Workshop Insights
How meditation changes your brain
13/03/2024

How meditation changes your brain

The following article stems from a recent workshop and may differ in style and depth from our usual content on Facts&Reasons. While we strive for accuracy and clarity, this piece has not undergone our standard review process.

When was the last time you felt overwhelmed with your everyday life? In a world that never stops, you may find it difficult to dedicate time to self-care. It is well known that meditation can reduce stress, but what you might not know is that meditation can actually change your brain!

Meditation dates back to more than 2,500 years ago and is a practice that is becoming more and more common nowadays [1]. Different types of meditation have emerged worldwide, which have traditionally been used for curative or religious purposes [1]. Examples include shikantaza, which is a sitting meditation originating in Japan or shamanistic healing rituals stemming from North Eurasia [1, 2]. In recent years, meditation has become popular in Europe and North America as a way to improve mental health and well-being [1]. Meditation exercises the ability to acquire awareness of our body, feelings, and emotions [1]. Typical practices include focusing the attention on a single repeated sound, on an image, movement, or experience, as well as noticing thoughts and worries, as if they were clouds passing through the sky, without holding on to them [1].

Over the past decades, researchers have started to study the effects of meditation on the brain. Several studies have observed that different meditation practices can reduce symptoms of depression and anxiety [3] and have the potential to improve attention [4], memory [5, 6]  and sleep quality [7, 8]. But what about stress? Practising meditation improves people’s way to deal with stress in their everyday life [1, 9, 10]. Interestingly, researchers analysed brain scans of long-term meditators and non-meditators and observed an increased thickness of the anterior area of the brain suggesting that meditation can strengthen the brain regions related to emotional regulation [11].

Meditation can reduce stress in our body by influencing the stimulation of the Hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis [12, 13]. This axis is a complex system of interacting organs and glands including the hypothalamus (the regulator of body temperature, hunger, sleep, hormones, etc.) [14, 15], the pituitary gland located under the hypothalamus [16], and the adrenal glands located on the kidneys [17]. In the case of a stressful event, the hypothalamus produces stress-related hormones to activate the glands. This finally results in the production of cortisol, the primary stress hormone in humans [13].

Researchers in Switzerland compared 29 individuals who have been practising Buddhist meditation for at least 3 years (with a frequency of at least 3 hours per week) with 26 individuals who do not meditate. The individuals had to prepare a task in 10 minutes and then present it in front of a camera, a microphone and two unfriendly judges by giving a 5-minute speech and solving a maths exercise in 5 minutes. Their heart rate and the cortisol level in their saliva were measured before, during and after the stress test. At the end of the task, the participants filled out a form to describe their emotional response to stress. The results showed that the salivary cortisol accumulated after 20 minutes from the beginning of the test was not different between the meditators and the non-meditators. However, the cortisol level of meditators reduced quicker than those of the non-meditators within 40 minutes after the test started. Moreover, meditators felt less ashamed and showed higher self-esteem [18]. This evidence, together with other studies, suggests that meditation can reduce the activation of the HPA axis, and therefore affect the regulation of the cortisol level [9, 13, 19, 20], by training acceptance and learning strategies to better regulate emotions [18].  

Practising meditation is therefore a good way to reduce stress and dedicate some time to yourself in your busy daily life. Why don’t you give meditation a try?

References 

  1. West, Michael A. (ed.), The Psychology of Meditation: Research and Practice (Oxford, 2016; online edn, Oxford Academic, 1 Mar. 2016), https://doi.org/10.1093/med:psych/9780199688906.001.0001 
  2. Eliade, M., Trask, W. R. (Willard R., & Doniger, W. (n.d.). Shamanism : archaic techniques of ecstasy. 610. 
  3. González-Valero, G., Zurita-Ortega, F., Ubago-Jiménez, J. L., & Puertas-Molero, P. (2019). Use of Meditation and Cognitive Behavioral Therapies for the Treatment of Stress, Depression and Anxiety in Students. A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 16(22), 4394. https://doi.org/10.3390/IJERPH16224394
  4. Zhang, Z., Luh, W. M., Duan, W., Zhou, G. D., Weinschenk, G., Anderson, A. K., & Dai, W. (2021). Longitudinal effects of meditation on brain resting-state functional connectivity. Scientific Reports, 11(1), 1–14. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-021-90729-y 
  5. Lardone, A., Liparoti, M., Sorrentino, P., Rucco, R., Jacini, F., Polverino, A., Minino, R., Pesoli, M., Baselice, F., Sorriso, A., Ferraioli, G., Sorrentino, G., & Mandolesi, L. (2018). Mindfulness meditation is related to long-lasting changes in hippocampal functional topology during resting state: A magnetoencephalography study. Neural Plasticity, 2018. https://doi.org/10.1155/2018/5340717 
  6. Newberg, A. B., Serruya, M., Wintering, N., Moss, A. S., Reibel, D., & Monti, D. A. (2014). Meditation and neurodegenerative diseases. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1307(1), 112–123. https://doi.org/10.1111/NYAS.12187 
  7. Innes, K. E., Selfe, T. K., Brown, C. J., Rose, K. M., & Thompson-Heisterman, A. (2012). The effects of meditation on perceived stress and related indices of psychological status and sympathetic activation in persons with Alzheimer’s disease and their caregivers: A pilot study. Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 2012. https://doi.org/10.1155/2012/927509
  8. Rusch, H. L., Rosario, M., Levison, L. M., Olivera, A., Livingston, W. S., Wu, T., & Gill, J. M. (2019). The effect of mindfulness meditation on sleep quality: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1445(1), 5–16. https://doi.org/10.1111/NYAS.13996 
  9. Vandana, B., Vaidyanathan, K., Saraswathy, L. A., Sundaram, K. R., & Kumar, H. (2011). Impact of integrated amrita meditation technique on adrenaline and cortisol levels in healthy volunteers. Evidence-Based Complementary and Alternative Medicine, 2011. https://doi.org/10.1155/2011/379645 
  10. Kumar, K., Singh, V., Kumar, D., Asthana, A. B., & Mishra, D. (2018). Effect of yoga and meditation on serum cortisol level in first-year medical students. International Journal of Research in Medical Sciences, 6(5), 1699–1703. https://doi.org/10.18203/2320-6012.ijrms20181762 
  11. Kang, D. H., Jo, H. J., Jung, W. H., Kim, S. H., Jung, Y. H., Choi, C. H., Lee, U. S., An, S. C., Jang, J. H., & Kwon, J. S. (2013). The effect of meditation on brain structure: cortical thickness mapping and diffusion tensor imaging. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 8(1), 27–33. https://doi.org/10.1093/SCAN/NSS056 
  12. Aggarwal, A. (2020). Hypothalamo-Pituitary-Adrenal axis and Brain during Stress, Yoga and Meditation: A Review. International Journal of Health and Clinical Research, 3(9), 96–103. Retrieved from https://www.ijhcr.com/index.php/ijhcr/article/view/237 
  13. Pascoe, M. C., Thompson, D. R., & Ski, C. F. (2020). Meditation and Endocrine Health and Wellbeing. Trends in Endocrinology and Metabolism, 31(7), 469–477. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tem.2020.01.012 
  14. Buckingham, J. C. (2011). The endocrine function of the hypothalamus. Journal of Pharmacy and Pharmacology, 29(1), 649–656. https://doi.org/10.1111/J.2042-7158.1977.TB11429.X 
  15. Principles of Neural Science, 6e. AccessNeurology, McGraw Hill Medical. (n.d.). Retrieved January 28, 2024, from https://neurology.mhmedical.com/book.aspx?bookID=3024 
  16. Scanes, C. G. (2022). Pituitary gland. Sturkie’s Avian Physiology, 759–813. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-819770-7.00008-6
  17. Khafagi, F. A., Shapiro, B., & Cross, M. D. (1991). The adrenal gland. In: Maisey, M.N., Britton, K.E., Gilday, D.L. (eds) Clinical Nuclear Medicine. Springer, Boston, MA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4899-3358-4_11
  18. Gamaiunova, L., Brandt, PY., Bondolfi, G., & Kliegel, M. (2019). Exploration of psychological mechanisms of the reduced stress response in long-term meditation practitioners. Psychoneuroendocrinology, 104, 143–151. https://doi.org/10.1016/J.PSYNEUEN.2019.02.026 
  19. Brand, S., Holsboer-Trachsler, E., Naranjo, J. R., & Schmidt, S. (2012). Influence of Mindfulness Practice on Cortisol and Sleep in Long-Term and Short-Term Meditators. Neuropsychobiology, 65(3), 109–118. https://doi.org/10.1159/000330362 
  20. Fan, Y., Tang, Y. Y., & Posner, M. I. (2014). Cortisol Level Modulated by Integrative Meditation in a Dose-dependent Fashion. Stress and Health, 30(1), 65–70. https://doi.org/10.1002/SMI.2497
Elena Giuliano & Nathalie Tichy
0
Tags :