Meditation: A Bench Press for the Brain?

by Nina

Two recent articles in the NY Times suggest that practicing meditation may increase our cognitive abilities. The first article, How Meditation Might Boost Your Test Scores, discussed a study published last month in the journal Psychological Science  by University of California, Santa Barbara researchers. The UCSB researchers found that after a group of undergraduates went through a two-week intensive mindfulness training program, their mind-wandering decreased and their working memory capacity improved. They also performed better on a GRE reading comprehension test. Students in the control group had no similar improvement.

Granted, this study was on young adults, but increasing memory capacity in general sounds real good to me! Richard J. Davidson, a professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who has studied brain function in long-term and novice mindful meditators, explained it this way, “You can improve the signal-to-noise ratio by reducing the noise. Decreasing mind-wandering is doing just that.”

The second NY Times article, In Sitting Still, a Bench Press for the Brain, discussed the many possible benefits of meditation in older people, citing several different studies. One study that intrigued me was The unique brain anatomy of meditation practitioners: alterations in cortical gyrification published in the Frontiers in Human Neuroscience journal in February, which looked at the extent to which meditation may affect neuroplasticity (the brain’s ability to make physiological changes) Previous studies found that the brains of long-term meditators had increased amounts of gray matter—believed to be involved in processing information and white matter—believed to be the “wiring” of the brain’s communication system.

In the recent University of California, Los Angeles study, M.R.I. scans were used to measure the features of the subject’s brains and compare them to a control group of non-meditators. The meditators had a median age of 51 and had all been practicing meditation of various types for an average of 20 years. The oldest subject was 71 and the longest practitioner had been meditating regularly for 46 years. The study concluded that “the degree of cortical gyrification appeared to increase as the number of years practicing meditation increased.” The Times quotes the lead scientist of the study:

“We used to believe that when you were born, your brain would grow and reach a peak in the early 20s and then start shrinking,” Dr. Luders said. “It was thought there was nothing we could do to change that.”

Now it appears that we can! Although this study does not provide conclusive proof that meditation caused the brain adaptations or that the increased folds meant improved cognitive performance for these older adults, the results were certainly intriguing and I’m sure there will be more research in this area to come.

I don’t know about you, but keeping my cognitive abilities in good shape as I age is pretty high on my priority list! And these two articles at least give me some hope that there is something that I can actually do about it—something completely free, with no dangerous side effects, mind you.

Yoga for Brain Health?

by Nina

Exercise, the latest neuroscience suggests, does more to bolster thinking than thinking does. —New York Times

Just a quick post today to let you know—if you don’t already—about the article in last Sunday’s New York Time’s Magazine called How Exercise Could Lead to a Better Brain.

While most current advice for keeping your mind fit as you age focuses on staying intellectually challenged by learning a new language or even by doing crossword puzzles or special "brain exercises" (why does the thought of that make me feel slightly ill?), there is more and more scientific evidence that continuing to exercise is the most important strategy of all. Are you wondering why? The New York Times article explains that the brain, like all muscles and organs, is a tissue, and that exercise seems to slow or reverse the brain’s physical decay, much as it does with muscles.

Unfortunately we don’t yet know how the exercise provided by a yoga practice fits into this, as so far all tests have been on animals either running or doing other aerobic activities. Here's another quote from the article:

“It’s not clear if the activity has to be endurance exercise,” says the psychologist and neuroscientist Arthur F. Kramer, director of the Beckman Institute at the University of Illinois and a pre-eminent expert on exercise and the brain. A limited number of studies in the past several years have found cognitive benefits among older people who lifted weights for a year and did not otherwise exercise.”

One advantage of yoga for exercise, though, is how versatile it is. There’s strengthening as well as stretching and balancing. By moving with your breath, either in vinyasas or mini vinyasas, you can obtain some of the benefits of aerobic activity. And, who knows, maybe our inverted poses will turn out to have some special benefits for the brain.

Plank Pose, A Strength-Building Asana

Personally I’m looking forward to the day when more is known about the specific types of exercise that benefit the brain because I really want to design some sequences for brain health! But until then, I’d recommend two strategies:

1. Be sure to include strength building and dynamic movement in your yoga practice, along with stretching and relaxation.
2. Challenge your intellect at the same time you are exercising by experimenting with new poses and maybe even memorizing their Sanskrit names.