April 30, 2011

A recent study published in the Brain Research Bulletin reports that mindfulness meditation may help the brain manage pain and improve working memory by controlling an important brain wave known as the alpha rhythm, which according to the researchers, can “turn down the volume” on distractions.

Conducted by a team from Massachusetts General Hospital, Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the small study tested twelve healthy volunteers. Six completed an eight-week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course and the other six formed a control group without training.

Researchers measured the six participants’ alpha rhythms before, during and after completing the eight-week course using imaging technology that detects the location of brain activity. More specifically, while monitoring the brain area that processes signals from the left hand, participants were told to focus attention on either their left hand or left foot. Results were then compared against those of the six untrained participants.

According to the researchers, although all participants registered some degree of attention-related alpha rhythm changes at the start, by the end of the eight weeks those who completed the mindfulness training “made faster and significantly more pronounced attention-based adjustments to the alpha rhythm” than the control group.

"This result may explain reports that mindfulness meditation decreases pain perception," said co-lead author of the report Catherine Kerr, PhD of the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Osher Research Center at Harvard Medical School, in a news release provided by Massachusetts General. "Enhanced ability to turn the alpha rhythm up or down could give practitioners' greater ability to regulate pain sensation."

"Mindfulness meditation has been reported to enhance numerous mental abilities, including rapid memory recall," said Kerr in the release. "Our discovery that mindfulness meditators more quickly adjusted the brain wave that screens out distraction could explain their superior ability to rapidly remember and incorporate new facts."

Source: Massachusetts General Hospital

Study: Kerr, C. E. et al. “Effects of Mindfulness Meditation Training on Anticipatory Alpha Modulation in Primary Somatosensory Cortex”. Brain Research Bulletin. Online 2011 Apr 8.

Dave Gorczynski is president of SPARK, a non-profit organization that has provided free energy work sessions and workshops across New York City since 2002. He writes a regular column about energy work and meditation for the Compact News in New York City's Chinatown. E-mail him at dave@sparkenergy.org.