Riches to rags: How the Buddha’s journey to enlightenment reimagined neurotherapeutics

The accumulation of years, cognitive and physical decline, and reckoning with death’s inevitability drew the spoon-fed prince Siddhartha Gautama away from a life of copious riches and political popularity. While embarking outside his palace, the sight of a humble ascetic inspired a quest to understand the universal experience of suffering, or in other words, life. Guatama’s ultimate shift and growth in perspective resulted in the formation of one of the world’s greatest religious influencers, the Buddha. His wisdom has passed through generations, giving rise to over 500 million individuals who identify as Buddhists, and millions more who practice mindfulness. The practice, neuroscientists say, has helped many in a landscape where over a quarter of U.S. adults with mental illnesses fail to receive the treatment they need.

Buddhists developed restrictive lifestyles and disciplines with the hope of ending the constant rotation of suffering — the cycle of death and rebirth. Notably, they practice the Eightfold Path, detailing the moral, physical, and mental conduct that guides followers to nirvana, when living beings are removed from the continuous cycle of reincarnation and are freed from suffering. One of the most important approaches Buddhists take to reach nirvana is mindfulness meditation. Meditation, the Sanskrit word for “remember,” teaches followers to be constantly aware of the present moment. Hence, mindful meditation has been defined as an increase in the awareness of one’s self through physical and mental concentration, calming the body and mind.

Out of the over 50 million American adults who have experienced mental illness, 28% reported they were unable to receive the treatment they needed. Thus, many neuroscientists have found the practicality, versatility, and cost-effectiveness of mindfulness meditation appealing. They have even been studying the neurological mechanisms involved in mindfulness meditation and how these processes influence human mental health and well-being, especially in mitigating psychiatric conditions.

Previous research findings suggest mindfulness meditation is associated with a decrease in symptoms of neuropsychiatric disorders, including rumination and a lack of attentional control. Furthermore, attention to breathing, a core tenet of mindfulness meditation, fosters emotional regulation. Neuroscientists study these effects by looking at the networks or regions in the brain responsible for the neurological symptoms. The intersection between attention, emotion, and awareness is the centerpiece of mindfulness meditation; an increase in the functional connectivity between them in the brain decreases susceptibility to neuropsychiatric disorders and advances one’s mental resilience.

“The intersection between attention, emotion, and awareness is the centerpiece of mindfulness meditation; an increase in the functional connectivity between them in the brain decreases susceptibility to neuropsychiatric disorders and advances one’s mental resilience.”

In one study from a team at the Technical University of Munich, researchers aimed to identify the specific neural impact of mindfulness meditation training on health and cognition. Participants were randomly assigned to 31 days of web-based meditation training or health training, which included familiar healthcare practices. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was then employed to monitor blood flow and measure data on the functional connectivity among three core networks in the brain: the default mode network, responsible for controlling rumination and attention; the salience network, responsible for coding stimuli from an environment; and the central executive network, responsible for managing higher-order cognitive functions. The results demonstrated a statistically significant increase in connectivity between these three networks in the experimental group that took part in the mindfulness training in comparison to the conventionally trained control group.

In a nutshell, mindfulness meditation training biologically encourages interaction between the default mode, salience, and central executive networks, and it behaviorally prevents a loss of attention and awareness characteristics of neuropsychiatric conditions. The research is a modern authentication of what Buddhists have known for centuries. The promotion of mental and physical well-being holds testament to the Buddha’s way of life: meditate, restructure, reinvent, repeat, and reignite.