It’s nice to just sit down in silence, close your eyes, take some deep breaths, and drift away into a deeply relaxing meditative state…while also apparently rewiring your brain, possibly permanently.
In research published in Neuroscience of Consciousness, led by neurophysiologist Annalisa Pascarella of the Italian National Research Council, scientists examined the brains of 12 highly experienced Buddhist monks using magnetoencephalography, a technique that tracks the brain’s magnetic signals in real time.
Each of these monks had more than 15,000 hours of meditation time under their belts. They practiced two techniques: Samatha, which narrows attention down to a singular thing, like breathing, and Vipassana, which is about focusing awareness on whatever happens to pop up in your brain at the moment.
Your Meditative State Could Become Your Brain’s Default Setting
The researchers were looking for signs of “brain criticality,” a term borrowed from physics to describe a sweet spot between order and chaos. Too much order and the brain becomes rigid; too much chaos and it becomes noisy and inefficient. At criticality, neural networks are stable enough to transmit information but flexible enough to adapt, learn, and respond quickly.
Samatha meditation produced a focused, steady brain state ideal for concentration. Vipassana, however, pushed the brain closer to that optimal critical zone. In this state, attention and flexibility coexist, allowing the brain to process information efficiently without getting stuck.
The study also found reduced gamma oscillations, which are brain activity linked to sensory processing. This suggests meditation can hinder external engagement in favor of inward awareness. More experienced monks showed smaller differences between meditation and rest, which seems to imply that this altered brain state brought on by meditation could eventually become a person’s default setting.
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