How God Changes Your Brain - Andrew Newberg, M. D_ [14]
Scans before and after eight weeks of Kirtan Kriya practice showing increased activity in the anterior cingulate (arrow). The fuzziness is due to the type of technology used and rendering a color scan in black-and-white.
Other meditation studies have shown similar benefits. In 2007, researchers at Emory University found that Zen meditation had “neuro-protective effects and reduced the cognitive decline associated with normal aging.”15 Overall, the evidence clearly demonstrates that most forms of contemplative meditation and yoga will exercise your brain in ways that maintain and promote cognitive health and vitality.
Brief prayer, however, has not yet been shown to have a direct effect upon cognition, and it even appears to increase depression in older individuals who are not religiously affiliated.16 However, when prayer is incorporated into longer forms of intense meditation, or practiced within the context of weekly religious activity, many health benefits have been found, including greater length of life.17 Prayer is also associated with a sense of connection to others,18 but the reason it may have little effect on cognition has to do with the length of time it is performed. Prayer is generally conducted for only a few minutes at a time, and we believe that it is the intense, ongoing focus on a specific object, goal, or idea that stimulates the cognitive circuits in the brain.
Schematic showing the circuit activated by Kirtan Kriya: the prefronta cortex (PFC), anterior cingulate (Cing), basal ganglia (BG), and thalamus (Thal). During meditation, we become more focused and alert (PFC), more empathic and socially aware (Cing), and can better control our body movements and emotions (BG). This affects our sensory perception of the world (Thal), and this information is relayed to other parts of the brain.
Our brain-scan study showed that the meditation Gus performed strengthens a specific circuit—involving the prefrontal and orbital-frontal lobe, the anterior cingulate, basal ganglia, and thalamus—that would otherwise deteriorate with age.19 This circuit governs a wide variety of activities involved with consciousness, clarity of mind, reality formation, error detection, empathy, compassion, emotional balance, and the suppression of anger and fear. When this particular circuit malfunctions or deteriorates, it contributes to the formation of depression, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive behavior, and schizophrenia. We can keep this circuit healthy, and even improve it, by incorporating meditation into our daily activities and rituals, regardless of our beliefs.
THE AMAZING PLASTICITY OF THE BRAIN
Next, we asked Gus to perform his meditation in our lab. We again injected him with the tracer, as we had eight weeks before, and we took another scan. We wanted to see if his brain responded differently to the meditation than when he first tried it, and we discovered that toward the end of the twelve-minute practice there was decreased activity in the parietal lobe, a part of the cortex involved with constructing our sense of self.
In our brain-scan studies of nuns and Buddhists, we also found decreased activity in the parietal lobe. When this happens, one's sense of self begins to dissolve, allowing the person to feel unified with the object of contemplation or intention. For the nuns, their goal was to come closer to God. For the Buddhists, it was to experience pure consciousness and awareness. But for Gus, he became unified with his goal of improving memory. We don't fully understand