Meditation Produces Positive Changes in the Brain

A UW-Madison research team has found, for the first time, that a short program "mindfulness meditation" produced lasting positive changes in both the fruit of the brain and immune system function. These findings suggest that meditation is a technique that has long been introduced to reduce anxiety and stress, can produce important biological effects that improve a person's resiliency.Richard Davidson, Vilas Professor of psychology and psychiatry at UW-Madison, led the research team. The research was conducted at the biotechnology company Promega near Madison, will be the next topic in the journal Psychosomatic Medicine.

"Meditation is awareness," is often recommended as an antidote to the stress and pain in chronic disease, is an exercise designed to focus one's attention, not to think and feel nothing as they occur but refraining from judging or acting on those thoughts and feelings. The aim is to deepen awareness of the present, develop skills of focused attention, and cultivate positive emotions such as compassion.In the UW study, participants were randomly assigned to one of two groups. Experimental group, with 25 subjects, received training from a mindfulness meditation's most famous follower, Jon Kabat-Zinn (Kabat-Zinn, an author of books on stress reduction, increase awareness based stress reduction program at the University of Massachusetts Medical Center). This group attended a weekly class and a retreat for seven hours during the workshop, they are also required to exercise at home every day one hour, six days a week. 16 members of the control group did not receive meditation training until completion.For each group, in addition to asking participants to assess how they felt, the research team measured electrical activity in the front of the brain, an area specialized for different kinds of emotions. Previous studies have shown that people who are generally positive, optimistic and always positive emotion, the left side of this frontal area becomes more active than the right.The findings confirmed the hypothesis: the meditation group showed increased activation in the left side of the front area. This suggests that the meditation itself produced more activity in the brain of this section. This activity is associated with lower anxiety and more positive emotional state.The research team also tested whether the meditation group had better immune function than the watchdog group. All participants got a flu vaccination in the last session of eight weeks of meditation. Then, at four and eight weeks after vaccine administration, both groups measured blood levels of antibodies produced to fight the flu vaccine. While both groups (as expected) had developed increased antibodies, the meditation group improved more than the watchdog group, at four and eight weeks after receiving the vaccine."Although our study is the beginning and more research will certainly clarify," said Davidson, "we are very encouraged by these results. Promega employees who took part have given a great opportunity for us to demonstrate a real biological impact of classical training this. "Davidson, who is involved in the Health Emotions Research Institute at UW, plans further research on the impact of meditation. He is currently studying a group of people who have been using meditation for more than 30 years. His research team also plans to study the impact of mindfulness meditation on patients with certain diseases.(Sources: Articles Lisa Brunette, www.news.wisc.edu) *