Meditation Builds up the Brain

Meditating does more than just feel good and calm you down, it makes you perform better and alters the structure of your brain, researchers have found.

People who meditate say the practice restores their energy, and some claim they need less sleep as a result. Many studies have reported that the brain works differently during meditation – brainwave patterns change and neuronal firing patterns synchronise. But whether meditation actually brings any of the restorative benefits of sleep has remained largely unexplored.

So Bruce O’Hara and colleagues at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, US, decided to investigate. They used a well-established psychomotor vigilance task, which has long been used to quantify the effects of sleepiness on mental acuity.

Ten volunteers were tested before and after 40 minutes of either sleep, meditation, reading or light conversation, with all subjects trying all conditions.

What astonished the researchers was that meditation was the only intervention that immediately led to superior performance, despite none of the volunteers being experienced at meditation.

Every single subject showed improvement, says O’Hara. The improvement was even more dramatic after a night without sleep. But, he admits: Why it improves performance, we do not know. The team is now studying experienced meditators, who spend several hours each day in practice.

Brain builder
What effect meditating has on the structure of the brain has also been a matter of some debate. Now Sara Lazar at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, US, and colleagues have used MRI to compare 15 meditators, with experience ranging from 1 to 30 years, and 15 non-meditators.

They found that meditating actually increases the thickness of the cortex in areas involved in attention and sensory processing, such as the prefrontal cortex and the right anterior insula.

You are exercising it while you meditate, and it gets bigger, she says. The finding is in line with studies showing that accomplished musicians, athletes and linguists all have thickening in relevant areas of the cortex. It is further evidence, says Lazar, that yogis aren’t just sitting there doing nothing.

The growth of the cortex is not due to the growth of new neurons, she points out, but results from wider blood vessels, more supporting structures such as glia and astrocytes, and increased branching and connections.

NewScientist.com news service, By Alison Motluk

Are You Daydreaming

Zoning, spacing out, building castles in the air… How many critical terms do we attach to the idea that daydreaming is a waste of time? And how many school kids have been warned by a teacher to wake up and focus…. and even been threatened with medication.

Until recently daydreaming was considered not merely a waste of time but almost pathological: Old psychology textbooks warn that excessive daydreaming can propel one into insanity. And during WWI a United States army questionnaire included the statement *I daydream frequently* to screen out assumed neurotic recruits. Even today well-meaning doctors medicate kids who are prone to daydreaming.

But psychologists and neuroscientists claim that most of us we spend from 15 to 50 percent of our waking hours daydreaming — straying away from tasks or external stimuli to instead focus on our inner thoughts, fantasies, and feelings. And there’s also research evidence that when our brains have nothing else to do, they switch to a special neural network dedicated to reviewing what we already know. In other words, we daydream.

Daydreaming appears to be a vital function of our psyche — a resource of creativity, and an arena for rehearsing social skills. And judging from the amount of time we spend doing it, perhaps daydreaming could even be the backbone of our consciousness. So should we really medicate daydreamers? Humm. Maybe what we all need is MORE time to let our minds wander and dream.

Want to make more sense of your dreams and daydreams?  Click here.

Lie Down to Be More Creative?

It seems we can be smarter and more creative lying down than standing up says one researcher. Dr Darren Lipnicki at the Australian National University (ANU) school of psychology found that people solve anagrams more quickly when lying on their backs than standing on their feet.

Lipnicki tested 20 people who were asked to solve 32 five-letter anagrams while standing, and while lying down. He found that the anagrams were solved more quickly lying down than standing up. The researcher said his subjects reported that while lying down, the solution just *popped into their minds* similar to the aha or Eureka experience associated with major innovative creative breakthroughs.

Lipnicki feels the results are due to the difference in brain chemistry when lying down vs standing up, and specifically to the release of the neurotransmitter noradrenaline. While noradrenaline is normally associated with cognitive ability and focused attention, it is also believed to impair creative thinking. And significantly less noradrenaline is released while lying down.

Archimedes and the ancient reclining poets
Lipnicki concluded that creative thinking might also be facilitated when lying down. He says there is historical evidence for this in the case of the Greek mathematician Archimedes, who concluded while lying in his bath that the amount of water that overflowed his tub was proportional to the amount of his body that was submerged.

The observation became known as Archimedes’ principle — the principle that an object immersed in a fluid experiences a buoyant force equal in magnitude to the force of gravity on the displaced fluid.

Professor of medieval history Donnchadh O’Corrain of University College Cork says medieval Irish poets also composed their complicated court poetry while lying flat on a couch in a darkened room. And there are descriptions dating back to 1571 of how law students studied by lying on flat straw pallets, he says.

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