On the brain benefits (and limitations) of mindfulness meditation

By SharpBrains | January 16, 2014

Breath­ing In vs Spac­ing Out (New York Times): “That a prac­tice once syn­ony­mous with East­ern mys­ti­cism could be put to the ser­vice of West­ern ratio­nal­ism may sound sur­pris­ing, but con­sid­er: By empha­siz­ing a focus on the here and now, it trains the mind to stay on task and avoid distraction…But one of the most sur­pris­ing findings…

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11 Hours of Meditation Can Enhance Brain Connectivity, Functioning

By SharpBrains | June 22, 2012

IBMT linked with pos­i­tive struc­tur­al changes in brain con­nec­tiv­i­ty (News Med­ical): — “A Texas Tech Uni­ver­si­ty sci­en­tist study­ing the Chi­nese mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion known as inte­gra­tive body-mind train­ing (IBMT) said he and oth­er researchers have con­firmed and expand­ed on changes in struc­tur­al effi­cien­cy of white mat­ter in the brain that can be relat­ed to pos­i­tive behavioral…

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From Anti-Alzheimer’s “Magic Bullets” to True Brain Health

By SharpBrains | May 31, 2012 |

We need a new cul­ture of life­long brain health to empow­er that 80% of the 38,000 adults over 50 sur­veyed in the 2010 AARP Mem­ber Opin­ion Sur­vey who indi­cat­ed “Stay­ing Men­tal­ly Sharp” as their top ranked inter­est and con­cern, not to men­tion youth, work­ers and elders fac­ing cog­ni­tive and emo­tion­al challenges.

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Mindfulness Meditation can impact Mood and Working Memory

By Alvaro Fernandez | February 16, 2010 |

Very inter­est­ing and rel­e­vant recent study on the impact of mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion (noticed thanks to heads up by Sharp­Brains read­er John): Build­ing Fit Minds Under Stress (Sci­ence Dai­ly) “high-stress U.S. mil­i­tary group prepar­ing for deploy­ment to Iraq has demon­strat­ed a pos­i­tive link between mind­ful­ness train­ing, or MT, and improve­ments in mood and work­ing mem­o­ry” The study also…

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