Our Work We use neuroimaging techniques to study neurological, cognitive and emotional changes associated with the practice of meditation and yoga. We also incorporate measures of peripheral physiology in order to understand how meditation practice influences the brain-body interaction. This work is funded by grants from NIH-National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine and the CDC. Previous research indicates that long-term meditation practice is associated with altered resting electroencephalogram patterns, suggestive of long lasting changes in brain activity. We hypothesized that meditation practice might also be associated with changes in the brain's physical structure. Magnetic resonance imaging was used to assess cortical thickness in 20 participants with extensive Insight meditation experience, which involves focused attention to internal experiences. Brain regions associated with attention, interoception and sensory processing were thicker in meditation participants than matched controls, including the prefrontal cortex and right anterior insula. Between-group differences in prefrontal cortical thickness were most pronounced in older participants, suggesting that meditation might offset age-related cortical thinning. Finally, the thickness of two regions correlated with meditation experience. These data provide the first structural evidence for experience-dependent cortical plasticity associated with meditation practice. figure 1. Brain areas that are thicker in practitioners of Insight meditation than control subjects who do not meditate. Graphs show age and cortical thickness of each individual, red= control subjects, blue = meditators. "The ultimate goal of yoga is to always observe things accurately, and therefore never act in a way that will make us regret our actions later." - TKV Desikachar

Sara Lazar
Massachusetts General Hospital, Room 2609, 149 13th Street, Charlestown, MA 02129
lazar@nmr.mgh.harvard.edu

Office: 617-724-7108
Lab: 617-724-2256

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This work has been sponsored by the National Institutes of Health and the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.