It has recently emerged that training in mindfulness meditation help patients manage chronic pain and depression, though up until now experts were unsure as to why meditation benefits your wellbeing in this way. However, scientists from Brown University have managed to shed light on the issue.
According to their review, which appeared in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, the experts from Brown have stated that those who practice mindfulness meditation have a better control of their cognitive wellbeing, meaning that they can control the sensory cortical alpha rhythms that help regulate how your brain processes and filters sensations, such as pain, and memories, such as depressive cognitions.
Since standardised mindfulness meditation training begins with a highly localised focus on body and breath sensations, the proposal’s mechanistic framework derives from the intimate connection in mindfulness between mind and body. The scientists have based their proposal on published experimental results and a validated computer simulation of neural networks. According to the team, repeating this localised sensory focus improves your control over localised alpha rhythms in the primary somatosensory cortex of your brain. This is where your brain ‘maps’ sensations from your body.
Effectively, the researchers are proposing that if you, as a mindfulness meditator, learn to control your focus on the present somatic moment, you can develop a more sensitive ‘volume knob’ for controlling your spatially specific, localised sensory cortical alpha rhythms. If you do this efficiently, as many mindfulness meditators can, your brain will be better able to filter sensory information, including chronic pain and depression.
Not only do mindfulness meditators learn to control what specific body sensations they pay attention to, but they also develop an ability to regulate their attention so that it does not become biased toward negative physical sensations such as chronic pain. By increasing their control of their attention on localised somatosensory alpha rhythms, they create a generally better regulated bias toward internally focused negative thoughts, as you may experience in depression.
Lead author Catherine Kerr, assistant professor (research) of family medicine at the Alpert Medical School and director of translational neuroscience for the Contemplative Studies Initiative at Brown, commented, ‘We think we’re the first group to propose an underlying neurophysiological mechanism that directly links the actual practice of mindful awareness of breath and body sensations to the kinds of cognitive and emotional benefits that mindfulness confers.’
Comments are closed.