Are the benefits of meditation a placebo effect, or a scientific reality?
The practice of meditation has become increasingly popular within Western cultures over the past few years. But meditation cannot be specifically defined, as there are so many different types.
Meditation’s origins are similarly hard to specify, with the only definite fact being that meditation has been around for thousands of years. Wall art that dates from between 5000 to 3500 BCE has been found which depicts people in meditative positions. Descriptions of meditative techniques have also been found within Indian scripture dating from 3000 years ago.
Forms of meditation can be found in almost all the major religions, including: Christianity, Islam, Judaism, but especially so in Buddhism. Meditation is an intrinsic element of Buddhism, which itself has been summarised in the single phrase "To tame this mind of ours". The Buddhist monks achieve this through meditation; they use it to identify ‘delusions’, which are negative states of mind, and to develop ‘virtuous’ minds, which are peaceful and positive mental states. Through this process, the monks can eventually reach Enlightenment, the essence of this being bliss and infinite compassion.
Practisers of meditation claim numerous benefits, such as increased clarity of mind, a perpetuating sense of calm, and improved memory and attention, with a recent study investigated these benefits on cancer sufferers. 90 cancer patients were instructed to practise daily meditation for a seven-week period. When surveyed after this period, the participants reported feeling significantly less anxious, angry and depressed then the control group of patients who hadn’t practised meditation. Studies have also found that meditation decreases production of the chronic-stress hormone cortisol. But can these benefits be scientifically validated? Or are those practising meditation simply experiencing such benefits because of their expectations, thus making meditation no more than a placebo?
Studies were conducted to investigate the brains of long-term meditation practisers, as compared with the brains of people who do not practise meditation. Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) technology was used to measure both brain activity and amounts of gray matter in specific brain regions. In the brains of meditation practisers, localised increases in brain activity and gray matter were observed in brain regions associated with emotion, empathy, compassion, learning and memory. These include the paralimbic region, particularly the insula, and the hippocampus. The frontal cortex- involved in functions such as memory and attention, amongst much more- of meditation practisers’ brains contained more gray matter. Decreased density in the gray matter of the amygdala was also noted, which correlates with decreased cortisol production, and physical arousal. Consequently, meditation was seen to produce neurological changes that are consistent with the claimed benefits of meditation.
Therefore, although placebo may continue to effect expectation's surrounding meditation, there now exists objective neurological evidence which supports many of these claims.
