Taming the psyche: Mindfulness meditation as neurological process

In traditional Buddhist philosophy and training, taming the mind through meditation is part of achieving spiritual wellbeing. In recent decades, however, Western Science has looked to meditation as a novel clinical practice for improving mental health. In the process, research has begun to study how meditation can positively impact an individual psychologically and neurologically.

Due to the fairly recent nature of such neurological research, there are a wealth of problems within existing studies, covered by an extensive literature review in Nature Review Neuroscience. The authors explain that because neuroscientists are still in the process of formulating theories about how meditation induces change within the brain, often studies of meditation utilize a low-quality methodology. That is, stemming from assumptions of what constitutes meditation, experimentation may invite ambiguity or be difficult to reproduce. Namely, there are many ways of conceptualizing meditation, as well as several key components working together within the practice (each described later in this article) that must be considered and isolated within the study.

In evaluating studies across such a literature review, of primary importance is to establish, in a thorough way, what challenges there are in studying meditation neurologically.

First, research is limited both by the sparsity of studies conducted and of meditation practitioners, especially expert practitioners. Sample sizes in essentially all current studies on meditation have been incredibly small, with none of the studies reviewed having more than 50 practitioners and many having far fewer, more often in the range of 15 to 25 persons for both meditator and control groups.

Furthermore, the difference between cross-sectional versus longitudinal studies must be considered. As stated in the review, the vast majority of studies on meditation have been cross-sectional, meaning they investigated neurological differences between meditation and control groups at a single point in time. In general, for more definitively showing how meditation changes practitioners neurologically over time, longitudinal studies are required — studies where subjects are studied across a longer time span, such as several months of development. The literature review covers various reasons why this second kind of study would be more effective.

Of primary importance is to establish, in a thorough way, what challenges there are in studying meditation neurologically.

A cross-sectional study might show differences between an experimental and control group, but because of the lack of a temporal aspect — namely a close examination and isolation of the variables factoring into subjects’ development over a long period of time — data might be skewed by unknown variables. For example, personal experiences or other non-meditation types of therapy might have affected neural development alongside mediation. In other words, cross-sectional studies fail to account for other aspects of subjects’ lives that may have caused incidental differences between practitioners and non-practitioners. Rather than meditation creating difference, it might simply reflect difference, where pre-existing differences factor into practitioners seeking out and maintaining meditation practice.

In this comparison between cross-sectional and longitudinal studies, another underlying challenge in studying meditation is revealed: that meditation, as a cultural and taught practice, may contain multiple variables, some of which are unconnected to the meditation itself. Meditation may, for example, accompany a differing lifestyle and diet, other psychological practices like relaxation training and stress management, or amounts of exercise. Studies, therefore, should have multiple control groups, where each of these other variables is introduced, to differentiate between their effects and those of meditation, and, for good measure, studies should also include “sham meditation” where individuals are led to believe they are practicing meditation but given incorrect instruction, as a way of isolating the teaching environment itself as another variable in practitioner outlook.

For more definitively showing how meditation changes practitioners neurologically over time, longitudinal studies are required — studies where subjects are studied across a longer time span.

Finally, the review points out something key that should be considered in studies going forward, which is that learning meditation is a process that incorporates multiple psychological components, specifically attention control, emotion regulation, and self-awareness. Because each of these must be mastered, then, studies should look to include both new and expert practitioners. And because studies have correlated mindfulness meditation with multiple regions of the brain, scientists should also consider how these three components each represent specific, different neural activities, suggesting meditation’s compositeness helps cause subtle neuroplastic changes that encompass multiple neural networks.

Scientists, then, should seek to break down meditation’s intertwined, both through extensive experimental structure and through novel hypotheses concerned with how meditation functions as a series of psychological processes.

Sources
Nature Review Neuroscience (2015). DOI: 10.1038/nrn3916