Can Meditation Make you Calmer and Happier?

Some recent studies have indicated that people who meditate regularly were able to decrease the negative effects of fear and stress. And scientists have determined that intense training in meditation can sharpen a person’s brain enough to help them notice details they might otherwise miss.

A University of Massachusetts Medical School study recorded the brain waves of employees at a high-tech company. The subjects were split randomly into two groups: one group was asked to learn meditation over eight weeks and the other group was left alone as a control.

All participants had their brain waves scanned several times during the study: at the beginning of the experiment, when meditation lessons were completed eight weeks later and four months after that. It was discovered found that the group that meditated showed a significant shift in activity to the left frontal cortex away from the stress-prone right frontal cortex. This shift decreases the negative effects of stress, mild depression and anxiety. There was also less activity in the amygdala, where the brain processes fear.

In another study, funded by a National Institutes of Health grant, scientists compared subjects with more than three years of daily practice in Zen meditation with novices who had never practiced meditation.

While their brains were scanned, the subjects were instructed to focus on their breathing and once in a while, they had to distinguish a real word from a nonsense word displayed at random times on a computer screen and, once done, try and re-focus on their breathing.

Their scans revealed that meditation training led to different activity in a set of brain regions known as the “default network.” This area of the brain is linked with spontaneous bursts of thought and wandering minds. When the subjects experienced in meditation were distracted by the computer, their brains returned faster to how they were before the interruption than novice brains did.

The study’s lead scientist stated: “The regular practice of meditation may enhance the capacity to limit the influence of distracting thoughts.”