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Purveyor

(29,876 posts) Tue Nov 13, 2012, 11:47 AM Nov 2012

Just 8 Weeks Of Meditation Can Cause Enduring Changes In The Brain

Neuroscientists have discovered that an 8-week meditation training program can leave a lasting impression on the human brain.

Researchers from the Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston University, and several other research centers found that the meditation training produced enduring changes in how the brain processed emotional information. The results of their study were published this month in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience.

“The two different types of meditation training our study participants completed yielded some differences in the response of the amygdala — a part of the brain known for decades to be important for emotion — to images with emotional content,” Gaelle Desbordes, a corresponding author of the report, explained. “This is the first time that meditation training has been shown to affect emotional processing in the brain outside of a meditative state.”

In the study, healthy adults with no experience meditating were enrolled in either mindful attention training, cognitively-based compassion training or a health discussion group. Mindful attention meditation cultivates awareness of one’s breathing and one’s own state of mind, while compassion meditation focuses on cultivating higher levels of empathy. The health discussion group was used as a control. The training occurred for 2 hours each week, or 16 hours total.

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http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2012/11/12/just-8-weeks-of-meditation-can-cause-enduring-changes-in-the-brain/

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Just 8 Weeks Of Meditation Can Cause Enduring Changes In The Brain (Original Post) Purveyor Nov 2012 OP

Quieting the amygdala marions ghost Nov 2012 #1

Thank you! Kick! Ilsa Nov 2012 #2

Meditation made my panic attacks go away clyrc Nov 2012 #3

marions ghost

(19,841 posts)

1. Quieting the amygdala

Reply to Purveyor (Original post)

Tue Nov 13, 2012, 12:10 PM

Nov 2012

Americans need this! Especially after the polarization of our society where fellow citizens become enemies.

Seriously.

... "self-control is crucial ...when facing someone who is in the throes of an amygdala hijack"[6] so as to avoid a complementary hijacking - whether in work situations, or in private life. Thus for example 'one key marital competence is for partners to learn to soothe their own distressed feelings...nothing gets resolved positively when husband or wife is in the midst of an emotional hijacking.'[7] The danger is that 'when our partner becomes, in effect, our enemy, we are in the grip of an "amygdala hijack" in which our emotional memory, lodged in the limbic center of our brain, rules our reactions without the benefit of logic or reason...which causes our bodies to go into a "fight or flight" response'.[8]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amygdala_hijack

Ilsa

(61,698 posts)

2. Thank you! Kick!

Reply to Purveyor (Original post)

Tue Nov 13, 2012, 12:11 PM

Nov 2012

clyrc

(2,299 posts)

3. Meditation made my panic attacks go away

Reply to Purveyor (Original post)

Tue Nov 13, 2012, 12:22 PM

Nov 2012

I had a brutal set of months where almost every day I had panic attacks that made me sick, and although I took something for the attacks, I wanted them to stop altogether. I finally went to the doctor, who sent me to a therapist who ran meditation groups every week day. I went about three times a week for four months, and by the end of the first months the panic attacks were gone. I haven't had one since, and this was two years ago. It made me a firm believer in meditation, where I was skeptical before.

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