Thursday, July 26, 2012

Insight meditation

          Studies done by Yale, Harvard, Massachusetts General Hospital have shown that meditation increases gray matter in specific regions of the brain and may slow the deterioration of the brain as a part of the natural aging process. 
 
         The experiment included 20 individuals with intensive Buddhist "insight meditation" training and 15 who did not meditate. The brain scan revealed that those who meditated have an increased thickness of gray matter in parts of the brain that are responsible for attention and processing sensory input. Some of the participants meditated for 40 minutes a day while others had been doing it for years. The results showed that the change in brain thickness depended upon the amount of time spent in meditation. The increase in thickness ranged between .004 and .008 inches (3.175 x 10−6m – 6.35 x 10 −6m).

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