From “The Neurobiology of Mindfulness Meditation” by Fedal Zeidan, PhD, Wake Forest School of Medicine, North Carolina.
Click here to read the full text.
For thousands of years, contemplatives have reported that enhancements in sensory awareness, cognition, and health can be accomplished through meditation practice. Before the development and utilization of neuroimaging and other scientific methodologies, the scientific world cast these descriptions as reflections of a relaxation response at best, and report biases associated with practitioner zeal at worst.
The recent surge in number of mindfulness-based studies has supported the claim that mindfulness meditation can improve a range of mental and physical health outcomes, and neuroimaging studies are beginning to identify the brain mechanisms that mediate the relationships between mindfulness meditation and such outcomes.
Although the neuroscientific investigation of mindfulness meditation is in its infancy, the premise of this chapter is that mindfulness meditation engages a unique, distributed network of brain regions.
Zeidan, F. (2014). The Neurobiology of Mindfulness Meditation. In The Handbook of Mindfulness. New York: Guilford Press. In press.
Peter:
I am not sure that the scientific establishment has been in as strong opposition as you suggest. Indeed, there is some worry that it has been too welcoming, too easily seduced by an attractive idea. But just as I was about to put virtual pen to virtual paper to offer a few comments, I ran across this article which sums up the disparate issues quite nicely.
http://www.salon.com/2014/12/06/mindfulness_truthiness_problem_sam_harris_science_and_the_truth_about_buddhist_tradition/
Nice to hear from you, Peter Reiner, thank you for the link. The title of my post is based on the first line in Zeidan’s chapter.
p.s. To avoid confusion about the similarity of names of the two Peters: they were neighbours many years ago and Dr. Reiner is a university professor with an interest in neuroethics and the commercialization of neuroscience (http://www.neuroscience.ubc.ca/reiner.htm).
The article Peter Reiner points to doesn’t help me with the does-science-support-the-efficacy-of-mindfulness-meditation conundrum. At worst, it stirs already muddy waters by quoting from all over the debate spectrum; at best, it calls me think about what I do and what I tell others.
I’ve been guiding weekly mindfulness meditation groups for five years now. Participants persist in assuring me that their practice helps them cope with work-related stress and/or the life-altering experience of pain and grief arising from living with cancer. As a researcher cited in the article says, “Public enthusiasm is outpacing scientific evidence,” and, “People are finding support for what they believe rather than what the data is actually saying.”
I share the authors’ suspicion about scientific claims. Take, for instance, the hype for a weeklong retreat, co-led by a UC Berkeley neuropsychologist: Evolving Together: Mindfulness Meditation and Modern Science. Its description claims that “(m)any of us are amazed when we read of the latest scientific discoveries about the complexity of the brain or the number of galaxies in the cosmos or the workings of biological evolution. In this meditation retreat we will learn how to make the new science come alive inside of us, helping us to transform our understanding of ourselves.” All sold out, by the way!
Meanwhile, being neither brain scientist nor Buddhist scholar, I invite you to pay attention to the moment-by-moment unfolding of your “one wild and precious life” (as Mary Oliver advises).
My view is that the science is a work in progress, with conclusions being viewed as provisional being the wisest way to view the matter. The challenge, as is always the case, is to separate what we wish the answer to be from what we might wish it to be – and this is the fundamental strength of the scientific method. But here an exhortation of one of my meditation teachers comes in handy. When I had opined that the evidence seemed to be moving in the direction of meditation leading to calmer waters ahead for practitioners, she thundered, “No promises!”. I think that her wisdom applies equally to the scientific study of the matter as it does to meditation itself. Buddhism teaches that we are best served when we become comfortable with groundlessness. The moment we imagine the future to be rosy may be the one in which it turns sour. There is wisdom in living in the here and now.