fMRI and EEG. The practice of meditation, apparently, brings an amazing set of positive neurological consequences - from changes in the volume of gray matter to a decrease in activity in the centers of the brain that are responsible for the “I”, and an improvement in the relationship between brain areas.

Below are some of the most exciting studies published over the past few years that have shown that meditation does 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 described at the same time?

Fortunately, these psychological effects are also confirmed by many - studies show that meditation helps lower our subjective levels of anxiety and depression and improve attention, concentration and overall psychological well-being.

Meditation Helps Preserve an Aging Brain

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

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

“We expected to find some minor and individual manifestations concentrated in areas whose connection with meditation was discovered earlier,” says study author Florian Kurt. “Instead, we have in fact seen the vast effects of meditation, covering areas throughout the brain.”

Meditation reduces activity in the brain “center of I”

One of the most interesting studies of the last few years, conducted at Yale University, found that mindfulness meditation reduces activity in the “default mode network (DMN),” the brain network responsible for wandering the mind and thoughts with reference to their "I" - that is, for the "monkey mind." The passive mode network is “turned on” or active when we are not thinking about anything specific, when our minds just jump from thought to thought. Since mental wandering is usually associated with lower levels of happiness, obsessive thinking (rumination), and anxiety about the past and the future, many people aim to weaken it. Several studies have shown that meditation - due to its calming effect on DMN - seems to lead to this very thing; and even when the mind begins to wander, because of the new forming connections, meditators are better able to stop this wandering.

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

An expert meta-study conducted last year at Johns Hopkins University examined 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 effect of meditation was moderate, with a score of 0.3. If this seems modest, remember that the magnitude of the effect of antidepressants is also 0.3 - in light of which meditation seems to be quite a good option. After all, meditation is an active form of brain training. “Many people have the idea that to meditate means to sit down and do nothing,” Goal notes. “But that is not so. Meditation is the active training of the mind with the goal of developing awareness, and various meditation programs approach this from different angles. ” Meditation is not a magic pill for depression (like any other treatment), but one of the tools that can help with 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 really change the structure of the brain: eight weeks of stress-reduction based on mindfulness (MBSR), as it turned out, increase the cortical thickness of the hippocampus that controls learning and memory, and certain areas of the brain. which play a role in managing emotions and the processes of determining your own "I". 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 corresponded to the reports of the participants themselves about their stress level (this shows that meditation not only changes the brain, but also changes our subjective perception and feelings). In fact, in a follow-up study, the Lazar team found that after training in meditation, changes in areas of the brain associated with mood and arousal also corresponded to how participants described how they felt better — that is, your psychological well-being. So for those who claim that the included bumps in the brain do not necessarily mean anything: our subjective experience - improving mood and well-being - thanks to meditation, it seems, is also really changing.

Just a few days of training improves focus and attention.

The presence of problems with concentration is not only a problem for children; millions of adults also suffer from it - 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 showed that just a couple of weeks of meditative training improved people's focus and memory (revealed through GRE verbal tests logical thinking). In fact, increasing the score was equivalent to 16 percent - and this is a considerable matter. Since a powerful focus on attention (on an object, idea or activity) is one of the key goals in meditation, it is not surprising that meditation should also strengthen people's cognitive skills at work - but it is good that science confirms this. In addition, a little support in passing standardized exams would not hurt anyone.

Meditation reduces anxiety - and social phobia

Many begin to meditate to reduce stress, and a lot of evidence supports this logic. There is a whole new subspecies of meditation mentioned earlier called “mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR)” developed by John Kabat-Zinn at the University of Massachusetts Awareness Center and now available throughout the United States. The purpose of this method is to reduce the level of stress (physical and mental) in a particular person. Studies have shown its benefits in reducing anxiety, even several years after the initial 8-week course. Studies have also shown that mindfulness meditation - as opposed to observing only breathing - can reduce anxiety, and that these changes seem to pass through brain regions associated with self-referential (“dedicated to me”) thoughts.

Mindfulness meditation, studies have shown, also helps people with social phobia: a team at Stanford University found that MBSR made changes in the areas of the brain involved in attention, and also found a weakening of symptoms of social phobia.

Meditation can help addicted people

A growing body of research demonstrates that meditation (given its effect on the parts of the brain responsible for self-control) can be very effective in helping people get rid of all sorts of addictions. One study, for example, contrasted awareness training with the Freedom from Smoking program of the American Lung Association and found that people who had mastered awareness had quit smoking by the end of preparation and during the 17 weeks of follow-up than those who had passed usual treatment. The reason for this may be that meditation helps people “separate” the state of desire from the act of smoking, so that one does not have to lead to another - instead, you fully experience and saddle the “wave” of longing until it passes. Another study found that training in mindfulness, mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) and mindfulness-based relapse prevention (MBRP) can be useful in dealing with other types of addiction.

Short meditation breaks can help children in school

For a developing brain, meditation is as - or perhaps even more - promising as it is for adults. Education professionals and researchers are increasingly interested in introducing students to meditation and yoga, who experience common sources of stress at school, and often additional stress and injuries outside the school. Some schools started introducing meditation into their daily schedule, and successfully: one of the San Francisco districts started a two-day daily meditation program in some of the high-risk schools - and children were less likely to be suspended, and average scores and attendance increased. Studies have confirmed the cognitive and emotional benefits that meditation brings to schoolchildren, but it is likely that more work will be required before it is universally recognized.

Worth a try?

Meditation is not a panacea, but, of course, there is plenty of evidence that it can bring some benefit to those who practice it regularly. Everything from Anderson Cooper and Congressman Tim Ryan to companies like Google, Apple, and Target, embed meditation on their schedule; and its benefits seem to begin to be felt after a relatively brief amount of practice. Some researchers caution that in certain circumstances, meditation can lead to negative effects (the so-called “dark night” phenomenon), but for most people - especially if you have a good teacher - meditation is beneficial, not harmful. Of course, you should try it: if you have a few minutes in the morning or in the evening (or both, then and then), instead of turning on the phone or surfing the Internet, 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 research is correct, just a few minutes of meditation can make a big difference.

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

Before starting the conversation, the Dalai Lama had already done something to find the answer to this question. In the 1980s He initiated a discussion of the prospects for cooperation between science and Buddhism, which led to the creation of the Institute “Mind and Life”, aimed at studying the meditative sciences. In 2000, he set a new goal for the project, organizing the “Meditative Neurobiology” field, and invited scientists to study brain activity from Buddhists who are seriously engaged in meditation and have more than 10 thousand hours of practice. Over the past 15 years, more than 100 Buddhists, monks and lay people, as well as a large number of people who have recently begun to engage in meditation, took part in scientific experiments at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and at 19 other universities. The article you are reading is the result of a collaboration between two neuroscientists and a Buddhist monk who originally studied biology. 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 this recently, we began to understand why such methods of training the mind can provide great cognitive benefits.

BASIC PROVISIONS OF THE ARTICLE:

Meditation is found in the spiritual practices of almost all major religions. In recent years, it began to be used in secular society to calm and improve well-being.
The three main forms of meditation - concentration of attention, awareness and compassion - are now used everywhere, 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 intersect with many tasks of clinical psychology, preventive medicine and education. An increasing number of studies support the fact that meditation can be effective in treating depression, chronic pain, and to form a general sense of well-being.

The discovery of the benefits of meditation is consistent with data recently obtained by neuroscientists that the adult brain retains the ability to change significantly under the influence of experience. It has been shown that changes occur in the brain when, for example, we learn to juggle or play a musical instrument, and this is called neuroplasticity. As the violinist's mastery increases, areas of the brain that control finger movements increase. Apparently, similar processes occur during meditation. Nothing changes in the environment, but the meditator regulates his mental state, creating an internal experience that affects the work and structure of the brain. As a result of ongoing research, evidence is accumulating of the positive effects of meditation on the brain, thinking, and even the whole organism.

WHAT IS MEDITATION?

Meditation is found in the spiritual practices of almost all major religions, the media. Mentioning meditation, they use this word in different meanings. We will talk about meditation as a way of developing basic human qualities, such as stability 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 more relaxed and flexible way of life.

Meditation is a fairly simple task, and you can do it anywhere. This does not require special equipment or uniforms. To start a “training”, a person must take a comfortable posture, not very tense, but not too relaxed, and wish for changes in himself, well-being for himself and alleviation of suffering for other people. Then it is necessary to stabilize the consciousness, which is often disordered and filled with a stream of internal noise. To control consciousness, it must be freed from automatic thought associations and internal absent-mindedness.

TYPES OF MEDITATION

Meditation concentration of attention. With this type of meditation, you usually need to focus on the rhythm of your own breaths and exhalations. Even experienced meditators may lose their attention, and then it must be returned. At Emory University, as a result of a brain scan, various areas involved in the process of switching attention with this type of meditation were revealed.

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 captivate themselves. Experienced meditators have reduced activity in areas of the brain associated with anxiety, such as the islet and tonsil.

Meditation of empathy and loving kindness. With this type of meditation, a person cultivates a feeling of goodwill towards another person, regardless of whether he is a friend or an enemy. At the same time, the activity of areas associated with representing oneself in the place of another person increases, for example, activity in the temporal-parietal node increases.

Advances in neuroimaging and other technologies have enabled scientists to understand what happens in the brain with each of the three main forms of Buddhist meditation: concentration, awareness, and compassion. The diagram below allows you to see the cycle of events that occur during attention meditation, and the activation of their corresponding brain regions.

Consider what happens in the brain during the three common types of meditation that came from Buddhism and are now used outside the religious context in hospitals and schools around the world. The first type of meditation is the so-called attention concentration meditation: consciousness at the current time is limited and guided, developing the ability to not 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, which he is currently experiencing, so as not to let them get out of control and bring him to a mental disorder. With this type of meditation, a person retains attention to any OWN experiences, but does not focus on anything specific. And finally, the third type is known in Buddhist practice as compassion and mercy and promotes an altruistic attitude towards others.

UNDER SURVEILLANCE

Neuroscientists have only recently begun to study the phenomena that occur in the brain during various types of meditation. Wendy Hazenkamp (Wendu Naskenkamr) from Emory University, together with her colleagues, used tomography to identify areas of the brain in which there is an increased activity of concentration of attention during meditation. While in the tomograph, the subjects focused on sensations during breathing. Usually, attention begins to slip away, the meditator should recognize this and regain his focus on the rhythm of inspiration and exhalation.

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

Researchers have determined that there is a four-step cycle: escaping attention, a moment of awareness of distraction, reorienting attention, and resuming focused attention. At each of the four stages, different parts of the brain are involved.

At the first stagewhen distraction occurs, the activity of the areas forming the network of the passive mode of brain activity intensifies. It combines such areas as the medial prefrontal cortex, posterior cingulate cortex, anterior wedge, inferior parietal lobule, and lateral region of the temporal cortex. It is known that these structures are active at a time when we are "floating in the clouds." They play a leading role in creating and maintaining an internal model of the world based on a long-term memory of oneself and others.
In the second stagewhen distraction is realized, other parts of the brain are activated — the front part of the islet 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 may, for example, contribute to distraction during the performance of a task. 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 take the brain out of passive mode.

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

And finally, at the last, fourth stage a high level of activity remains in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which allows you to keep the meditator's attention on a given target, for example, in breathing.

In the future, we observed differences in brain activity in our laboratory in Wisconsin, depending on the experience of the subjects. Paradoxical as it may seem, people who had serious experience of meditation (more than 10 thousand hours) had less activity compared to newcomers in areas related to the restoration of attention. As people gain experience, they 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 study the effect of meditation on concentration, we studied volunteers before and after a three-month period of intensive training for 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 higher tone that arose. It turned out that people after a period of lengthy meditation had fewer differences in reaction speed from time to time compared with those who did not meditate. This means that after long trainings of consciousness, a person retains attention better and is less likely to be distracted. In people with meditation experience, electrical activity in response to high sounds was more stable.

MINDFLOW

In the secondwell studied too form of meditation another type of attention is involved. In meditation of awareness, and free perception, the meditator should notice all eyes or sounds and keep track of his sensations, as well as 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 such exercises, ordinary everyday annoying events - an aggressive colleague at work, an annoying child at home - lose their destructive effect, and a feeling of psychological well-being develops.

Awareness of unpleasant sensations helps to reduce non-adaptive emotional reactions, helps to overcome unpleasant sensations and can be especially useful for dealing with pain. In our laboratory in Wisconsin, we studied people with extensive experience in meditation, while they were engaged in a complex form of mindfulness meditation called open presence. With this kind of meditation, which is also sometimes called pure perception, consciousness is calm and relaxed, focused on nothing, but at the same time, living clarity of mind remains without excitement or inhibition. The meditator observes, not trying to interpret, change, get rid of or ignore painful sensations. We found that during meditation, the intensity of pain does not decrease, but this worries the meditator less than people from the control group.

Compared with newcomers, people with extensive experience in meditation experienced less activity in areas of the brain associated with anxiety in the period before pain exposure. - islet and tonsil. With repeated pain in the brain of experienced meditators in areas associated with pain, more rapid addiction was observed than in beginners. In other tests conducted in our laboratory, it was shown that consciousness training increases the ability to control and mitigate basic physiological reactions, for example, inflammation or the release of hormones in social stressful situations, such as public speaking or oral counting in the face of a strict commission.

Several studies have shown that mindfulness meditation has a beneficial effect on symptoms of anxiety or depression, and also improves sleep. Having the opportunity to consciously observe and track their thoughts and emotions, patients with depression can use meditation in anxious situations to control spontaneously arising and obsessive negative thoughts and feelings.

Clinical psychologists John Teasdale, who worked at Cambridge University, and Zindel Segal from 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 combined with cognitive psychotherapy, the risk of relapse during the year is reduced by about 40%. Segal later showed that meditation works better than placebo and is comparable in effectiveness to standard antidepressant therapy.

COMPASSION AND MERCY.

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

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

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

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

This form of meditation, aimed at love and empathy, is more than just a spiritual exercise. It is shown that it helps to maintain the health of social workers, teachers and other people at risk of burnout due to the experiences they experience, deeply sympathizing with other people's problems.

Meditation begins with the person focusing on unconditional goodwill and love for others and silently repeating 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 engaged in this type of meditation for thousands of hours. We let them listen to the voices of the sufferers and found in them increased activity in certain areas of the brain. It is known that secondary somatosensory cortex and islet are involved in empathy and other emotional reactions. When listening to the suffering voices of experienced meditators, these structures became more active in comparison with the control group. This means that they better share other people's feelings, without experiencing emotional overload. Experienced meditators also showed increased activity in the temporoparietal node, medial prefrontal cortex, and anterior temporal sulcus. All these structures are usually activated when we mentally put ourselves in the place of another person.

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

In accordance with the Buddhist traditions of contemplation, from which this practice began, compassion should not cause fatigue and despondency, it strengthens internal balance, strength of mind and gives determination to help those who suffer. When the child goes to the hospital, the mother will do more good if she holds his hand and calm him with gentle words than if, overloaded with empathy and anxiety, not having endured the sight of a sick child, she will rush back and forth along the corridor. In the latter case, the case may end in burnout, from which, according to studies conducted in the USA, approximately 60% of the 600 people surveyed who looked after the patients suffered.

To further study the mechanisms of empathy and compassion, Klimecki and Singer divided about 60 volunteers into two groups. Among the participants in the first group, meditation was associated with love and compassion; in another group, a sense of empathy for others was developed. As preliminary results showed, a week of meditation based on loving kindness and compassion led participants, although not having previous experience, to experience more benevolent feelings when watching videos with suffering people. Participants from another group who only practiced empathy for a week experienced the same emotions as the suffering people in the video. These emotions evoked negative feelings and thoughts, and participants in this group were very stressed.

Having identified such devastating consequences, Singer and Klimecki conducted compassion meditation exercises with the second group. It turned out that additional classes reduced the negative consequences of empathy training: the number of negative emotions decreased, and benevolent ones increased. This was accompanied by corresponding changes in areas of the brain associated with empathy, positive emotions and maternal love, including in the orbitofrontal cortex, ventral striatum and anterior cingular cortex. In addition, the researchers showed that compassion training over the course of the week reinforced prosocial behavior in a computer game specifically designed to measure a desire to help others.

Meditation not only causes changes in certain cognitive and emotional processes, but also helps to increase some parts of the brain. The study showed that people with extensive meditation experience increased the amount of gray matter in the islet lobe and in the prefrontal cortex.

DOORS OF CONSCIOUSNESS

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

It turned out that experienced Buddhists could arbitrarily maintain a state characterized by a certain rhythm of the electrical activity of the brain, namely high-amplitude gamma oscillations with a frequency of 25-42 Hz. Such coordination of the electrical activity of the brain can be of great importance for creating temporary nerve networks that combine cognitive and emotional functions in the process of 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 they were, the greater was the experience of the meditator. First of all, such features of the EEG were expressed in the lateral region of the frontoparietal part of the cortex. They may reflect in people an increase in environmental awareness and internal thought processes, however, additional research is required to understand the role of gamma rhythm.

Brain is Growing

Researchers from several universities have studied the ability of meditation to cause structural changes in brain tissue. Using 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 Broadman) and in the islet lobe is larger compared to the brains of people from the control group (graphs). These areas are involved in processing information related to attention, inner sensations and sensory signals. To confirm the data, further long-term studies are required.

Meditation not only causes changes in certain cognitive and emotional processes, but also helps to increase some parts of the brain. Presumably this is due to 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 the amount of gray matter in the islet lobe and in the prefrontal cortex, and more specifically in Broadman fields 9 and 10, which are often activated with various forms of meditation. Such differences were most pronounced in older study participants. It has been suggested that meditation can slow the rate of thinning of brain tissue that occurs with age.

In further work, Lazar and colleagues showed that for those subjects who, as a result of practicing mindfulness meditation, had the greatest reduction in stress response, the volume of the amygdala, the area of \u200b\u200bthe brain involved in the formation of fear, also decreased. Later, Eileen Luders from the University of California at Los Angeles, together with her colleagues, discovered that meditators differ in the number of axons - fibers connecting different parts of the brain. This is thought to be associated with an increase in the number of compounds in the brain. This observation supports the suggestion that meditation does indeed cause structural changes in the brain. An important drawback of these works is the lack of long-term studies in which people would be observed for 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 such evidence that meditation and the ability to improve one’s own state with it 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, \u200b\u200bfor an experienced meditator, one day of intensive mindfulness meditation is enough 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 effects of meditation on a molecule involved in the regulation of cell lifespan. This molecule is a telomerase enzyme that extends DNA at the ends of chromosomes. The ends of chromosomes, called telomeres, ensure 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 with the control group, meditators more effectively reduced psychological stress and higher telomerase activity was observed. Sometimes mindfulness meditation can slow down cellular aging.

THE WAY TO WELL-BEING

Over 15 years of research, it was possible to show that long meditation classes not only significantly change the structure and function of the brain, but also significantly affect biological processes critical to physical health.

Further studies are required using clear, randomized controlled trials to separate the effects of meditation from those associated with other psychological factors that may also influence the results of the studies. This, for example, is the level of motivation of meditators and the roles that teachers and students play in the group of meditators. Further studies are necessary to determine the possible negative side effect of meditation, the desired duration of classes and how to adapt them to the needs of a particular person.

But taking all the precautions into account, it is obvious that as a result of research on meditation, we have gained a new understanding of psychological preparation methods that can potentially 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 that are not tied to any philosophy or religion. This can deeply and beneficially affect all aspects of human society.

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

Antoine Lutz (Antoine Lutz) - Researcher at the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research, a member of the University of Wisconsin Madison. He headed the neurobiological studies of 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.