A month of
meditation training alters brain wiring in ways that could open the door to new
treatments for mental disorders, research has shown.
 |
Research
into meditation training
could lead to new treatments for
mental disorders
|
Scientists
looked at the effects of integrative body-mind training (IBMT) on two groups of
university students.
After just
four weeks, or 11 hours, of training scans showed physical changes in the
brains of the volunteers.
Nerve
fibres, known as "white matter", became denser, providing greater
numbers of brain-signalling connections. At the same time there was an
expansion of myelin, the protective fatty insulation surrounding nerve fibres.
The effects
were seen in the anterior cingulate cortex region of the brain, which helps
regulate behaviour. Poor nerve activity in this part of the brain is associated
with a range of mental problems, including attention deficit disorder,
dementia, depression, and schizophrenia.
The study,
reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, built
on previous research based on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans that first
flagged up brain changes induced by IBMT. Scientists revisited results from two
2010 studies, taking a closer look at what the scans revealed.
One
involved 45 US students from the University of Oregon; the other 68 students
from China's Dalian University of Technology. The researchers found greater
density of axons, or nerve fibres, after two weeks of IBMT training, but no
change in myelin formation.
After a
month both increases in axon density and myelin were seen. Students undergoing
IBMT also reported improvements in mood, experiencing reduced levels of anger,
depression, anxiety and fatigue. They also had lower levels of the stress
hormone cortisol.
Study
leader Professor Michael Posner, from the University of Oregon, who carried out
the original US research, said: "This study gives us a much more detailed
picture of what it is that is actually changing. We did confirm the exact
locations of the white-matter changes that we had found previously. And now we
show that both myelination and axon density are improving.
"The
order of changes we found may be similar to changes found during brain
development in
early childhood, allowing a new way to reveal how such changes
might influence emotional and cognitive development."
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