Meditation is a self-activity that relaxes one’s mind and composes one’s thoughts to achieve awareness and mental settlement. Many people mistake this as a boring, sleep-inducing exercise, but it actually awakens your mind rather than makes you sleepy.
Physical exercises require your body to work, but mental exercises such as meditation require your mind to function. There have been numerous benefits to our cognitive function which is why it’s a highly recommended brain “exercise” that anyone can do at any time, anywhere.
Throughout the years, many studies have found that mindfulness meditation can improve one’s ability to sustain attention and focus. The DMN or the default mode network is responsible for mind-wandering. This is active when a person’s mind starts wandering or not thinking about anything specific. Meditation helps reduce these instances and helps the DMN become less active.
To test this, one study used a standardized test to see how meditation helped improve focus and cognitive function through test results. Results showed an increased 16 percentile in people who participated in a 2-week controlled group undergoing mindfulness meditation. Many people struggle with staying focused, and it helps to know that meditation has science-backed benefits for this.
One research on mindfulness meditation published in 2010 found that brief daily meditation not only improved mood and alertness but also reduced fatigue and anxiety. It also showed significant improvements in a person’s memory, visio-spatial processing, and general executive function. When mapping the brain to qualify the effects of mindfulness meditation on the brain, we can take a look at the hippocampus, responsible for our memory and learning. In a 2011 research, it was found that 8 weeks of mindfulness meditation resulted in an increase in cortical thickness of the hippocampus. Cortical thickness is an essential brain morphometric measure, typically associated with intellectual ability or general intelligence.
Its impact on the hippocampus is what ties the theory that meditation has a direct effect on one’s mood and emotions. Aside from the hippocampus, meditation also affects the volume of brain cell volume in the amygdala, the part of the brain responsible for emotional memories and the associations made relating to feelings in a situation. An increased amygdala volume is related to disorderly behavior.
The hippocampus connects with the amygdala, and it helps regulate emotions and how we process our feelings. Since meditation increases self-awareness, it can have a positive effect on symptoms of depression. In fact, one researcher from Johns Hopkins found that daily meditation also had the same effect size as antidepressants, at 0.3 for both. This is already a huge deal because of how comparable the impact is to prescriptions.
A new type of therapy is being used called Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy, or MBCT. This is becoming a widely used cognitive behavioral therapy method, initially used to prevent a relapse in people diagnosed with major depression. Meditation is the key activity in this therapy because of how it helps the person regulate negative thoughts.
Meditation can also be a good tool to help the cognitive development of young and developing kids. It helps them control their emotions, make sense of their thoughts, and how to appropriately express their feelings. However, some research found that it can also have a positive effect on normal age-related cognitive decline.
Sedentary activity, such as mindlessly sitting on the couch watching TV, can contribute to cognitive decline if prolonged. This is why seniors who don’t have routines or hobbies are more likely to decline. Aside from their age, their lack of brain-stimulating activities causes their brain cells to die.
Meditation requires you to actively exercise your brain. Because it improves one’s intellectual cognizance, it can help older people slow down the aging effects on the brain. It also improves memory, which is common in older people,
Regularly exercising the brain helps prevent the death of brain cells. Further, it can even help with the formation of connections in the neurons. Such connections are necessary for the brain to communicate with the rest of the body. That’s why meditation can be very useful in slowing cognitive decline.
Sources
https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2018/04/harvard-researchers-study-how-mindfulness-may-change-the-brain-in-depressed-patients/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4024457/
https://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2015/02/09/7-ways-meditation-can-actually-change-the-brain/?sh=c767c9614658
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