Meditation Shown to Light Up Brains of Buddhists
Wed May 21, 2:48 PM ET - Reuters

LONDON (Reuters) - Buddhists really are happy, calm and serene people -- at least according to their brain scans.

Using new scanning techniques, neuroscientists have discovered that certain areas of the brain light up constantly in Buddhists, which indicates positive emotions and good mood. This happens at times even when they are not meditating.

"We can now hypothesize with some confidence that those apparently happy, calm Buddhist souls one regularly comes across in places such as Dharamsala, India, really are happy," Professor Owen Flanagan, of Duke University in North Carolina, said Wednesday.

Dharamsala is the home base of exiled Tibetan leader the Dalai Lama.

The scanning studies by scientists at the University of Wisconsin at Madison showed activity in the left prefrontal lobes of experienced Buddhist practitioners. The area is linked to positive emotions, self-control and temperament.

Other research by Paul Ekman, of the University of California San Francisco Medical Center, suggests that meditation and mindfulness can tame the amygdala, an area of the brain which is the hub of fear memory.

Ekman discovered that experienced Buddhists were less likely to be shocked, flustered, surprised or as angry as other people.

Flanagan believes that if the findings of the studies can be confirmed they could be of major importance.

"The most reasonable hypothesis is that there is something about conscientious Buddhist practice that results in the kind of happiness we all seek," Flanagan said in a report in New Scientist magazine.

Ekman discovered that experienced Buddhists were less likely to be shocked, flustered, surprised or as angry as other people.

I'm going to organize a protest against the mistreatment of laboratory Buddhists.

Very interesting!

I can say that my brain certainly feels like it's "lighting up" with morning meditation. Often, I actually see all sorts of lights, mostly in the violet and blue range. Very relaxing!

There are also brain wave correlations with meditation. Lots and lots of experiments on that.

- originally posted 6/2/03 -

Tara Bennett Goleman, Daniel Golman's (author of "Emotional Intelligence") wife, devotes most of her own book ("Emotional Alchemy") to how mindfulness can be blended into psychotherapy, especially to help people who had poor attachment relationships early on in life. She cites some of the early research you have mentioned here, JB.

One of my closest friends just gave birth to her second child, and I've already spent some time helping she and her husband when he has to work. They have her mother living with them, but in spite of so much to do and a three-old to attend to, that mother-child bond is simply a miraculous and essential continuum of resilient moments. We have to remember that these monks in India, even the ones that suffered at the hands of the Chinese, are largely people who had solid early attachment relationships. Of course, there are exceptions to that among these immigrant Tibetan groups, and it would be interesting to study them as a separate group, which I don't believe has been done. The brain is quite malleable, or "plastic," even throughout life, but when the trouble is as severe as an attachment disorder, the benefits of meditation may be even more crucial, yet limited when compared to those monks whose first years were relatively secured in the ways psychobiology intends.

From watching my friend, and having been close to her family and seen the profound effects of attachment relatedness on her first child, it is clear to me that mindfulness practice in some form is essential for self-regulation, and in the case of attachment disorders, can help restore self-cohesion in the presence of a therapist who can provide the being-space we see mothers giving their young children - a space that is intuitive understanding, warm, yet not intrusive - allowing the child to be a separate being from the very beginning, with many fluid degrees of connection available to the infant, respecting her unique traits.

There is a new book out on the "Nature-Nurture" issue, and I'll get you guys the title this afternoon. The reviews basically state the authors'(neuroscientists)coverage of the latest research showing the way experience not only shapes the brain early on, but directly impacts gene expression.

I am reading a book on Chakras right now that talks about an ancient school for initiates that required them to enter a sealed tomb for 9 days. While in that tomb they not only had to focus their energies enough to grow full stalks of wheat before they emerged, but, they also had to see enough to navigate around a floor full of venomous snakes. Supposedly there were able to draw enough energy into their auras to literally illuminate their surroundings.

True or not true, it's certainly an interesting thought. The countless visual and verbal references to halos, auras, lights, etc. around holy people would simply confirm the "scientific" evidence from the arena of myth, legend and history.