Test subjects taking part in an 8-week program of
mindfulness meditation showed results that astonished even the most experienced
neuroscientists at Harvard University.
The study was led by a Harvard-affiliated team of researchers based at
Massachusetts General Hospital, and the team's MRI
scans documented for the very first time in medical history how meditation
produced massive changes inside the brain's gray matter. "Although the
practice of meditation is associated with a sense of peacefulness and physical
relaxation, practitioners have long claimed that meditation also provides
cognitive and psychological benefits that persist throughout the day,"
says study senior author Sara Lazar of the MGH Psychiatric Neuroimaging
Research Program and a Harvard Medical School instructor in psychology. "This
study demonstrates that changes in brain structure may underlie some of these
reported improvements and that people are not just feeling better because they
are spending time relaxing." Read more.
