Meditation improves brain wiring in just one month

London -  Researchers have found that just a month of meditation training alters brain wiring in ways that could open the door to new treatments for mental disorders. 

They looked at the effects of integrative body-mind training (IBMT) on two groups of university students.

Scans showed physical changes in the brains of the volunteers after just four weeks, or 11 hours, of training.

Nerve fibres, known as ‘white matter’, became denser, providing greater numbers of brain-signalling connections. At the same time there was an expansion of myelin, the protective fatty  insulation surrounding nerve fibres.

The effects were seen in the anterior cingulate cortex region of the brain, which helps regulate behaviour.

Poor nerve activity in this part of the brain is associated with a range of mental problems, including attention deficit disorder, dementia, depression, and schizophrenia.

The study built on previous research based on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans that first highlighted brain changes induced by IBMT.
Scientists revisited results from two 2010 studies, taking a closer look at what the scans revealed.

One involved 45 US students from the University of Oregon and the other 68 students from China’s Dalian University of Technology.

The researchers found greater density of axons, or nerve fibres, after two weeks of IBMT training, but no change in myelin formation.

After a month both increases in axon density and myelin were seen.

Students undergoing IBMT also reported improvements in mood, experiencing reduced levels of anger, depression, anxiety and fatigue. They also had lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol.

“This study gives us a much more detailed picture of what it is that is actually changing,” the Daily Mail quoted study leader Professor Michael Posner, from the University of Oregon, who carried out the original US research, as saying.

“We did confirm the exact locations of the white-matter changes that we had found previously. And now we show that both myelination and axon density are improving.

“The order of changes we found may be similar to changes found during brain development in early childhood, allowing a new way to reveal how such changes might influence emotional and cognitive development,” he added.

The scientists concluded: “This dynamic pattern of white matter change involving the anterior cingulate cortex, a part of the brain network related to self-regulation, could provide a means for intervention to improve or prevent mental disorders.”

The findings were reported in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.