Here is a copy of a great article that I memtioned in the post below on stress management:
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Meditation Can Wish You Well, StudySays
By Amanda Gardner
HealthDay Reporter
THURSDAY, March 27 (HealthDay News) — Newresearch suggests that qualities the world desperately needs more of — love,kindness and compassion — are indeed teachable.
Imaging technology shows that people who practice meditation thatfocuses on kindness and compassion actually undergo changes in areas of thebrain that make them more in tune to what others are feeling.
"Potentially one can train oneself to behave in a way which is morebenevolent and altruistic," said study co-author Antoine Lutz, anassociate scientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
How far this idea can be extrapolated remains in question, though.
"I think there's no question that people can benefit from thesepractices," said Dr. Louis Teichholz, medical director of complementarymedicine and chief of cardiology at Hackensack University Medical Center in NewJersey. "I think the question is how easy is it to get trained enough sothat it will make a clinical difference, and I don't think this study answersthat."
The findings were published in the March 26 issue of the PublicLibrary of Science One.
Recent brain-imaging studies have suggested that the insula and theanterior cingulate cortices regions are involved in the empathic response toother people's pain. But not much is known about how cultivating compassionmight affect brain circuitry.
And previous research has indicated that meditation may reduce thebrain's reaction to pain, and that it may actually improve cardiovascularhealth by decreasing the risk of metabolic syndrome.
"The main research question was to see whether some positivequalities such as loving-kindness and compassion or, in general, pro-socialaltruistic behavior, can be understood as skills and can be trained," Lutzexplained.
In the same way that training in sports or chess or music producesfunctional and structural changes in the brain, the Wisconsin researcherswanted to see if cultivating compassion through the practice of meditation alsoproduced brain changes — suggesting that compassion could be viewed as alearned skill.
The study involved 32 people: 16 Tibetan monks and lay practitioners,who had meditated for a minimum of 10,000 hours throughout their lifetime (the"experts"); and 16 control subjects, who had only recently beentaught the basics of compassion meditation (the "novices").
The senior author of the paper, Richard Davidson, a professor ofpsychiatry and psychology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an experton imaging the effects of meditation, has been collaborating with the DalaiLama since 1992, studying the brains of Tibetan monks.
For the study, individuals in the control group were instructed first towish loved ones well-being and freedom from pain, then to wish such benefits tohumankind as a whole.
"We looked at whether there were any differences between expertsand novices in generating compassion with the idea that a central practice inthis tradition [of meditation] is to cultivate these positive emotions,"Lutz said. "We wanted to see if there were any differences in the way thebrain was reacting."
Each participant was hooked up to a functional MRI both while meditatingand not meditating. During each state, the participants heard sounds designedto produce responses: the negative sound of a distressed woman, the positivesound of a baby laughing, and the neutral sound of background noise from arestaurant.
"We showed altered activation in brain circuitry that waspreviously linked to empathy and perspective-taking or the capacity tounderstand other's intentions and mental states and, more precisely, the insulawas more activated, particularly in response to negative emotionalsounds," Lutz said.
In the monks, especially, these areas of the brain were activated evenmore when they hard the cries of the distressed woman, she said.
The study authors hope the findings might one day help with a range ofproblems, including reducing the incidence of bullying in schools or helpingpeople with depression.
"The next step is to see if this works," Lutz said. "Ifit works, then it can be applied to selective populations — for instance,depressed people or, more broadly, in education."
SOURCES: Antoine Lutz, Ph.D., associate scientist, WaismanCenter, University of Wisconsin-Madison; Louis E. Teichholz, M.D., medicaldirector, complementary medicine, and chief, cardiology, Hackensack UniversityMedical Center, New Jersey; March 26, 2008, Public Library of Science One
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