Enlarge your brain in only 8 weeks!

Having a big brain seems like a very desirable thing right now (it certainly wasn't "trendy" when I was in high school, though). Games like "Big Brain Academy" measure your success by the size of your virtual brain. In the real world, scientific studies right, left and center extol the virtues of anything ranging from exercise to learning a new language as ways of expanding your gray matter. It turns out that learning to manage your stress might also do the trick, as I found out from a recent article pointed out to me by my friend Fawn.

The article looks at mindfulness mediation, a practice that involves becoming aware of experiences in the present moment without judging oneself. Many studies have already shown that mindfulness-based stress reduction programs can ease symptoms of anxiety and depression and can improve sleep and attention. But how does it work? To answer this question, researchers studied what mindfulness meditation does to your brain (to learn about what mindfulness mediation does to your pain, see this post).

The study looked at a handful of participants enrolled in an 8-week Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction course. This course entails one meeting per week, one full day of training in week 6, and daily homework to do at home (meditation exercises). The experiment was very simple: researchers took a picture of each participant's brain using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) at two time points: before the course started, and once it was over (8 weeks later). They also took pictures of the brains of control subjects who didn't take the course (also about 8 weeks apart).

By now I'm sure you've guessed the results: yup, the participants who meditated had significantly bigger brains. One area of the brain in particular was bigger: the hippocampus, a region known for its role in memory, but also involved in emotions. The researchers hypothesized that the increase in gray matter in the brain of people who mediate may explain the improvement they experience in dealing with their emotions. This hypothesis is supported by the fact that people who suffer from certain emotion-related diseases and disorders like depression and post-traumatic stress disorder often have a smaller hippocampus.

While I'm a big believer in meditation (this blog is so biased!), there are two limitations of this study worth mentioning. First, the researchers only looked at about 14 participants in each group. That's a pretty small sample, so it will be interesting to see what later experiments looking at more subjects come up with. Second, the mindfulness-based stress reduction program is not only about meditating: it also involves social interaction at the weekly meetings, stress education, and gentle stretching, which the control participants didn't get. So it's quite possible that the effect described here (bigger brains) are not the result of meditation per se. At this point we can't tease it out.

Regardless of these limitations, though, the study drives home an important message: the adult brain can change in response to training. I for one find some comfort in that.



Reference: Mindfulness practice leads to increases in regional brain gray matter density. (2011) Holzel BK et al. Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, 191:36-43.

Oms for ouches

In North America one in three people struggle with chronic pain. Old sports injuries, carpal tunnel syndrome, migraines, the causes are varied, and the treatments are few. In my case, too many hours of swimming have done a number on my shoulders, and I’m left popping Advils like they’re jelly beans. Forced to quit swimming, I now took up cycling, to make sure I wreck my knees and get the full body experience. In any case, chronic pain can be debilitating, and to the sufferers, it often seems like there is no way out. Interestingly, a new study suggests that a little open mindedness in the form of mediation can be a huge help.

The study looks at the effectiveness of a technique called mindfulness mediation for the reduction of chronic pain in various conditions ranging from arthritis to fibromyalgia. Mindfulness meditation aims at paying close attention to the moment, at accepting thoughts and sensations for what they are, without judging them and without reacting to them. It takes practice, and commitment, but an increasing number of people swear by it for improving their quality of life.

The researchers studied over 100 participants with chronic pain before and after an 8-week regimen of mindfulness meditation, performed both in weekly classes and at home. The outcome survey assessed a number of parameters such as body pain, vitality and fatigue, limitations due to physical health problems (try washing your hair when both your shoulders feel broken), and so on.

Overall, mindfulness meditation lead to a significant improvement of all the parameters studied. Not only that, it lead to clinically relevant changes in measures like bodily pain and general health perception. Interestingly, when you divide the group by specific health condition, some conditions show a much greater improvement than others. For example, arthritis and back/neck pain sufferers benefited from meditation more than headache/migraine sufferers.

So how does mindfulness meditation work? Because we are just beginning to understand the impact of meditation in the brain, we can only take educated guesses. It is possible that meditation can regulate sensory and affective aspects of pain itself (i.e. you actually hurt less). It is also possible that meditation acts to reduce distressing thoughts that come with pain and usually amplify the pain feeling (i.e. you still hurt, but you stress out about it less, so the pain doesn’t seem as bad). It may also be a combination of both (isn’t it always?).

The study is very convincing, but it’s not perfect. Without a proper control group (i.e. a cohort of people who have chronic pain but don’t meditate), it’s not possible to rule out that everyone just had a spontaneous improvement in their pain. However, given that most participants had been experiencing pain for several years, this seems unlikely. In addition, the sample sizes for individual condition groups were pretty small (27 to 53 individuals per group), which limits statistical power. Finally, the participants in the study were not very heterogeneous, being mostly well-educated Caucasian women, so who knows if this applies to everyone.

Mindfulness meditation is obviously no miracle cure for chronic pain, but it sure seems like it can help people cope with the pain. In my humble opinion, it can only be a good thing to take some time to breathe correctly and relax. It would be extra nice if the researchers also recommended daily naps, though.

Mr. Minou is also an adept of meditation.

Reference: Mindfulness-based stress reduction for chronic pain conditions: variation in treatment outcomes and role of home meditation practice. (2010) Rosenzweig S, Greeson JM, Reibel DK, Green JS, Jasser SA, Beasley D. J Psychosom Res. 68(1):29-36.