Positively Left
Photo via flickr by Steffe
For the past several years Richard Davidson and his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison have been studying brain activity in Tibetan monks, both in meditative and non-meditative states.
Davidson’s group had shown earlier that people who are inclined to fall prey to negative emotions displayed a pattern of persistent activity in regions of their right prefrontal cortex.
In those with more positive temperaments, the activity occurred in the left prefrontal cortex instead.
When Davidson ran the experiment on a senior Tibetan lama skilled in meditation, the lama’s baseline of activity proved to be much farther to the left of anyone previously tested.
Davidson recently tested the prefrontal activity in some volunteers from a high-tech company in Wisconsin. One group of volunteers then received eight weeks of training in meditation, while a control group did not. All the participants also received flu shots.
By the end of the study, those who had meditated showed a pronounced shift in brain activity toward the left, “happier,” frontal cortex. The meditators also showed a healthier immune response to the flu shot, suggesting that the training affected the body’s health as well as that of the mind.
more from wired.com
more from National Geographic