30-Second Brain

the Obvious How We Pick Up a Cup

Breathe. Shrink that amygdala, enhance that prefrontal cortex. There is no downside to meditation. Om.

Meditation even reduces the need for sleep. Due to its stress-reducing properties, meditation is increasingly being used as a clinical tool, relieving symptoms of chronic pain, depression, anxiety, schizophrenia and other conditions.

Long-term meditators also appear somewhat protected from dementia, which makes sense given that meditation causes brain regions linked to complex thought and memory to grow instead of shrink.

Unlike brain training, meditation is increasingly being shown to have profound effects on thought, emotions and the brain. For instance, long-term meditators have a shrunken amygdala, a brain region associated with anxiety or fear, and an enlarged prefrontal cortex, associated with our highest forms of cognitive processing and intelligence.

For instance, when we make a movement, our brain predicts the sensory consequences of the movement so that we experience the movement, as self-caused. If these predictions go awry, the brain may falsely attribute control to some external source, leading to a ‘delusion of control’. Recently, the theory has been extended to explain perceptual hallucinations, using the idea that perceptions are also based on predictions. This implies that schizophrenics, unlike most, should be able to tickle themselves, which turns out to be true.

Although certain brain regions decline faster than others, we lose on average approximately 10 per cent of our grey and white matter every decade of our adult lives. Mirroring this, our powers of reasoning, as measured by non-verbal IQ tests, peaks in our early 20s and declines steadily after this.

One recent lab-based training paradigm that has shown some promise, however, involves the tricky task of keeping in mind two different streams of information simultaneously. Not only did performance increase dramatically over the weeks of training on this fiendish exercise, but so did IQ, particularly for those who started in the lower IQ range.

The revelation came when one of the researchers reached for some of the raisins used as treats for the monkeys. To the scientists’ astonishment, they realized that the monkeys’ motor cells had fired, as if they had made the same movement as the researcher. In other words, these cells seemed to have mirror-like properties – they were activated during the execution of an action and by the sight of someone else performing that action.

Feelings provide the basis for human reason – brain-damaged patients left devoid of emotion struggle to make the most elementary decisions.