How can daily meditation work as well as a prescription drug to calm your head and tame your pain? Apparently, it's all in your brain.
Scientists compared MRIs of 16 patients taken two weeks before and after they participated in an eight-week program of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) exercises to a control group of 17 patients who had no training. Over those two months, meditation patients spent close to a half-hour each day practicing MBSR on their own, and it showed, not only in their responses to mindfulness questionnaires administered before and after their training.
MRIs of the meditators showed greater grey matter density in the hippocampus, where learning and memory reside, and decreased density in the amygdala where emotions like anxiety and stress are processed. However, no changes in grey matter density were reported in the insular cortex where self-awareness and blood pressure control are governed.
This bears repeating: It takes practice and an investment of time every day if you expect to get anything whatsoever from meditation, but the benefits are real and measurable…
Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, Vol. 191, No. 1, p. 36-43, January 30, 2011
Scientific American January 22, 2011
ScienceDaily January 21, 2011