NEW YORK, 23 April 2011 (BBC News): In a laboratory tucked away off a noisy New York City street, a soft-spoken neuroscientist has been placing Tibetan Buddhist monks into a car-sized brain scanner to better understand the ancient practice of meditation. But could this unusual research not only unravel the secrets of leading a harmonious life but also shed light on some of the world’s more mysterious diseases? Zoran Josipovic, a research scientist and adjunct professor at New York University, says he has been peering into the brains of monks while they meditate in an attempt to understand how their brains reorganise themselves during meditation.
“Meditation research, particularly in the last 10 years or so, has shown to be very promising because it points to an ability of the brain to change and optimise in a way we didn’t know previously was possible.” When one relaxes into a state of oneness, the neural networks in experienced practitioners change as they lower the psychological wall between themselves and their environments, Dr Josipovic says. And this reorganization in the brain may lead to what some meditators claim to be a deep harmony between themselves and their surroundings.
Shifting attention Dr Josipovic’s research is part of a larger effort better to understand what scientists have dubbed the default network in the brain. He says the brain appears to be organized into two networks: the extrinsic network and the intrinsic, or default, network. The extrinsic portion of the brain becomes active when individuals are focused on external tasks, like playing sports or pouring a cup of coffee. The default network churns when people reflect on matters that involve themselves and their emotions. But the networks are rarely fully active at the same time. And like a seesaw, when one rises, the other one dips down. This neural set-up allows individuals to concentrate more easily on one task at any given time, without being consumed by distractions like daydreaming
Dr Josipovic has found that some monks and other experienced meditators have the ability to keep both neural networks active at the same time during meditation – that is to say, they have found a way to lift both sides of the seesaw simultaneously.
Scientists previously believed the self-reflective, default network in the brain was simply one that was active when a person had no task on which to focus their attention. But researchers have found in the past decade that this section of the brain swells with activity when the subject thinks about the self. Dr Raichle says the default network is important for more than just thinking about what one had for dinner last night. “Researchers have wrestled with this idea of how we know we are who we are. The default mode network says something about how that might have come to be,” he says. It’s about self-reflection while interacting with the world.
Dr Raichle adds that those studying the default network may also help in uncovering the secrets surrounding some psychological disorders, like depression, autism and even Alzheimer’s disease. “If you look at Alzheimer’s Disease, and you look at whether it attacks a particular part of the brain, what’s amazing is that it actually attacks only the default mode network,” says Dr Raichle, adding that intrinsic network research, like Dr Josipovic’s, could assist in explaining why that is. Cindy Lustig, associate professor of psychology and neuroscience at the University of Michigan, agrees. “It is sort of the other piece of the puzzle that’s been ignored for too long.”