Meditation's Impact on the Brain | Documentary Clip

The impact of meditation on the brain and body

• Scientific research has helped us understand how meditation affects the brain and body.

• Two major domains that meditation affects are attention and emotion.

"The circuits in the brain that are important for regulating both attention and emotion can be transformed by meditation."

The goal of scientific research on meditation

• The overall goal is to use scientific research to understand the nature of suffering and how to alleviate it.

• Understanding the impact of meditation on the brain can contribute to this goal.

Measuring brain activity during meditation

• Traditionally, brain electrical measurements or MRI are used to study brain activity during meditation.

• These methods require post-processing of the data, which can be time-consuming.

• With the practitioner Mingyur Rinpoche, a different approach was taken.

"We didn't need any fancy post-processing, we actually were able to see a signal with our naked eye."

Discovering unique brain signals during meditation

• During Mingyur Rinpoche's meditation, unique brain signals called gamma oscillations were observed.

• Gamma oscillations are fast frequency brain oscillations that are typically seen for very short periods of time in ordinary people.

• Rinpoche's gamma oscillations were large, highly synchronized, and lasted for many minutes.

"Nobody had ever seen these kinds of signals before for this length of time."

The plasticity of the brain

• The brain's ability to change, known as plasticity, was demonstrated through meditation.

• Just two weeks of daily meditation practice for 30 minutes showed a different pattern of brain activity compared to before the practice.

• This suggests that the brain can be changed through practice, and it doesn't require a significant amount of time.

"The brain really is plastic ... We really can make these changes and it actually doesn't take that much."

cultivating well-being and warm-heartedness

• Well-being and warm-heartedness can be cultivated through certain kinds of practice.

• These qualities can be thought of as skills that can be enhanced through practice.

"Well-being and warm-heartedness can be cultivated ... almost as skills."