Holzel's study of mindfulness meditation's effects on brain gray matter

Ground-Breaking Meditation Research: A Comparison of Presentations

Holzel and colleagues performed the study "Mindfulness practice leads to increases in regional brain gray matter density" as a result of the fact that little is known about the neural mechanisms that are impacted by specific forms of mindfulness meditation and comparable interventions. While some interventions are known to be more effective than others, there aren't a lot of details available about the precisely positive changes which can occur in the gray matter of one's brain as a result of effective and critically acclaimed techniques like Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR). Holzel and colleagues were able to confirm that the changes occurred were ones which specifically were connected to the gray matter in areas of the brain where the bulk of the learning process, memory processes, emotional regulation and perspective taking manifested. For example, one area of the brain that the study examined was the hippocampus, an area of the brain that looks like seahorse and which is divided into left and right hemispheres. The hippocampus is the area of the brain which deals directly with the creation of long-term memories and even spatial navigation: thus when an individual has to deal with a disease as crippling as Alzheimer's can be, the hippocampus is one of the primary areas of the brain which starts to deteriorate, leading to issues like memory loss or confusion. This is an area of the brain which can be very sensitive to oxygen loss. People who develop amnesia are often ones with damage to this area of the brain, preventing them from forming new memories.

The researchers looked at all areas of the brain and sought to determine how mindfulness meditation was impacting them. For example, the frontal lobes in the cerebral cortex were examined, as they are prime areas within the largest part of the brain's structures and control higher cognitive structures such as attention and thought processing, along with decision-making skills. Issues in the frontal lobes such as damage or poor or incomplete development can often lead to a range of disorders such as ADHD or schizophrenia. Researchers also looked at the parietal cortex, the part of the brain which has a tremendous role in the integration of information from a range of the body's five sense so that a coherent view of the world is able to be put together. Information is integrated from visual pathways, helping to assemble a picture of what and where things are allowing basic functions like spatial mapping and number representation to occur. When damage occurs to this region of the brain, issues like a loss of sensation in the body, along with issues in understanding speech. The temporal lobe is another massive part of the brain and which houses a range of substructures, including areas which are responsible for face recognition and memory acquisition along with understanding language. Damage to this area means that issues in understanding, learning and memory can manifest, as a result of certain cognitive disorders, including severe mental illnesses like schizophrenia. Another arena of the brain that this study looked at was the cerebellum which supervises motor behavior and automatic movements along with learning and attention: this is a small area of the brain, but is one which contains the most neurons. Many of the analyses in this study involve looking at the areas like the posterior cingular cortex, the temporo-parietal junction and the cerebellum

Other areas like the occipital cortex, which is the main visual area of the brain receives were not examined as closely or as targeted in this study. The brain stem is another area which is not as targeted in this study which contains structures that control homeostasis in the body by supervising automatic functions like breathing and certain automatic movements.

Methods and Performance of the Study

The participants of the study were all people who were taking part in MBSR courses at the University of Massachusetts; these classes were primarily marketed for stress reduction. Participants had to be both physically and psychologically healthy and not taking any medication. Other criteria for inclusion in the study were that they couldn't have taken meditation in the last half of a year, and with no more than five classes in the past five years and no more than ten classes their entire lifetime (Holzel, 2011). Ultimately, the study consisted of 18 participants, 10 female, eight male with a mean age of 37.89 years. The control sample had 17 participants: 11 male and 6 female (Holzel, 2011).

The MBSR program consists of eight weekly group meetings which are a couple hours, along with one full day during the ae-makr of the course. The mindfulness training activities were designed to help develop the individual's capacity for awareness in a compassionate non-judgmental manner as participants are taught how to investigate what feels appropriate for themselves with regard to the sensations in their body and their own body's limitation. All participants received audio recording which contained 45-minute mindfulness exercises that they had to use at home and didactic instructions were also given regarding the use of mindfulness in coping with the stress of daily life (Holzel, 2011). Furthermore the five-facet-mindfulness-questionnaire was also used to measure the five factors of mindfulness (such as with regard to observing, describing, acting, non-judging, and non-reactivity) and was measured on a five-point Likert scale.

With all of these factors going on, the participants were scanned at a center for biomedical imaging in the two weeks before the program and the two weeks after the program. Participants in the control group were also scanned twice, two months apart.

The data images of the brain were gathered using the T1 weighted MPRAGE sequence and the image assessment was engaged in with the voxel-based morphoemtry along with neuroimaging statistical software. Researchers aligned the images collected by hand in accordance to the anterior commissure and then placed into gray and white matter in the space. For each person the gray matter portions were spatially co-registered with normalization parameters calculated for the pre- and post-images (Holzel, 2011). The normalization parameters were assessed for the pre-scan and then used for both the time points so that the regional differences among the images were not eliminated by the scan-specific normalization (Holzel, 2011). Once all these factors were engaged in, the researchers were able to put forth an exploratory whole brain analysis in addition to the region of interest analyses with bilateral hippocampi and bilateral insulae created using specialized software (Holzel, 2011). The ROI assessment has a spatial-concentration; the researchers selected multiple comparisons within the ROI. Thus, the researchers decided upon a cluster-wise method for the whole exploratory brain analysis as a means of correcting multiple comparisons around the entire brain; in order for this to work, clusters had to exceed the size of 250 voxels (Holzel, 2011). In this regard, follow-up tests were then engaged in to text for the significance when compared with the control group and with values taken from the identified clusters for each person were assessed using the Marsbar toolbox (Holzel, 2011). ANOVA was then engaged in for each cluster and with each group so that subjects could win within the factor. Groups were not identical in terms of their age and gender, and thus, these variables were controlled by deeming them as nuisance variables (Holzel, 2011).

Importance of the Study

The study essentially does validate many of the previous findings and assertions about how meditation has a positive impact on brain functioning. However, this study is able to show a clearer snapshot about that specific issue and to demonstrate why and how it is important, and just how it can have a meaningful impact on brain functioning. Furthermore, this study is able to give a more detailed analysis and description about the impact that meditation has on the human brain and the specific parts of the brain. The experiments were important because all prior research looked at people who already meditated regularly, so the areas of the brain experienced a higher level of correlational data. This study was so marked and novel because it represented the initial time that meditation was manipulated in non-meditators and areas of the brain were assessed. The implications for future research are also enormous, as the hippocampus has been known to engage in a central role in regulating emotion and this research suggests that increased meditation can help in better emotional responding. The changes found in the hippocampus are also connected to a smaller likelihood of stress-related psychopathology (Holzel, 2011). The fact that the TPJ region of the brain was also similarly impacted makes sense and also validates many of theories on this region, as it has been suggested that this is the structure which is pivotal for the conscious experience of the self, and the mediation of spatial connected of self and body (Holzel, 2011).

Popular Press's Summary of the Study

The article conducted by the popular press of the New York Times did not do a good job in summarizing the article. They made it far too anecdotal and lacked detail in the ways in which they cited information from the research study. Many important pieces of information were left out, and the author was unable to stay on topic, taking too informal of a tone for such a scientific article. For example, the following statement is just too reductive to really "Of course, it's important to remember that the human brain is complicated. Understanding what the increased density of gray matter really means is still, well, a gray area" (Bhanoo, 2011). This is far too simplistic a means of summarizing the study, unfortunately. It is able to get to the essence of the factors at stake, but it isn't able to adequately summarize them in a meaningful or detailed way. Even the quotes used by the author when she directly quotes Holzel really just function to promote a sense of vagueness: "the field is very, very young, and we don't really know enough about it yet,' Dr. Holzel said. 'I would say these are still quite preliminary findings. We see that there is something there, but we have to replicate these findings and find out what they really mean'" (Bhanoo, 2011). One redeeming part of the article, however, is that Bhanoo is able to pinpoint what makes this study distinctive: that it is able to document the changes in gray matter that meditation causes.

However, consciously or not, the writer seems to trivialize meditation, offering up anecdotal remarks about meditation which seem to warp her summary of the research with her own specific opinion. This is problematic as the writer really should just be reporting on the facts and make a more conscious effort to avoid swaying the reader's conception of meditation towards a given opinion. Consider the following remark: "So many people talk about meditating these days. Within four miles of our Bay Area home, there are at least six centers that offer some type of meditation class, and I often hear phrases like, 'So how was your sit today?'" (Bhanoo, 2011). While one could argue that this writer is just reporting about her own life experience, this particular remakr makes meditation seem trivial and overly connected to new age practices. This remark colors meditation so that it looks like less of a scientific tool for biophysical and spiritual health, but something practiced by hippies eager to engage in the most popular form of spiritual practice, regardless of what it might be.

The writer in spite of the validity of the evidence that is presented, the writer lingers on the fact that more research is needed. This is generally true when it comes to nearly all studies, not just this one: however the writer of this blog posting uses that conclusion as a means for somewhat dismissing the findings of the study as a whole. When it comes to the new meditation practice of the author's husband, she proclaims "For now, I'm more than happy to support my husband's little experiment, despite the fact that he now rises at 5 a.m. And is exhausted by 10 at night. An empathetic husband who takes out the trash and puts gas in the car because he knows I don't like to -- I'll take that" (Bhanoo, 2011). Again there's a strong tendency of this author to trivialize the findings of the research: she refers to it as a "little experiment" and she ultimately equates its importance with the fact that her husband is more willing to engage in household chores. Ultimately, Bhanoo's presentation of this study does a great disservice to it.