Meditation activates the neurons of enlightenment

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Meditation is a serious exercise for the mind and body. What happens to the brain during this process? Could Meditation Be Dangerous For People With Mental Disorders? T&P looked at research from neuroscientists and other scientists in the United States, Europe, and Asia to answer these questions.

In 1979, in one of the hotels in the city of Pune, a misfortune happened: a man who had just returned from Kathmandu after a 30-day meditation course committed suicide. The Humanist correspondent Mary Garden, who is also staying at the hotel, spoke to him the day before. According to her, the man showed no signs of mental disorder: he was friendly and did not look upset. Nevertheless, in the morning he jumped off the roof.

Today you can read many true positive stories about attending meditation courses. Every year, tens of thousands of people go to specialized schools at home and abroad to improve their quality of life, health and outlook on the world. However, the history of meditation goes back more than 3000 years, and the goal of these practices has never been what people from the West often seek and find in them today: relaxation and stress relief. Initially, meditation was, and still remains, a spiritual tool created to "cleanse" the mind of impurities and hindrances and to help a person achieve inner enlightenment in the form in which his religion of Buddhism understands.

Pro: relaxation for the brain and attention to the self

What does the meditative process look like from the point of view of brain physiology? According to experts from the United States and Tibet, who conducted research among people who constantly practice contemplative meditation, during this process, neural activity in the centers responsible for experiencing happiness increased by 700-800%. For subjects who started practicing recently, this value was noticeably lower: only 10-15%. In their book Buddha, the Brain and the Neurophysiology of Happiness, the researchers note that in the first case we are talking about people who have honed their skills over the years and in total managed to devote 10,000 to 15,000 hours of meditation, which corresponds to the level of athletes -the Olympians. And yet the same thing happened to the newcomers, albeit on a smaller scale.

Neurophysiologists from the University of Oslo, Norway, found that during non-directive meditation (it allows you to concentrate on breathing and send thoughts to wander), brain activity also increases in the areas responsible for creating thoughts and feelings associated with a person's self. Scientists noticed that concentration-meditation did not give such results: in this case, the level of work of the "self-centers" turned out to be the same as during normal rest. “These areas of the brain are most active when we’re resting,” says study author Svenn Dawanger at the University of Oslo. “It’s a kind of underlying operating system, a network of interconnected operations that comes to the fore when external tasks do not require attention. Curiously, non-directive meditation activates this network more than simple relaxation."

In terms of brain physiology, meditation is indeed like relaxation. A group of scientists from Harvard found out during research that during this process the brain stops processing normal amounts of information. The beta rhythm characteristic of the state of active wakefulness (EEG rhythm in the range from 14 to 30 Hz with a voltage of 5–30 µV) is extinguished. This appears to allow the brain to recover.

Scientists from Harvard also performed magnetic resonance imaging scans of the brains of people who meditated regularly for 8 weeks. After assessing the state of the brain immediately after 45 minutes of practice, they noticed that in many areas the activity was almost extinguished. The subjects' frontal lobes, which are responsible for planning and decision-making, practically "turned off", the parietal areas of the cortex, usually occupied with processing sensory information and orientation in time and space, slowed down, the work of the thalamus, which redistributes the data of the sense organs, slowed down, and the signals of the reticular formation, whose work allows the brain to be put on alert. All this allowed the brain to "relax" and start processing data related to a person's own personality, and not to the outside world.

Contra: excess of serotonin and the disappearance of boundaries

Even the Dalai Lama is convinced that one has to be careful with meditation: “Western people go to deep meditation too quickly: they need to learn about Eastern traditions and train more than they usually do. Otherwise, mental and physical difficulties arise."

Neurophysiologists point out that meditation can indeed be bad for your mental health, especially if you already suffer from some kind of disorder. Dr. Solomon Snyder, head of the Department of Neurophysiology at Johns Hopkins University, warns that during meditation, serotonin is additionally released in the brain - one of the main neurotransmitters that governs many body systems. This can be helpful in mild depression, but excess serotonin can cause paradoxical anxiety associated with relaxation. Instead of relaxing, the person then gets deep sadness or panic attack. In schizophrenia, according to Snyder, meditation can sometimes induce psychosis.

Dr. Andrew Newberg of the University of Pennsylvania found in his research that meditation decreases blood flow in the posterior part of the superior parietal gyrus, which is responsible for deep sensitivity and boundaries of the body. This fully explains the feeling of "unity with the world", which is often told by people who have tried such practices on themselves. "If you block the work of this gyrus," says Newberg, "you stop feeling where your personality ends and the world around you begins." “Meditation is not going to be beneficial for all patients with emotional distress,” says colleague Professor Richard Davidson of Wisconsin. "For some categories of people, it may even be harmful." Davidson argues that meditation practices "can alter the state of neural tissue in the regions of the brain responsible for empathy, attention and emotional responses." This, according to the professor, can negatively affect relationships with people around and lead to the appearance of feelings of loss and loneliness, which can undermine a person's mood, even if he is mentally healthy.

Neurophysiologists are not alone in favoring careful handling of meditation practices. Christophe Titmuss, a former Buddhist monk who attends Vipassana at one of the Indian schools every year, warns that sometimes people go through very traumatic experiences during such a course, which subsequently requires 24-hour support, medications and even hospitalization. “Some people experience a momentary state of dread that their brains are out of control and are afraid of going crazy,” he adds. "Away from the usual everyday reality, it is difficult for consciousness to recover, so such a person usually needs outside help." However, Titmuss notes that, in his opinion, meditation does not cause such effects by itself.“The function of the meditation process, as the Buddha pointed out, is to become a mirror that reflects our essence,” says the former monk.

Contraindications

Thus, if a person suffers from depression, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder or other mental illness, meditation can turn into trouble for him: aggravation, psychosis, or even suicide attempt. Some schools of spiritual practice today even use questionnaires that allow you to identify and screen out among applicants those who have already encountered mental disorders themselves or know that such cases were in their family history. However, there is nothing surprising in this. Meditation is a way to actively use and train your psyche, just like running is a way to train your heart and legs. If your heart or joints are not always working well, you may need to run gently or choose a different type of exercise.