Question

1.What impact does meditation have on the brain, and how is that impact evidenced?

2.Why is social support connected to better health outcomes?

3.What do studies suggest about the relationship between genetics and intelligence?

4. What is the role of skepticism in scientific research?

Answer 1

1. Meditation has several positive benefits on the brain:

• Long-term meditators have better-preserved brains than non-meditators as they age. More specifically, individuals who’d been meditating for an average of 20 years had more grey matter volume throughout the brain during old age (Luders, Cherbuin and Kurth, 2015).
• Mindfulness meditation decreases activity in the default mode network (DMN). This brain network responsible for mind-wandering and self-referential thoughts, such as those associated with being less happy, ruminating, and worrying about the past and future (Brewer et al., 2015).
• The effect of mindfulness meditation on its ability to reduce symptoms of depression, anxiety, and pain is equivalent to that of anti-depressants (Goyal et al., 2014)

References:

Brewer, J. A., Worhunsky, P. D., Gray, J. R., Tang, Y., Weber, J., & Kober, H. (2011). Meditation experience is associated with differences in default mode network activity and connectivity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 108(50), 20254-20259. doi:10.1073/pnas.1112029108

Goyal, M., Singh, S., Sibinga, E., et al. (2014). Meditation Programs for Psychological Stress and Well-being: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis. JAMA Intern Med., 174(3), 357–368. doi:10.1001/jamainternmed.2013.13018

Luders, E., Cherbuin, N. and Kurth, F. (2015) Forever Young(er): potential age-defying effects of long-term meditation on gray matter atrophy. Front. Psychol., 8, 1551. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01551