The science of meditation | Catalyst

[Music] the ancient art of meditation has moved out of the temple and into our daily [Music] lives it's practiced by Top Class athletes even taught in some of the most powerful corporations in the world you don't have to be Buddhist to meditate you just have to be a person with a functioning mind new discoveries in science suggest it may indeed have benefits 8% that's enormous boost memory and treat depression I've decided I was well enough to come off the medication and meditation may even slow the aging process the studies are very promising they actually do suggest there are benefits from brain scans to blood tests from the psychological to the biological depends what your definition pain is I'm going to investigate the hard evidence to see if meditation lives up to the hype and I'm going to put my own brain to the test and undertake 8 weeks of mindfulness meditation will it make me less stressed will it improve my memory I did better at that will it changed the structure of my [Music] [Music] brain Londoner Nick Brewer is a yoga and meditation teacher but life hasn't always been so Serene for 10 years Nick ran a drug Empire smuggling cocaine out of Colombia essentially I was quite a wealthy young man I had a a property asset holding company an nightclub restaurants you know all the toys that go with it you would have looked at me as being quite a successful entrepreneur unless you know what I do for living in 2004 he was arrested in South America and sentenced to is in there it's probably one of the worst places you could ever imagine in your entire life it was poor it was broken it was corrupt you're anxious about absolutely everything you're anxious about staying alive about where your next plate of food's going to come from if you got any money if you haven't got any money um you know if you're going to get raped um killed a year into his sentence Nick was shown a book by his cmate you know I asked him what he had and he say he got a book on yoga so obviously at the time I said you know you must be some sort of weird soon he was hooked and began practicing yoga and meditation every day it was the sitting practice and the yoga practice that helped me to you know find some kind of Serenity in there Nick transformed his life I have a very happy life extremely humble I have a lot of amazing clients that I teach so you know the last 5 years has been completely transformational [Music] like Nick I guess i' never really contemplated whether meditation could do anything for me but the more I hear about the research the more keen I am to see whether it has any effect so I'm going to try it myself for 2 months step one learning how it's done I'm off to see Dr Richard Chambers who's a clinical psychologist but also an expert in mindfulness he's going to teach me how to make meditate apparently mindfulness is a type of meditation where we focus our attention on the present moment on the body the breath that kind of thing mindfulness meditation is the most well researched type of meditation and just taking a few moments to check in and just notice the state that your body's in checking in with the mind some scientists say it can boost physical and mental health and improve cognitive abilities and when the Mind inevitably wanders just noticing that and see if you can bring it back gently without any further thinking most of us focus our attention on Daydreams and distraction and rumination and worry and a whole bunch of stuff if we can train ourselves and we can we can actually build a mindful muscle to train ourselves to be focused and present just enjoy the moment more key to building this so-called mindful muscle is strengthening the prefrontal cortex if the brain were an orchestra the prefrontal cortex is like the conductor when we notice our attentions wandered and we bring it back to in the present moment we activate the prefrontal cortex it's forming new shapses new connections and getting thicker and stronger kind of like a muscle and will I feel greater sense of well-being or more relaxed or why don't we wait and see what happens for you I mean I'm going to predict yes but one of the best ways to learn mindfulness is through the [Music] doing for me to take meditation seriously I need some hard evidence that it's changing my brain for the better that's the uh the weapon it's the weapon we'll uh put one of these on you it's an EEG cap so I've come to see neuroscientist Dr Neil [Music] Bailey he's about to put me through a raft of rigorous test tests to get a measure of my brain power at the beginning of the 8 weeks meditation all right Graham looks like we've got some brain activity fantastic contr to popular opinion first up an EEG to measure my brain's electrical activity when we activate it it will give you a gentle electrical shot that's annoying uh is it annoying but not painful at all well depends what your definition of pain is yeah the tests will measure my memory my reaction time and my ability to focus you to respond to the meaning of the emotion of the word and try and ignore the emotion on the face okay so angry face could have the word happy underneath [Music] exactly electrical activity in the brain is produced as neurons communicate with each other the synchronized signals are brain waves when you meditate and feter waves increase and activity in some parts of the brain decreases allowing me to focus the idea is after 8 weeks the brain activity changes I experience during meditation will have a lasting effect on my brain according to Dr Bailey I'll be better able to concentrate make faster decisions and remember more information most extraordinary though my brain may even become more energy efficient you're performing better but your brain is exerting less energy you're getting a decrease in neural activity you might be able to do just as well in your job but be exerting less mental energy so when you get home you're less tired Beyond enhancing my brain's performance I also want to know if meditation can have an even more dramatic effect and actually change its physical structure must say I hate being locked confined spaces not looking forward to this so I've come for an MRI to have some before and after brain structure scans this next one is going to go for about 6 minutes try not to think of anything just let your mind go blank Recent research from Harvard University showed that just 8 weeks of meditation can physically change the structure of the brain everything we do affects the brain so any skill we learn anything we practice will change the way our brain is structured so so over time if you're repeating a practice for example mindfulness it's going to strengthen certain Connections in the brain and um change the The gry Meta for example volumes of the brain gry meta is the darker tissue of the brain where most of the nerve cell bodies [Music] are the Harvard research found that gray matter increased in key areas such as the hippocampus prefrontal cortex and temporo parietal Junction and these parts of the brain that help us to remember to focus to learn to inhibit impulses and regulate our emotions if we sat there daydreaming for 20 minutes we'd be strengthening a different part or different parts of the brain and we get to choose what we want to strengthen we've got to use it or lose it brain now it is early days for a lot of This research but the possibility of meditation changing the structure of my brain certainly sounds exciting I have to wait 8 weeks to find out my results I'd better start [Music] meditating okay the end of week one it's now breathing meditation and that's more challenging you're just focusing on that one thing your breath which I find very easy to get distracted from that but can meditation change the body as well as the brain a handful of studies show it may be good for our health by reducing inflammation and stress hormones so far there's a interesting growing list of some of the different ways that meditation affects the body the question us researcher Dr Alysa Appel wants to answer is can it also slow down aging been looking in particular at aging markers by now the field has a pretty good collection of very interesting studies that do suggest that there are benefits to our rate of Aging [Music] signs of aging can be seen inside the body's cells specifically in the tiny caps at the end of each chromosome known as the ters our tiir protect our genes now what happens as we age our immune cells divide and the tiir shorten those protective caps get shorter and shorter so we want to keep those intacted basically the shorter the telm the faster the Aging several studies have compared the telome of meditators to Norm meditators it looks like tiir length that measure of how our immune cells age stabilizes more and doesn't shorten in the meditation group other Studies have measured telay the enzyme that protects those precious telr those Studies have suggested that Tas can go up and tilr length can be better maintained during those periods and uh you know we wait for lots of replications before we say something is true or a fact the studies are very promising very [Music] suggested we've seen how meditation can change you biologically but how about psychologically one of the most widely studied areas of meditation research is the effect on mental Health Ross buun has been coping with depression for years I wasn't really comfortable in my own skin I was very sort of agitated quick to anger I didn't really feel I knew who I was I was not doing the things I I loved and enjoyed I wasn't seeing my friends or family anymore and uh my relationship was uh well strained really it was it was very difficult Ross was given medication but he didn't like the side effects it really didn't make me feel very well I still didn't feel like myself I was still wasn't sleeping I was still very agitated I just felt pretty detached from everything and everyone Ross is one of a growing number of people using meditation to treat their depression I actually practice mindfulness whilst hiking I find it's quite easy to to focus on putting one foot in front of the other and then just noticing the world around around me and and how my body feels people who practice mindfulness show better mental health than 70% of the population on average uh people with depression and anxiety have even larger gains than that the data shows that that reduces depressive symptoms but the big finding is that it harves the rate of depressive relapse for people who had three or more depressive episodes if they learn mindfulness is as part of their treatment they're half as likely to get depressed again down the track indeed for some meditation could be an alternative to their medication paper that came out last year meta analysis has found that it's as effective as anti-depressants for preventing relapse which is a pretty significant [Music] finding did it make a difference to you yes absolutely probably would have been been about 8 months or so I've decided I was I was well enough uh able enough to to come off the medication Dr Richard Chambers believes mindfulness meditation works because it breaks the cycle of depressive thoughts depressive thoughts that maybe go through people's minds that they don't normally notice they're just running in the background like an app and reducing people's mood so mindfulness helps them to notice that and then just to recognize it as a thought rather than taking it seriously believing it trying to push it away which then gets the attention very much caught up in that kind of rumination just noticing it let it go bring the attention back to the present doing the meditation really helps break that rumination cycle and overall that allows me to focus on all sorts of things if I need to focus on work not my mind's not wandering away thinking about something else so it's it's it's training my brain to focus that's the main aim so how exactly does meditation train the brain one of the things that many types of meditation do is exercise our attention muscle and boy that's an important muscle this socalled attention muscle May exert some control over one of the brain areas tied up with a motion the amydala when the amydala gets activated that's when we feel fear and anxiety and that sort of thing um so it's its purpose is to give uh experience an emotional salience in something like depression or anxiety it becomes overactive and so it's it's constantly activated and and providing that sensation of anxiety or fear or um hypervigilance after meditation other parts of the brain appear more in control of the amydala what happens is in theory at least and from what we can tell from the brain scans when you've practiced a lot of uh fness both the prefrontal cortex and the hippocampus those regions exert more regulation on the amydala and uh dampen the effect of that anxiety or fear coming [Music] up meditation list of benefits does seem remarkable and some are concerned media hype is falsely overselling them after all the research is still in infancy the few studies that have looked at it haven't found that mindfulness was any better than other forms of therapies which in itself is is not a bad outcome but there simply isn't enough research Professor farus believes certain people should exercise particular caution all kinds of meditation were originally designed to Rattle your sense of self if there is something which has traumatized you in your life and you've forgotten about it by meditating you may become aware of it and this will exacerbate all the symptoms it can actually increase stress it can lead to Greater levels of anxiety panic attacks in some [Music] people there were times where we dredge up past experiences that I I really didn't want to go back to and it was really quite disturbing and and confronting at the time to I never expected for that to occur Professor farias also believes there may be an inherent bias in the research 99% of the researchers have only been looking at the potential benefits at the positive effects they haven't really been asking people about good effects if you've got a psychotic disorder if you're really anxious or if you're getting it taught to you badly maybe it's not going to be so so [Music] good G when you're going through a stressful time you got a lot on your mind it is really hard to get all that stuff out when you're meditating I'm finding it really hard at the moment it's time for a catch up with Dr Richard Chambers so I might just check in has your practice been going I'm the scientific type you know I'd like to do a lot more experiments before I draw any conclusions but I'm feeling more relaxed than I have been for some time and yeah I notice the stress but it's not like I'm sucked into it I just sort of cruise through which is very [Music] good reducing stress is one of the most commonly reported effects of meditation you know the stress isn't actually in the situation the stress is in our relationship with the situation but stress is a complicated thing we can't avoid stress stress is an embedded part of life and in fact engaging in new things and challenges is very good for us but we need to make sure that we have enough Reserve in our days or at the least in our weeks and that's where meditation might help meditation and Mind Body activities are a wonderful way to build our kind of physiological and psychological [Music] resiliency to get a better idea of how meditation works on a bigger scale I've come to nen Temple to meet meditation teacher chalky she believes it has an important role to play in society when I first started meditating I remember I was telling everyone this is the cheapest form of um dealing with stress anxiety that's available to you it's totally free really cuz it's just you and your mind chocky is part of an international project teaching meditation to inmates in New South Wales correction centers people get into prison and in one way you can say it's a bit like going into Retreat you know because you go into a closed environment a lot of things have taken away from you and one thing you do have on you is time on your hands so what you're going to do now is you focus all your awareness strongly on the sensation at your nostrils as you breathe in and out you just feel that take one more breath and you'll feel it [Music] okay she believes it improves mental health and AIDS Rehabilitation and it doesn't take very long to see the effect in a prison environment former inmate Nick Brewer experienced these benefits firsthand there were deep shifts in my psychological patterns and thought patterns about the way I felt about myself and life and it started a whole Rehabilitation process I think every one of us whether we're in prison or out we look at our lives by not knowing what's going on inide ourself until the words vomit out the mouth until the fist does the does the punch you know you kind of you get into trouble in life they learn more about themselves they learn what is it that triggers me you know what triggers me to anger what triggers me to act out in in way selfish ways or um ways that do harm to others Professor farias studied the effect of meditation on prison inmates in South America he believes it helps in some ways but it's no magic bullet we did F they became less stressed they had a lower probability of having psychological problems on the other hand we also found out that there weren't differences in terms of aggression or interpersonal Behavior which was something we were looking for my old self is very alien to me now I I can relate to the the old Nick the character but from what I did you know it's dead [Music] it's 8 weeks later and my personal trial has come to an end who would have thought I'd ever take part in a group meditation session there you go anyway my 8 weeks is up now I'm off of my results uh NE I'm back to mes to find out if all the dedication has paid off you I'm Keen to see if I've made a difference to my brain yeah let's [Music] see 3 hours of cognitive tests and brain scans later it wasn't bad this time I got to wait a week for the results apparently though and it's results time with Dr Bailey and MRI expert Dr Charles S overall uh you did better in three of the five tasks better behavioral performance oh that's fantastic not only that you exerted less brain activity so you spent less energy to do better this one in particular was your memory task I did better at that you did better at that I felt like I was guessing that was a very hard task it was very hard that's annoying was actually one where we were um distracting you with that tiny electrical shock I remember it well the same time as you were trying to remember stuff it feels like it's easier for me to intervene if my brain's doing something I don't wanted to do yeah that's cool and that's that's actually a really uh interesting point for this next slide your reaction time to unexpected events you cut your reaction time by 400 milliseconds really it's almost half a second yeah that's huge it's massive if you're driving a car and a pedestrian steps out in front of you 400 milliseconds is probably a life-saving amount of time that's very good news I feel like a past yeah I was better at the tasks but had my brain physically changed so what did my brain scan result show all right let start with the structure changing uh the throw brain regions that's been reported before there were indeed changes in my gry matter density in several parts of my brain they're big changes in the scheme things yes yes that's very interesting finding yeah the most dramatic change was in a part of my hippocampus known as the dentate gyrus where new brain cells are produced in adults 22.8% it's enormous yeah it's huge that's really large that means something's definitely going on you've got what we call uh neurogenesis [Music] happening in other words new brain cells were growing and there's more my hippocampus is also exerting more control over something called the default mode Network which is associated with anxiety these changes are not usually seen in someone my age younger people show that pattern more than older people it's as if my brain's getting a little bit younger yeah you've you've reversed the aging process a little bit in uh in your brain who could complain about that [Music] now sure my personal experience is not a proper scientific study so we can't say for sure these brain changes with a direct result of meditation but hey I'm impressed and certainly feeling happy with my younger heavier brain [Music]

Channel: ABC Science

Views: 685,950

Keywords: ABC, ABCTV, Science, Mindfulness, meditation, dr graham phillips, catalyst, education, hype, abc science, brain, neuroscience, mbsr, mindfulness based stress reduction, mental health, psychology, relaxation, calm

Id: BI5JNDs-Azk

Length: 25min 29sec (1529 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 07 2016