Meditation and Your Brain
Meditation is one of the oldest practice on earth. Practitioners have reported all sort of benefits… but is there any scientific basis?
Well, the scientific community as of today couldn’t prove (just yet) exactly how meditation can improve your brain and your overall health but a handful of studies have done that clearly shows a difference.
The first study was published in the Journal of Neurophysiology back in 1995. The experiment involved 4 group. The first practiced piano with specific instructions. The second group randomly played the piano. The third observed the first group and imagined playing the piano. And fourth group is the control - they didn’t do anything.
The result? The third group - the group that only mentally rehearsed showed almost the same amount of neuronal development as the group that physically practiced. Though the researcher did not actually asked the subjects to play the piano, previous research has established that the stronger your neuronal development is, the better you are at doing something.
To verify this fact, let’s take a look at another study. This study is conducted by Drs Guang Ye and Kelly Cole. They had two groups of subjects. The first performed finger exercises and the second imagined doing the same exercises.
Results? While the first increased their finger strength by 34%, the people who merely imagined also increased their finger strength… by 22%. Though they didn’t quite as well, imagined what would’ve happened if they did both?
Intense imagination, which is a form of meditation, is in fact a common practice among top performers in their field, be it a 100m dasher, a triathlete or a rapper. They imagined how they are going to perform before actually going out to the “stage”.
The principle behind what makes meditation work, is called “Hebbian Learning”. That is - neurons that fire together, wire together. The stronger the link, the better you do. And guess what? Imagining and physically doing something fires the same network of neurons… resulting in the same effect.
It is for this reason that meditation is highly recommended if you want to maintain your brain fitness. It allows you to stimulate your neurons just as brain exercises do and thus keeps them active. This is important because guess what’s the opposite impact of Hebbian Leaning?
Neurons that no longer fire together… no longer wire together.
