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Can meditation change the brain?

Yes. People who concentrate a lot are good at concentrating. That is what the surrogate markers they are looking at reflect.
 
skepticdoc said:
http://labnotes.talk.newsweek.com/default.asp?item=593703

I am posting this to get the unvarnished, raw opinion of this "No BS allowed" forum.
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His final conclusion is not totally valid, he states
"Their previous practice of meditation is influencing their performance on this task," Davidson says. "The conventional view is that attentional resources are limited. This shows that attention capabilities can be enhanced through learning."

My bolding.

To prove that it is *meditation* that is key to this learning you would need another control group. One that, for the same period that the meditation training was being performed, had training in spotting two numbers in a stream of letters.
 
Can thinking change the brain? This is a bit like asking "Can using muscles change them"? Of course it can. Exactly how it changes it is a different matter, and there seems to be no evidence to suggest meditation is special at all.
 
What I really wonder is...are those changes useful? What is the practical application that would be of benefit to the person who practices meditiation?
 
kellyb said:
What I really wonder is...are those changes useful? What is the practical application that would be of benefit to the person who practices meditiation?
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Well, the ability to notice what's going on around you (which is the ability tested) would appear to be useful. Another abiliiy that has been associated with meditation in some studies is the ability to ignore distractions. If you work in a noisy environment but can more easily concentrate on what you're doing, you'll be a better worker with concommittant pay raises. That practical enough for you?
 
drkitten said:
Well, the ability to notice what's going on around you (which is the ability tested) would appear to be useful. Another abiliiy that has been associated with meditation in some studies is the ability to ignore distractions. If you work in a noisy environment but can more easily concentrate on what you're doing, you'll be a better worker with concommittant pay raises. That practical enough for you?
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Can you provide an example that can be achieved by mediation and not by another method of training? That was my objection to the conclusion come to in the article posted by the OP.
 
EHocking said:
Can you provide an example that can be achieved by mediation and not by another method of training?
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Probably not. The human mind and body don't work that way; there's always alternate ways to get any particular benefit.

If you need to get in shape, you can use the stationary bicycle. Or you can use the treadmill. Or you can swim laps in the pool, or join the karate club, or take up rock climbing. There's nothing you'll get from rock climbing that you couldn't get from another training regime. Doesn't mean that rock climbing is useless, or woo, or silly, though.

Nor, for that matter, does the fact that you can achieve the benefits of rock climbing through other means mean that rock climbing isn't what got you in shape.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

And, frankly, I think rock climbing's a lot more fun than using the stationary bicycle.
 
drkitten said:
Well, the ability to notice what's going on around you (which is the ability tested) would appear to be useful. Another abiliiy that has been associated with meditation in some studies is the ability to ignore distractions. If you work in a noisy environment but can more easily concentrate on what you're doing, you'll be a better worker with concommittant pay raises. That practical enough for you?
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Well, if the benefits of meditation for ignoring noise were skills that were easily acquired simply working on the job for a few days, and it took 6 months of daily meditation to develop skills that come naturally in a day or so under pressure, then maybe not. It could still be a monumental waste of time.

As far as "noticing what's going on around you" goes, I guess my understanding is that the human brain is always active, and in a constant state of change, and always adapting to the needs at hand.
Going back to the test that was referred to in the OP, there could be a general benefit to not noticing the second surprise in the sequence. Maybe in everyday life under most circumstances, devoting cognitive resources to processing the original deviation from the pattern is advantageous.

"Different" isn't necessarily "better".
 
kellyb said:
Well, if the benefits of meditation for ignoring noise were skills that were easily acquired simply working on the job for a few days, and it took 6 months of daily meditation to develop skills that come naturally in a day or so under pressure, then maybe not. It could still be a monumental waste of time.
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Shrug. If you enjoy it, it's not a waste of time. If you enjoy it and it benefits you, so much the better.
 
drkitten said:
Probably not. The human mind and body don't work that way; there's always alternate ways to get any particular benefit.

If you need to get in shape, you can use the stationary bicycle. Or you can use the treadmill. Or you can swim laps in the pool, or join the karate club, or take up rock climbing. There's nothing you'll get from rock climbing that you couldn't get from another training regime. Doesn't mean that rock climbing is useless, or woo, or silly, though.

Nor, for that matter, does the fact that you can achieve the benefits of rock climbing through other means mean that rock climbing isn't what got you in shape.

Quite the opposite, in fact.

And, frankly, I think rock climbing's a lot more fun than using the stationary bicycle.
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All well and good, I'm merely noting that in my opinion this is bad science.

The neurologist set out to prove "the causal arrow really does point from meditation to brain changes rather than from brain differences to a life of meditation. Specifically, meditation can change brain circuits linked to attention."

There was absolutely no control group for achieving the same result through different means, but the conclusion of the article implies that meditation is the name of the game.

The entire "experiment" was merely an exercise in belief confirmation. Frankly, after reading the synopsis I'm even less impressed with his all encompassing conclusion, since it is based on only a *specific* set of data, and that is "After the three-month training period, each member of the practitioner group showed improved detection of the second target, if it appeared within half a second after the first target. (my bolding).

16 of the 23 in the "control" group showed a similar achievement.

It makes me wonder what data was ignored in order for the good doctor to support his preconception.
 
EHocking said:
The neurologist set out to prove "the causal arrow really does point from meditation to brain changes rather than from brain differences to a life of meditation. Specifically, meditation can change brain circuits linked to attention." There was absolutely no control group for achieving the same result through different means, but the conclusion of the article implies that meditation is the name of the game.
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I'm afraid I consider this criticism to be totally unfounded.

The experiment used a before-and-after set of matched controls; the patients' performance on the test prior to meditation experiments was compared to their performance afterwards, and difference were found. Therefore, he concludes that meditation has a causal effect on attentional performance, instead of attentional performance having an effect on meditation. Prior studies, which looked only at meditational experts controlled with "normals" were only able to show a correlation between the two, but not a causal arrow.
 
drkitten said:
I'm afraid I consider this criticism to be totally unfounded.

The experiment used a before-and-after set of matched controls; the patients' performance on the test prior to meditation experiments was compared to their performance afterwards, and difference were found. Therefore, he concludes that meditation has a causal effect on attentional performance, instead of attentional performance having an effect on meditation. Prior studies, which looked only at meditational experts controlled with "normals" were only able to show a correlation between the two, but not a causal arrow.
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Except that he has not present ALL the data. His conclusion is based ONLY on the results for spotting the second number "if it appeared within half a second after the first target".

It smacks of data mining to get the desired result.

What is the scientific basis for excluding the other results? We don't know because it is not discussed.

What is the scientific significance of this 1/2 second period? We don't know because it is not discussed.

Does the other data show significant positive results for either of the groups? We don't know because it is not presented and not discussed.

I'm willing to concede that a non-meditation control group trained on the character recognition test for a similar period is not necessarilly a damning flaw in the experiment. I objected initially because it's exclusion undermines the experiment's ability to stand on it's own as supporting the conclusion WITHOUT the preceding experimental results to support the supposition.

I DO object that (seemingly) only supporting data has been presented in order to prove the hypothesis and conclusion.

My other objection was that part of the conclusion states, "This shows that attention capabilities can be enhanced through learning."
This may well be quite valid but has not clearly been demonstrated
1. through his data mining of the results and
2. "learning" has not been investigated, only meditation. The conclusion IMPLIES that meditation is a superior learning technique for this particular test, but ALTERNATIVES are not investigated.

To me it the experiment really doesn't do much to promote the significance of meditation in learning because of these flaws.
 
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EHocking said:
Can you provide an example that can be achieved by mediation and not by another method of training? That was my objection to the conclusion come to in the article posted by the OP.
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Years ago, I bought a "Mindlab" device. This was a generator of sound and light patterns which the user experienced via earphones and specs with LEDs.
Supposedly based on Grey Walter's pioneering work, it was claimed to improve concentration and do all sorts of good stuf. What it certainly did for me was put me to sleep, and for some folk it would be worth it for that alone.

When a friend, who had practised Transcendental Meditation years earlier tried it, she immediately commented that it brought her mantra back to mind and induced a TM like state of relaxation.
Anecdotal, but suggestive that the two techniques generated similar results.

This is the opposite of what you requested, but I thought might be of interest.
 
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