Meditation, as a decompression training, has been well known by the public all over the world, and many people have participated in this training. Meditation is beneficial to people's mental health, such as getting rid of the problem of daydreaming, making thinking more active and making people less anxious when things happen. However, how did all this happen? Will the brain, which carries psychological functions, change because of meditation?

First, the youngest part of the human body

In fact, the human brain is probably the youngest part of the human body. If there is only one puberty stage in other body parts, then for the human brain, it is adolescence for life. This is because the human brain is plastic all its life, that is, it can change itself to adapt to the new environment and new tasks, and the research results related to meditation also support this view. Psychologists have found that meditation can change the structure of the human brain and its functions.

In 2009, psychologists at UCLA recruited 44 people with rich meditation experience. They had an average of 24 years of meditation experience and meditated 10~90 minutes every day. The researchers used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to observe the gray matter of the meditator's brain, so as to analyze its brain structural characteristics.

They found that people who meditate often have more gray matter in the right orbital frontal cortex, the right thalamus and the left lower lobe than ordinary people. In other words, the brain structure of meditators is obviously different from that of ordinary people.

The gray matter of the brain is mainly composed of neuronal cells. It is pink in the living brain, so it is named because it turns gray when soaked in preservative solution. Experiments show that meditators have more brain cells in the gray matter, which explains why they are more focused mentally and emotionally stable. The structural changes of these brain parts provide them with opportunities to play more potential. For example, there has been a lot of evidence that the orbitofrontal cortex has an extremely important influence on people's "execution."

Second, how does the brain concentrate?

In a study in 20 1 1 year, psychologists focused on brain waves, and they used magnetoencephalography equipment to observe the changes of human brain waves. A wave is one of the most common brain waves. When a person pays attention to a possible thing, the brain cells used to perceive it will produce low-frequency A waves, and the frequency of A waves in the cerebral cortex that has nothing to do with it will increase. The generation of low-frequency A wave indicates that this part of the brain is activated, while the increase of the frequency of A wave indicates that this part of the brain is in a state of inhibition.

For example, when you are waiting for a program to appear in front of the TV, your brain is in the same state as what we said above. Some areas are in a state of vigilance, and the frequency of A waves is low, while the frequency of A waves in other areas is high. Those brain regions that deal with things that have nothing to do with the program are not as active as those you use to expect the program, so that someone may knock at the door and not hear it. This is why the so-called brain helps us eliminate interference and concentrate.

In a study completed by Massachusetts General Hospital and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, researchers recruited a group of volunteers who had never been exposed to meditation courses before. Divide them into two groups, one group will receive 8 weeks of meditation training, and the other group will live as usual during these 8 weeks without contact with meditation training.

Eight weeks later, the researchers observed the changes of brain waves when they completed an attention task with a magnetoencephalography machine. It was found that those who received meditation training had faster brain wave regulation. That is, from the general mental state to the state of concentration, the brain waves change significantly faster. This shows that their ability to regulate their brain functions has increased. This also explains why meditation can get rid of our daydreaming.

In 20 12 years, psychologists used another observation method-functional magnetic resonance imaging to study the influence of meditation on the human brain. The researchers also recruited volunteers for 8 weeks of meditation training. In the first three weeks and the last three weeks of the eight-week training, they observed the changes of blood oxygen in the volunteers' brains to determine the influence of meditation training on the brain function of meditators.

As expected, after meditation training, volunteers' right amygdala did not react as strongly as before when faced with pictures of different emotions (amygdala is a brain structure involved in emotional management in the human brain). This result supports the hypothesis that meditation promotes emotional stability.

Also in 20 12, psychologists also studied another brain structure index of meditators-the gyrus. In the past, in terms of brain structure, scientists focused on the differences between meditators in the size of gray matter and the thickness of cortex. But there is another brain structural feature that has not been associated with meditation before, and this feature is the folds on the surface of human brain.

I believe everyone's impression of the brain is like this: the surface is covered with gullies, like a high slope of Huangshi eroded by wind and water. Practical research shows that the greater the surface area of the brain, the smarter people are, and the more wrinkles the brain has, the greater its surface area. It's like two carpets, one tiled and the other stacked. Although they occupy the same area on the plane, in fact, if the stacked one is unfolded, it must be larger than the tiled one.

Therefore, the wrinkles on the brain surface are also an interesting part of brain scientists' concern. In 1988, zilles, a scientist, put forward a method to measure the degree of wrinkles in our brains, and called it "gyrus index". 20 12 years, Professor Luders from UCLA School of Medicine. The "brain gyrus index" is used to measure the difference between meditators and ordinary people.

He found 50 people who meditated for a long time and 50 people who didn't meditate. As a result, people who take meditation as a common practice have more cortical folds than others, and their brain surface area is larger. Moreover, there is a positive correlation between the gyrus index and the number of years of meditation. That is to say, the more people meditate, the greater the index of brain gyrus and the greater changes have taken place in the brain structure.

Through the research in recent years, psychologists have gradually figured out the relationship between meditation and the human brain. Meditation plays a positive role in terms of gray matter, brain waves, gyrus and cerebral oxygen status.

Studies have shown that whether you are young or old, you can always use meditation to protect the health of your brain. Meditation can improve the function of human brain and make people more calm and sharp.