Meditation is good for the brain

It is already known that techniques such as yoga or taichi help the physical well-being of the body, but do they influence the brain? Studies are lacking, but those that exist suggest that these practices improve their plasticity and positively affect their functions.

We are often not aware of the pleasure of sitting without doing anything, letting the mind wander in the here and now, either on the beach, letting ourselves be carried away by the sound of the waves; in the bush, next to a stream, or simply at home. Not only is it a relaxing experience, which helps us balance our thoughts after a day's work and meet again; If we also pay attention to our thoughts, to some external object or to our consciousness, we will be meditating. Etymologically, meditation comes from the Latin meditatio, which defined a type of intellectual exercise . We use it to describe the practice of a state of concentrated attention, whether about an external object, our thinking, or simply about the state of concentration itself.

Since the 1960s, and especially since the 1968 Beatles went to India to attend a transcendental meditation course at the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi ashram, the founding guru of the Transcendental Meditation movement, many traditional oriental concentration and relaxation techniques They have won fans in the West, such as yoga, tai-chi…. Various benefits are attributed to them, but scientific evidence has always been very scarce, beyond the simple effect of relaxation produced by silence and tranquility . However, since 2009, an increasing number of experimental works have examined the effects of meditation on function, connectivity and even morphology in different areas of the brain.

It has been seen, for example, that it favors emotional control, both at a functional and structural level of the brain. By this we do not mean that all the benefits that at some time have been attributed to these meditation techniques are scientifically true (especially those with sometimes almost miraculous or supernatural dyes), nor the pseudoscientific explanations about the reason for these benefits -Like the existence of mystical energies that can only be perceived by a few initiated with some kind of special gift. However, there is currently little doubt about its influence on certain aspects of our behavior, through brain functions. The concept revolves around the idea that meditating with the brain is a benefit to the brain itself.

Taichi: brain plasticity, sensory and motor attention
This is one of the most recent works. In early 2014, Xi-Nian Zuo, director of the functional connectivity laboratory at the University of Beijing and a member of the Chinese Academy of Science, and his team of collaborators, wondered to what extent the practice of taichi modifies the functional organization of the brain. Conectomics, by the way, is the scientific discipline that studies how neural connections are established and maintained.

The taichi, more properly taichichuan - an expression that can be translated as "ultimate supreme fist" - is an internal martial art of Chinese origin for hand-to-hand fighting, although currently it is mostly used as a moving meditation technique . It is based on the realization of a series of slow chained movements, during which leisurely breathing and balance in movements are kept under conscious control, which allows for relaxation and self-awareness . Historical data on its origin are very contradictory, and although the oldest documents are dated in the fifteenth century, some say it could be earlier. The first scientific studies on the supposed beneficial effects of their practice began in the nineties, and indicated that it improves blood pressure in people with hypertension, favors cardiac rehabilitation in those who have suffered a heart attack and decreases the symptoms of depression. Effects that, however and without undermining their importance, can be explained by the simple psychological benefits of relaxation. In this work that we comment more extensively, the neural activity of taichi practitioners was monitored with a non-invasive functional magnetic resonance system, which allows the functional architecture of the brain to be examined with a high spatial resolution.

A group of volunteers between 50 and 55 years of age were examined, which had the same cultural, educational and general health characteristics. Half were taichi practitioners, and the rest had never practiced it nor did they use any other specific relaxation technique or balance training. When comparing the neural activity of both groups, it was observed that taichi practitioners presented more functional homogeneity in a region of the brain called the right poscentral gyrus, which correlates with a superior integration of the Sensory and motor areas, and conversely a lower functional homogeneity in another area called anterior cingulate cortex, which correlates with the functional optimization of the attention control areas .

In other words, and according to the authors of this paper, the regular practice of taichi seems to act on the plasticity of the brain so that it can improve the ability to maintain attention and promotes integration. Sensory and motor, optimizing the functioning of certain areas of the brain. However, the same researchers do not rule out that these brain differences may be prior to the practice of taichi, so that they are the reason, or one of the reasons, that lead certain people to want to practice this martial art, and not A consequence of practicing it. To elucidate this point it would be necessary to repeat the study with new volunteers, to examine their brain before they began to practice taichi and compare the results with new scans performed a few years later. A search in the scientific literature offers us more than 200 clinical experiments also called clinical trials about utility of taichi in aspects as diverse as loss of balance in old age, cholesterol, arthritis, withdrawal syndrome, hypertension, hyperglycemia, depression, fibromyalgia, post-menopausal osteopenia, cognitive problems, respiratory pathology, low back pain, craniocerebral trauma, strokes, cardiovascular disease, insomnia, lack of immune response, or Parkinson's disease. In most cases these are non-randomized studies or without a good comparison group, which makes their results not entirely generalizable.

Yoga and meditation transcendental
Also in 2014, a group of scientists from the Siberian section of the Russian Academy of Sciences analyzed whether the practice of yoga can permanently affect emotional function. Yoga is a physical and mental discipline that has traditionally been associated with meditation practices in various Eastern religions, such as Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism . Etymologically, the word yoga comes from the Sanskrit ioga, which in turn comes from the verb iush, which means “place the yoke (two oxen, to unite them), concentrate the mind, absorb in meditation, remember, unite, connect and grant” . It is the same root of the Castilian terms yugo and cony ugal . Its historical origin is uncertain. According to Hindu mythology, it is eternal and always existed. Historically speaking, in 1931 the British archaeologist Sir John Marshall discovered in the ruins of Mohenjo-Daro (Pakistan) a stamp with figures from the 17th century BC in which an alleged anthropomorphic creature with horns is seen in a sitting position with his legs crossed that Remember a typical yoga posture, which could indicate that this physical and mental discipline is more than 35 five centuries old.

Be that as it may, it has long been known that yoga can be a good anti-stress therapy and is useful as an adjunct in certain psychosomatic diseases, which means that it helps to overcome them without being the direct and sole cause of their healing. In this work, the brain activity of yoga practitioners was monitored and compared with that of people outside this technique, which allowed us to observe if there were permanent changes in emotional function. In addition, in the long term it also seems to increase conscious control, through the activity of the so-called frontal and prefrontal cortex on the automatic responses of the tonsil, which is the area of ​​the brain responsible for emotional responses.

These are only two scientific works, but there is more. Some have suggested that meditation also increases attention span and cognitive flexibility, that is, the ability to change thinking about two different concepts and to think of multiple concepts at once. Thus, expert meditators are less affected by stimuli that have negative emotional charges than those who do not practice any type of meditation.

Differences in emotional control mechanisms have also been found between expert meditators and beginners. While in the former the meditation acts on the so-called middle and posterior cingulate cortex, in the beginners it does so on the tonsil. The difference can be important, since the cingulate cortex is involved in the anticipation of rewards, decision making, empathy and emotional control, while the amygdala is the area of ​​the brain where emotions are generated preconsciously. According to the authors of this work, this difference implies that experts achieve emotional stability through the acceptance of their emotional state, while beginners directly repress negative emotional states. Modern clinical psychology incorporates some aspects of meditation and yoga in its so-called "third generation therapies", more specifically in therapy known as mindfulness . Again, although there is some agreement among experts about the usefulness of this technique in controlling anxiety and in mild-moderate depression, well-designed studies are lacking to reach conclusions about its usefulness in most mental disorders.

In a study by researchers at Harvard University in which the brains of 20 people who practiced Buddhist meditation were examined and compared with other individuals, it was seen that those who did it regularly had a greater volume of brain tissue in certain areas of the aforementioned prefrontal cortex and in the insula, a structure related to empathy. In that line, meditation does not only seem to act at the level of emotional control, that is, on functional aspects of the brain, but also anatomical, as in the insula just mentioned. Thus, for example, it has been shown that meditation also increases the amount of white matter in the brain in some of the main neural pathways that connect associative and receptive areas with motor and premotor, and those that connect the hippocampus and the amygdala.

In the same direction, a few months ago a work carried out by scientists from the universities of Oregon, Texas and California allowed to discover a molecular mechanism that would explain this increase in white matter in expert meditators. Meditation would increase the rhythm of the so-called zeta waves of the brain, which are normally associated with the early stages of sleep and reflect positive emotional states and attention to one's own thoughts and body, which would activate the function of a brain enzyme called Calpain involved in memory and learning. This enzyme also acts on neural plasticity - in turn linked to memory and learning - and also activates the so-called glia cells, which play a supportive role for neurons. Together, all this would favor an increase in neuronal connectivity.

The effects of meditation
According to researchers from the University of California, expert meditators show greater activity of the enzyme telomerase, responsible for maintaining the ends of chromosomes - the so-called telomeres -, which results in a delay in cell aging. On the contrary, it has been seen that chronic stress reduces the activity of this enzyme.

Meditation and stress
Today we know that the brain is critical for the regulation of stress, and that it can modify its functioning and structure. While the brain is able to determine what kind of stimuli must produce a stress response in the body, it becomes the key organ for a stress response to be adaptive or maladaptive for the person. How does the brain respond to stress? Today we know that in the face of a situation of chronic stress, it experiences functional and structural changes in different regions that can be reversible over time. Two of these regions are the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus. Since these are regions that are key to different cognitive processes (decision making, attention, learning and memory, emotion regulation), the effects of stress on cognition and emotion are not surprising.

Could meditation help us minimize the effects that stress has on brain function? Various studies published in 2010 and 2011 by different work teams have found, for example, that meditation alters blood flow in some areas of the brain related to stress response, and that The prefrontal cortex is much more active during the practice of meditation than during the execution of cognitive tasks that induce a high state of concentration. An increase in blood flow has also been detected in regions belonging to attentional neural networks and emotion regulation, although it remains to be revealed if this is linked to an improvement of learning and memory .

And not only functional changes have been detected but also structural ones related to meditation and its positive influence on stress. For example, it has been seen that in people who have been meditating for years the thickness of the prefrontal cortex of their brain is greater; that after an intensive course of meditation for 11 hours, the thickness of the white matter increases in the anterior frontal and cingulate cortices, and that in people who have participated for eight weeks in a meditation program also increases the gray matter of the left hippocampus and other brain regions.

What do we mean by all this? Bearing in mind what are the brain structures target of the effects of stress (precisely the prefrontal cortex and hippocampus), and taking into account that these regions are of cardinal importance for different cognitive processes and for regulation of emotion, we might think that the functional and structural changes found after meditation in these regions could help minimize the effects that stress can exert on the nervous system and, therefore, about our cognitive and emotional abilities.

Genes and meditation
Finally, it has also been seen that meditation does not only affect the functioning of the brain and some aspects of its anatomy, but also the functioning of some genes. Last year, for example, it was shown that regular practice of meditation favors the expression of certain genes related to anti-inflammatory activities and physical recovery and emotional in situations of stress, that is, with the resilience, genes called RIPK2 and COX2. Specifically, it seems that the meditation alters the function of an enzyme involved in epigenetic modifications, which contribute to regulate the function of certain genes without altering the message they contain, and in this case will affect the functionality of the two mentioned genes. In short, taken together as a whole, all these results also contribute to explaining some of the beneficial effects of these practices on human health.

Corollary: the relative ease of meditating without superstitions
Although the number of scientific papers on the various forms of meditation is not yet extensive, the truth is that they all seem to confirm the usefulness of these practices to enhance certain functional aspects of the brain, such as emotional control, attention span, cognitive flexibility, learning and memory. For some people, meditating may seem difficult to do, which explains that these practices have often been associated with religions and pseudoreligions, with mystical scientific explanations that, generally, all they do is extol the role of the guru / coach.

Perhaps you meditate regularly without being fully aware of it (beautiful paradox, by the way). Meditation is something as simple as taking time to not think about anything consciously or to focus awareness on one's thoughts, on the same fact of meditation, on some external object or on the rhythm of breathing, always here and now, breathing slowly, in an atmosphere of relaxation away from stress. Without detracting from the ancient techniques of meditation and their corresponding experts, it is not ruled out that their neighbor who sits on the portal to see without watching the passing of people and cars, is meditating without knowing it. Don't tell him: he would break the charm.

Cervell de Sis: David Bueno, Doctor of Biology; Enric Bufill, neurologist; Francesc Colom, doctor of Psychology; Diego Redolar, doctor in Neurosciences; Xaro Sánchez, doctor of Psychiatry, and Eduard Vieta, doctor of psychiatry

Meditation is good for the brain