Ever since Buddhist meditation came to the West during the mid-20th century Eastern spirituality craze, proponents have maintained that there must be some serious and scientifically verifiable value to the practice. From records of the practice’s longevity to statements by the Dalai Lama that Western science could learn much from meditation to the image of mental control of Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc self-immolating in perfect silence in 1963, it seemed as if meditation must offer some solid, universal access to new realms of consciousness (or at least mental control). But for much of the past half-century, this was just an article of faith. Over the last decade or so, though, a growing body of serious scientific literature has built up demonstrating in clear neurological terms the effect of meditation on the brain, and how even a novice can harness the practice’s mental boost.
That’s not to say there was no scientific study of meditation before the 21st century. As early as 1966, studies on meditating individuals revealed unique brain wave patterns, but not much could be discerned from these findings. About three decades later, a small cadre of researchers fascinated by meditation started playing with new brain monitoring tools and neurological knowledge, authoring some concrete and compelling papers on how habitual meditation could alter the limbic system, permanently increasing empathy. Later researchers would, retrospectively, criticize the methods and conclusions of these early studies, noting for instance that they failed to account for the fact that a person inclined to meditate might have a different brain to begin with, but this initial glimmer of scientific inquiry helped to mainstream both meditation and serious academic research on the same.
Now research on meditation is so common (usually carried out in communication with Buddhist monks) that the U.S. National Institute of Health has a dedicated page on the merits and findings of the work. The health benefits and neurological effects attributed to meditation by the studies featured on this site and others like it are overwhelming: From 2007 to 2009 support came in for the idea that meditation could increase attention spans and decrease blood pressure. From 2010 to 2013 we got a sense for how quickly such effects could take hold—after just a few meditation sessions scientists could observe better memory, spatial thinking, and even a significant physical increase in beneficial grey matter, while noting a marked decrease in self-reported patient anxiety levels. Findings in 2013 even suggested that meditation could increase the effectiveness of flu vaccines and lower the risk of donor organ rejection.
As to how meditation achieves these seemingly miraculous results, one seminal 2011 study by researchers at Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on meditation’s potential to regulate and decrease the experience of chronic pain suggested that the concentration involved changes patterns of neural activity in seemingly intentional way. Put simply, it seemed to allow the meditator to better focus attention, selectively tuning out stimuli in a top-down process. A groundbreaking 2013 study using real-time brain imaging bore this suggestion out in a shockingly direct way, showing that meditators could change the activity in one section of their brain reliably on demand.
And that’s hardly a comprehensive list of every individual effect attributed to meditation. An almost infinite list of minor and major benefits are now linked to meditation, but at their core they all relate back to that top-down control and neurological restructuring: The meditating brain redirects sensory data, heightening assessment and decreasing distractions and knee-jerk reactions like fear or anger. In the process, proper meditation winds up working out certain elements of the brain (like a muscle), fostering an increase in empathy, memory, focus, and positive emotions even outside of the meditative state while decreasing the risk of cognitive decline (like dementia) in old age.
The fact that we know all of this doesn’t by any stretch mean that we fully understand meditation, though. Most of these findings, for instance, are the results of studies on focused-attention meditation, as opposed to open meditation, which allows the minder to wander. This year a team of Australian and Norwegian researchers released a paper comparing the two major forms of meditation, suggesting that the latter form is better for emotional processing and generalized brain activity. But while we now have a grasp on focused-attention meditation, we’re just at the beginning of understanding how the minute variations in different schools and techniques of meditation affect the brain differently. Still we’ve come a long way in our understanding of the neuroscience of meditation. Just one and a half decades ago, we had little idea how elastic the brain could be in later life and how a top-down brain-shaping process like meditation could change our minds.
And as we’ve furthered out understanding, we’ve made it easier for people to access meditation. Basic guides on meditation have been enhanced by this scientific understanding to create tools like Headspace, an app guiding individuals through meditation intended to help decrease pain and anxiety in cancer survivors (but useful for just about anyone interested in starting out and looking for guidance). In this environment of progress and increasing ease of access, though, it’s important to remember that brain-as-muscle and meditation-as-exercise concept: meditation’s benefits aren’t limited to the religiously observant, but the religiously observant enjoy them in spades because, thanks to rigorous dedication, they’ve sculpted their minds into the neurological equivalent of Olympic athletes. Which is to say, if you want to full benefits of meditation and our understanding of it, you don’t have to convert to Buddhism, but you do have to dedicate yourself to mental exercise the same way you would to a gym schedule.
