Science and meditation
Welcome to the iCover Blog Pages . Today we would like to touch on the phenomenon of meditation, which has long been of interest to the advanced scientific elite. What processes occur in the brain at this time? What might be the consequences of meditative practices for a person prone to mental disorders? Who is not recommended, and who benefits from meditation? To get one of the most likely versions of the answer to these, and some other questions, to form your own idea of them, the opinion of scientists from all over the world will help us.
The number of supporters of meditation practices is increasing every year. Tens of thousands who want to hide from the all-pervasive eye, NTP goes to specialized schools at home or abroad in order to change themselves, their attitude to the world and replenish their arsenal of opportunities under the guidance of a famous or local guru. Some, after a certain time, do discover a new potential that has not been revealed before. But it happens differently. It is enough to recall the incident that occurred in the city of Pune in 1979. After completing a thirty-day meditation course in Kathmandu at the local master, a man jumped out of the hotel window upon his return. Note that the day before he gave a detailed interview to the correspondent of Humanist magazine and, according to the journalist, was absolutely adequate,
There are enough examples that set up a positive attitude to meditative practices, as well as the cases described above. And in order to find the answer to what has arisen: “why?”, Let’s try to figure out what happens in the brain when we meditate.
The history of all kinds of meditative practices that has come down to us dates back almost 3,000 years. Initially, the ultimate goal of meditation was and remains not to achieve a state of deep relaxation and relieve nervous tension, as many today incorrectly understand, but to completely clear the mind of the obstacles that impede the achievement of a state of inner enlightenment, as classical Buddhism interprets. What does purification of the brain imply according to the ideas of modern neurophysiology?
Studies conducted by specialists from the USA and Tibet among people practicing contemplative meditation for a long time showed that neural activity in the centers responsible for experiencing the internal sensation of happiness grew during training by 700-800%. For beginners, the increase in activity of processes was only 10-15%. The book, “Buddha, the brain and the neurophysiology of happiness”, issued by scientists on the basis of the research, states that the first group included subjects who gave meditation practice from 10 to 15 thousand hours, which corresponds to the time spent on improving their skills by Olympic athletes. At the same time, albeit to an insignificant degree, but a similar effect was observed among beginners who had been practicing for several months.
Almost parallel, a group of neurophysiologists from the University of Oslo (Norway) found that in the process of “non-directive” meditation, which allows you to concentrate on breathing while thoughts wander, the activity of the brain zones responsible for the formation of thoughts and feelings associated with the identification of a person’s “I” increased. “These brain regions (“ I ”centers) show maximum activity when we rest,” says Svenn Davanger, a specialist at the University of Oslo. The network of such centers can be compared with a basic operating system that performs interconnected operations and comes to the fore at a time when external sources of problems do not attract attention. Curiously, non-directive meditation activates this connected system more than just deep relaxation. ”
A group of scientists from Harvard University in the course of research came to the conclusion that in the process of meditation the amount of information processed by the brain is significantly reduced. The beta rhythm (EEG rhythm lying in the range from 14 to 30 Hz at a voltage of 5-30 μV) fades, which allows the brain to actively recover.
The results of magnetic resonance scanning of a group of people who regularly practice meditation for 8 weeks showed that at about the 45th minute of practice, the brain activity of most parts of the brain almost completely stopped. The parietal sections of the cortex, which are responsible for processing sensory information and orienting in space and time, have calmed down, the frontal lobes responsible for decision-making and planning have been turned off, the activity of the thalamus, which redistributes the sensory information, has been minimized, and the signals of the reticular formation responsible for the reaction rate of the brain have faded. In total, the effect achieved allowed the practitioner's brain to concentrate on processing data related to the personal I, pushing the information of the outside world into the background.
According to the Dalai Lama, meditation is a force that must be handled with care. “Westerners go to deep meditation too quickly: they need to learn about eastern traditions and exercise more than they usually do. Otherwise, mental and physical difficulties arise. ”
With the opinion of the supreme spiritual leader of Tibet, neurophysiologists are completely in agreement, confirming that meditative practices can have a deplorable effect on the state of mental health, especially when a person is exposed to any psychological disorders.
Dr. Solomon Snyder, head of the Department of Neurophysiology at Johns Hopkins University, explains: in the process of meditation, additional serotonin is produced in the brain, one of the key neurotransmitters that correct the activity of many body systems. And, if with mild depression it is rather a plus, then with excess emissions in a state of relaxation this can plunge the practitioner into a state, the so-called “Paradoxical anxiety”, which results in a state of deep sadness and panic attacks, and in people with schizophrenia, in some cases, and psychosis.
In the course of the research, Dr. Andrew Newberg of the University of Pennsylvania was able to find out that meditative practice reduces the blood flow in the back of the upper dark gyrus, which is responsible for body boundaries and deep sensitivity. This, he believes, becomes the explanation of the feeling of “unity with the world” that practitioners experience at a certain level of cultivation. “If you block the work of this gyrus,” says Newberg, “you will lose the feeling of the border beyond which your Self ends and the world begins.”
“Meditation is clearly not useful for all patients with emotional disorders,” says Professor Richard Davidson of Wisconsin. “In some categories of people, it can provoke extremely undesirable and even dangerous reactions.” The professor is sure that meditation practices “... can change the state of neural tissue in the areas of the brain responsible for the ability to empathy, for attention and characteristic emotional reactions.” This, in turn, can adversely affect relationships with people around you and lead to the development of feelings of loss and loneliness that can undermine the mood of even a mentally balanced person.
Former Buddhist monk Kristof Tithmuss annually attending Vippasana in one of the schools in India warns that the experience experienced during attending such courses can be very, very traumatic, which may subsequently require around-the-clock correction of the psychological state, taking medication courses, and in some cases - hospitalization.
“In some cases, practitioners experience a short-term state of horror at the loss of their ability to control the brain, and fear losing their minds,” he adds. “Being far from the usual everyday reality, consciousness is difficult to recover, so such a person usually needs outside help.” However, Titmuss notes that meditation does not cause such effects on its own. “The function of the meditation process, as the Buddha pointed out, is to become a mirror that reflects our inner core,” says the former monk.
Note that the meditation techniques used in eastern religious practices, subject to expert supervision, turn out to be an effective means of psychological correction and psycho-training. Meditative practices in this case are used as part of the methods of alternative and complementary Western medicine.
According to experts, meditation is not recommended, and in some cases dangerous, for people suffering from bouts of schizophrenia and depression, prone to bipolar affective disorders and other persistent mental disorders. Experiments with meditative practices in these cases can provoke exacerbations, psychosis and suicide attempts, as in the case described at the beginning of our article.
In Western schools of spiritual practice, in order to filter out students who have a clear predisposition to mental disorders or who are unaware that such cases have occurred in their family history, they are asked to fill out a questionnaire before entering. And this is quite understandable and justified, because meditation is a way of actively training the psyche, like running is a way of training the legs and heart. If the joints and the heart muscle are intermittent, it may be wise to replace the run with some more gentle form of training or reduce the load.
Dear readers, we are always happy to meet and wait for you on the iCover blog pages! We are ready to continue to please you with our publications and will try to do everything possible to ensure that the time spent with us is pleasing to you. And, of course, do not forget to subscribe to our sections and we promise - you won’t be bored!
Our other articles
The number of supporters of meditation practices is increasing every year. Tens of thousands who want to hide from the all-pervasive eye, NTP goes to specialized schools at home or abroad in order to change themselves, their attitude to the world and replenish their arsenal of opportunities under the guidance of a famous or local guru. Some, after a certain time, do discover a new potential that has not been revealed before. But it happens differently. It is enough to recall the incident that occurred in the city of Pune in 1979. After completing a thirty-day meditation course in Kathmandu at the local master, a man jumped out of the hotel window upon his return. Note that the day before he gave a detailed interview to the correspondent of Humanist magazine and, according to the journalist, was absolutely adequate,
There are enough examples that set up a positive attitude to meditative practices, as well as the cases described above. And in order to find the answer to what has arisen: “why?”, Let’s try to figure out what happens in the brain when we meditate.
Where I am"?
The history of all kinds of meditative practices that has come down to us dates back almost 3,000 years. Initially, the ultimate goal of meditation was and remains not to achieve a state of deep relaxation and relieve nervous tension, as many today incorrectly understand, but to completely clear the mind of the obstacles that impede the achievement of a state of inner enlightenment, as classical Buddhism interprets. What does purification of the brain imply according to the ideas of modern neurophysiology?
Studies conducted by specialists from the USA and Tibet among people practicing contemplative meditation for a long time showed that neural activity in the centers responsible for experiencing the internal sensation of happiness grew during training by 700-800%. For beginners, the increase in activity of processes was only 10-15%. The book, “Buddha, the brain and the neurophysiology of happiness”, issued by scientists on the basis of the research, states that the first group included subjects who gave meditation practice from 10 to 15 thousand hours, which corresponds to the time spent on improving their skills by Olympic athletes. At the same time, albeit to an insignificant degree, but a similar effect was observed among beginners who had been practicing for several months.
Almost parallel, a group of neurophysiologists from the University of Oslo (Norway) found that in the process of “non-directive” meditation, which allows you to concentrate on breathing while thoughts wander, the activity of the brain zones responsible for the formation of thoughts and feelings associated with the identification of a person’s “I” increased. “These brain regions (“ I ”centers) show maximum activity when we rest,” says Svenn Davanger, a specialist at the University of Oslo. The network of such centers can be compared with a basic operating system that performs interconnected operations and comes to the fore at a time when external sources of problems do not attract attention. Curiously, non-directive meditation activates this connected system more than just deep relaxation. ”
A group of scientists from Harvard University in the course of research came to the conclusion that in the process of meditation the amount of information processed by the brain is significantly reduced. The beta rhythm (EEG rhythm lying in the range from 14 to 30 Hz at a voltage of 5-30 μV) fades, which allows the brain to actively recover.
The results of magnetic resonance scanning of a group of people who regularly practice meditation for 8 weeks showed that at about the 45th minute of practice, the brain activity of most parts of the brain almost completely stopped. The parietal sections of the cortex, which are responsible for processing sensory information and orienting in space and time, have calmed down, the frontal lobes responsible for decision-making and planning have been turned off, the activity of the thalamus, which redistributes the sensory information, has been minimized, and the signals of the reticular formation responsible for the reaction rate of the brain have faded. In total, the effect achieved allowed the practitioner's brain to concentrate on processing data related to the personal I, pushing the information of the outside world into the background.
Serotonin Erasing Borders
According to the Dalai Lama, meditation is a force that must be handled with care. “Westerners go to deep meditation too quickly: they need to learn about eastern traditions and exercise more than they usually do. Otherwise, mental and physical difficulties arise. ”
With the opinion of the supreme spiritual leader of Tibet, neurophysiologists are completely in agreement, confirming that meditative practices can have a deplorable effect on the state of mental health, especially when a person is exposed to any psychological disorders.
Dr. Solomon Snyder, head of the Department of Neurophysiology at Johns Hopkins University, explains: in the process of meditation, additional serotonin is produced in the brain, one of the key neurotransmitters that correct the activity of many body systems. And, if with mild depression it is rather a plus, then with excess emissions in a state of relaxation this can plunge the practitioner into a state, the so-called “Paradoxical anxiety”, which results in a state of deep sadness and panic attacks, and in people with schizophrenia, in some cases, and psychosis.
In the course of the research, Dr. Andrew Newberg of the University of Pennsylvania was able to find out that meditative practice reduces the blood flow in the back of the upper dark gyrus, which is responsible for body boundaries and deep sensitivity. This, he believes, becomes the explanation of the feeling of “unity with the world” that practitioners experience at a certain level of cultivation. “If you block the work of this gyrus,” says Newberg, “you will lose the feeling of the border beyond which your Self ends and the world begins.”
“Meditation is clearly not useful for all patients with emotional disorders,” says Professor Richard Davidson of Wisconsin. “In some categories of people, it can provoke extremely undesirable and even dangerous reactions.” The professor is sure that meditation practices “... can change the state of neural tissue in the areas of the brain responsible for the ability to empathy, for attention and characteristic emotional reactions.” This, in turn, can adversely affect relationships with people around you and lead to the development of feelings of loss and loneliness that can undermine the mood of even a mentally balanced person.
Former Buddhist monk Kristof Tithmuss annually attending Vippasana in one of the schools in India warns that the experience experienced during attending such courses can be very, very traumatic, which may subsequently require around-the-clock correction of the psychological state, taking medication courses, and in some cases - hospitalization.
“In some cases, practitioners experience a short-term state of horror at the loss of their ability to control the brain, and fear losing their minds,” he adds. “Being far from the usual everyday reality, consciousness is difficult to recover, so such a person usually needs outside help.” However, Titmuss notes that meditation does not cause such effects on its own. “The function of the meditation process, as the Buddha pointed out, is to become a mirror that reflects our inner core,” says the former monk.
Note that the meditation techniques used in eastern religious practices, subject to expert supervision, turn out to be an effective means of psychological correction and psycho-training. Meditative practices in this case are used as part of the methods of alternative and complementary Western medicine.
To whom, according to neurophysiologists, meditation is contraindicated?
According to experts, meditation is not recommended, and in some cases dangerous, for people suffering from bouts of schizophrenia and depression, prone to bipolar affective disorders and other persistent mental disorders. Experiments with meditative practices in these cases can provoke exacerbations, psychosis and suicide attempts, as in the case described at the beginning of our article.
In Western schools of spiritual practice, in order to filter out students who have a clear predisposition to mental disorders or who are unaware that such cases have occurred in their family history, they are asked to fill out a questionnaire before entering. And this is quite understandable and justified, because meditation is a way of actively training the psyche, like running is a way of training the legs and heart. If the joints and the heart muscle are intermittent, it may be wise to replace the run with some more gentle form of training or reduce the load.
Dear readers, we are always happy to meet and wait for you on the iCover blog pages! We are ready to continue to please you with our publications and will try to do everything possible to ensure that the time spent with us is pleasing to you. And, of course, do not forget to subscribe to our sections and we promise - you won’t be bored!
Our other articles