Meditation and bigger brains

May 18 - People who meditate tend to have larger brains compared to those who don't, a new study by the UCLA Laboratory for Neuro Imaging says.

Researchers used high-resolution magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to scan the brains of people who meditate and found that certain regions in the brains of long-term meditators were larger than in the brains of those who do not.

The study showed that meditators had significantly larger volumes of the hippocampus and areas within the orbito-frontal cortex, the thalamus and the inferior temporal gyrus, all areas known for regulating emotions.

Researchers examined 44 people, half of whom were control subjects. The other 22 had practiced various forms of meditation for between five and 46 years. The average was 24 years.

More than half of all the meditators said that deep concentration was an essential part of their practice, and most meditated for between ten and 90 minutes every day.

The researchers used a high-resolution, three-dimensional form of MRI and two different approaches to measure differences in brain structure.

One approach automatically divides the brain into several regions of interest, allowing researchers to compare the size of certain brain structures. The other segments the brain into different tissue types, allowing researchers to compare the amount of gray matter within specific regions of the brain.

The researchers found significantly larger cerebral measurements in meditators compared with controls, including larger volumes of the right hippocampus and increased gray matter in the right orbito-frontal cortex, the right thalamus and the left inferior temporal lobe. There were no regions where controls had significantly larger volumes or more gray matter than meditators.

The study does not conclude definitively that meditation necessarily produces brain growth. It may be that those attracted to meditation were already endowed with more regional gray matter, a factor which drew them to meditation in the first place.

(SOUNDBITE) (English) RESEARCHER EILEEN LUDERS:

(SOUNDBITE) (English) MEDITATION INSTRUCTOR DIANA WINSTON:

(SOUNDBITE) (English) MEDITATION STUDENT DON MCCORMICK: