Participants of a University of California, San Francisco-led study that blended ancient meditation practices with the most current scientific methods for regulating emotions showed less depression, anxiety, and stress, and increased feelings of compassion and awareness of others’ feelings.

Schoolteachers who practiced meditation in a short yet intensive program were part of a new study that was designed to create new techniques to reduce destructive emotions while improving social and emotional behavior. Previous research has linked meditation to positive changes in blood pressure, metabolism, and pain, but less is known about the specific emotional changes that result from the practice. The female teachers, who were new to meditation, were chosen due to their stressful work environment, and it was hoped they could immediately benefit from the practice and the benefits would spill over into their classrooms.

“The findings suggest that increased awareness of mental processes can influence emotional behavior,” said lead author Margaret Kemeny, PhD, director of the Health Psychology Program in UCSF’s Department of Psychiatry. “The study is particularly important because opportunities for reflection and contemplation seem to be fading in our fast-paced, technology-driven culture.”

The idea for the study arose after Paul Ekman, PhD, a UCSF emeritus professor and world expert in emotions, attended a 2000 meeting with the Dalai Lama, Buddhist scholars, behavioral scientists, and emotion experts for a discussion on the psychological benefits from meditation. At that meeting, the Dalai Lama posed a question: In the modern world, would a secular version of Buddhist contemplation reduce harmful emotions?

The Dalai Lama’s question led Ekman and Buddhist scholar Alan Wallace to develop a 42-hour, eight-week training program, integrating secular meditation practices with techniques learned from the scientific study of emotion. It involved three areas of meditative practice:

• Concentration practices involving sustained, focused attention on a specific mental or sensory experience;
• Mindfulness practices involving the close examination of one’s body and feelings;
• Directive practices designed to promote empathy and compassion toward others.

“The findings suggest that increased awareness of mental processes can influence emotional behavior,” said lead author Margaret Kemeny, PhD, director of the Health Psychology Program in UCSF’s Department of Psychiatry. “The study is particularly important because opportunities for reflection and contemplation seem to be fading in our fast-paced, technology-driven culture.”

The study involved researchers from a number of institutions including UCSF, UC Davis, and Stanford University.

UCLA researchers point to new evidence that shows people who meditate for years experience positive changes to the brain, specifically more folding of the cortex, which may allow the brain to process information faster. It is believed the more folding that occurs, the better the brain is at processing information, making decisions, forming memories and so forth.

They compared meditators who had practiced their craft on average for 20 years using a variety of meditation types — Samatha, Vipassana, Zen and more – with people who didn’t meditate. They found pronounced differences (heightened levels of folding in active meditation practitioners) across a wide swatch of the cortex.

Their findings from comparing the difference in brain structure in long-time meditators to non-practitioners point to proof of the brain’s neuroplasticity, or ability to adapt to environmental changes.

They also looked for a link between the amount of meditation practice and the extent of brain alteration.

“Meditators are known to be masters in introspection and awareness as well as emotional control and self-regulation, so the findings make sense that the longer someone has meditated, the higher the degree of folding in the insula,” said Eileen Luders, an assistant professor at the UCLA Laboratory of Neuro Imaging.

Previous evidence from UCLA showed that long-time meditators experienced a strengthening of the connection between brain cells.

The five soldiers in the study, aged 25 to 40 years, experienced marked relief from stress and depression, and saw improvement in their relationships and quality of life.

“Even though the number of veterans in this study was small, the results were very impressive,” said Norman Rosenthal, MD, clinical professor of psychiatry at Georgetown University Medical School and the study’s senior researcher. “These young men were in extreme distress as a direct result of trauma suffered during combat, and the simple and effortless Transcendental Meditation technique literally transformed their lives.”

Rosenthal hypothesizes that Transcendental Meditation helps people with PTSD because regular practice produces long-term changes in sympathetic nervous system activity, as evidenced by decreased blood pressure, and lower reactivity to stress. “Transcendental Meditation quiets down the nervous system, and slows down the ‘fight-or-flight’ response,” he said. People with PTSD show overactive fight-or-flight responses, making them excellent candidates for Transcendental Meditation.

Rosenthal points out that there is an urgent need to find effective and cost-effective treatments for veterans with combat-related PTSD. “The condition is common, affecting an estimated one in seven deployed soldiers and Marines, most of whom do not get adequate treatment. So far, only one treatment—simulation exposure to battleground scenes—has been deemed effective, but it requires specialized software and hardware, trained personnel and is labor intensive.”

The details of the pilot study were published in the June 2011 issue of Military Medicine (Volume 176, Number 6).

“There’s good evidence to support using mind-body therapies clinically,” said lead author Aditi Nerurkar, MD, Integrative Medicine Fellow, Harvard Medical School and BIDMC. “Still, we didn’t expect to see provider referral rates that were quite so high.”

The study shows that attitudes about healing are changing and that the use of complementary medicine is on the rise. This is especially true for patients who are sicker and are seeking alternatives to their failed traditional treatments.

“What we learned suggests that providers are referring their patients for mind-body therapies as a last resort once conventional therapeutic options have failed. It makes us wonder whether referring patients for these therapies earlier in the treatment process could lead to less use of the health care system, and possibly, better outcomes for these patients,” said Nerurkar.

Catherine Kerr, PhD, of the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Osher Research Center at Harvard Medical School, co-lead author of a recent report on mindfulness meditation, says: “Our discovery that mindfulness meditators more quickly adjusted the brain wave that screens out distraction could explain their superior ability to rapidly remember and incorporate new facts.”

The key is how regular meditation practice eventually adjusts and regulates the brain’s alpha rhythms, a crucial brain wave that is thought to “turn down the volume” on distracting information. The alpha rhythm is particularly active in brain cells that process touch, sight and sound in the brain’s outmost layer, called the cortex, where it helps to suppress irrelevant or distracting sensations and regulate the flow of sensory information between brain regions.

“This result may explain reports that mindfulness meditation decreases pain perception,” says Kerr. “Enhanced ability to turn the alpha rhythm up or down could give practitioners’ greater ability to regulate pain sensation.”

Using a type of mindfulness meditation known as focused attention, non-meditators who were trained to use the technique experienced a 40 percent reduction in pain intensity and a 57 percent reduction in pain unpleasantness. Other pain-relieving drugs, such as morphine, tend to alleviate the pain intensity by about 25 percent, according to Fadel Zeidan, Ph.D., lead author of the study and post-doctoral research fellow at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.

Before and after meditation training, brain scans were performed using arterial spin labeling magnetic resonance imaging (ASL MRI), which more effectively captures brain activity specific to meditation. During the scans, a pain-inducing heat device was applied to the participants’ legs. Comparisons of the two sets of scans demonstrated the difference in the level of activity in the pain-processing region.

Zeidan and colleagues believe that meditation has great potential for clinical use because so little training was required to produce such dramatic pain-relieving effects. “This study shows that meditation produces real effects in the brain and can provide an effective way for people to substantially reduce their pain without medications,” Zeidan said.

Focused attention is a form of mindfulness meditation where people are taught to attend to the breath to reduce mental distractions and be in the present moment.

William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility, Alabama’s toughest prison, has implemented a model program based on the meditation practice Called Vipassana (which is pronounced vuh-’POSH-uh-nuh), one that dates back 2500 years to Buddha,  to help instill self-control and social skills never before learned in life before prison.

So far, 10 percent of the inmates have completed the program. “The inmates are less angry, they are better able to conduct themselves, they are more mindful of themselves and others, and overall there has been a 20 percent reduction in disciplinary action for those who have actually completed the course,” said Dr. Ronald Cavanaugh from Alabama Department of Corrections.

“I had a lot of anger issues, and this has given me a way to deal with it,” said Ronald McKeithen, who is serving life without parole for robbery.

A study conducted by a team led by Harvard-affiliated researchers at Massachusetts General Hospital is the first of its kind to document such physical changes in a meditator’s brain matter. MR images showed increased grey-matter density in the hippocampus, known to be important for learning and memory, and in structures associated with self-awareness, compassion, and introspection. Some participants, who meditated for an average of 27 minutes, also reported reduced stress, and these reports were correlated with decreased grey-matter density in the amygdala, which is known to play an important role in anxiety and stress. No changes were noted in the control group, confirming that the brain matter changes were not just from the passage of time.

“Although the practice of meditation is associated with a sense of peacefulness and physical relaxation, practitioners have long claimed that meditation also provides cognitive and psychological benefits that persist throughout the day,” says Sara Lazar, PhD, of the MGH Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program, the study’s senior author. “This study demonstrates that changes in brain structure may underlie some of these reported improvements and that people are not just feeling better because they are spending time relaxing.”

Researchers at the Université de Montréal enlisted the aid of a group of Zen meditators and compared their responses to non-meditators. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging to record their brain responses after painful stimuli was applied, the experienced meditators showed decreased activity in the areas responsible for cognition, emotion and memory (the prefrontal cortex, amygdala and hippocampus), therefore eliminating the brain’s mental processing of pain.

“The results suggest that Zen meditators may have a training-related ability to disengage some higher-order brain processes, while still experiencing the stimulus,” says Pierre Rainville, researcher at the Université de Montréal. “Such an ability could have widespread and profound implications for pain and emotion regulation and cognitive control. This behavior is consistent with the mindset of Zen and with the notion of mindfulness.”

In the study, people who took an eight-week class in mindfulness meditation training reduced their fatigue and depression and improved overall quality of life compared to people with MS who received only usual medical care. The positive effects continued for at least six months.

“People with MS must often confront special challenges of life related to profession, financial security, recreational and social activities, and personal relationships, not to mention the direct fears associated with current or future physical symptoms and disability. Fatigue, depression and anxiety are also common consequences of having MS.” said study author Paul Grossman, PhD, of the University of Basel Hospital in Switzerland. “Unfortunately, the treatments that help slow the disease process may have little direct effect on people’s overall quality of life, fatigue or depression. So any complementary treatments that can quickly and directly improve quality of life are very welcome.” For the study, 150 people with mild to moderate MS were randomly assigned to receive either the eight-week meditation training or only usual medical care for MS. The class focused on mental and physical exercises aimed at developing nonjudgmental awareness of the present moment, or mindfulness. The training included weekly classes lasting two and a half hours, plus one all-day retreat and 40 minutes per day of homework assignments. “MS is an unpredictable disease,” Grossman said. “People can go for months feeling great and then have an attack that may reduce their ability to work or take care of their family. Mindfulness training can help those with MS better to cope with these changes. Increased mindfulness in daily life may also contribute to a more realistic sense of control, as well as a greater appreciation of positive experiences that continue be part of life.”

Participants in the mindfulness program showed extremely good attendance rates (92%) and reported high levels of satisfaction with the training. Furthermore, very few (5%) dropped out of the course before completion. Those who went through the mindfulness program improved in nearly every measure of fatigue, depression and quality of life, while those who received usual medical care declined slightly on most of the measures. For example, those with mindfulness training reduced their depressive symptoms by over 30 percent compared to those with no training.

Improvements among mindfulness participants were particularly large for those who showed significant levels of depression or fatigue at the beginning of the study. About 65 percent of participants showed evidence of serious levels of depression, anxiety or fatigue at the start of the study, and this risk group was reduced by a third at the end of training and six months later.

The other benefits of the training were also still apparent six months after the training ended, although they were sometimes reduced compared to right after finishing the training. Reductions in fatigue, however, were stable from the end of treatment to six months later. An accompanying editorial pointed out that because there was not an active control group (using a different type of intervention), it is unclear that the good results were specifically a result of mindfulness training. However, the editorialists noted that the present study was the largest of its type, and was well-conducted.

Source: aan.com