STRESS MAKES YOU STUPID

“In 2012, a team of neurologists at UCLA’s Laboratory of Neuromodulation and Neuroimaging published a study that clearly demonstrated the thickening of the corpus callosum in people with regular meditation practices. Even more interesting, in 2015, a team from Harvard published findings from an experiment in which they conducted baseline MRIs on participants before starting half of them on a regular, daily meditation program. The subjects were selected on the basis of their overall health; all subjects, however, reported dealing with the effects of stress on their lives. 

During the course of the experiment, subjects answered questions about their moods and emotional states; those in the meditation group reported more positive overall feelings and a reduction of stress. At the end of eight weeks, the scans were repeated, and the brains of those who had begun meditating showed unmistakable physical changes, including shrinking of the amygdala (that is, the brain’s fear center), which expands when the brain is steeped in cortisol or other stress hormones, and expansion of the brain stem, where dopamine and serotonin—the chemicals responsible for feelings of happiness, love, and contentment originate.

Just think about that for a minute: In only two months, meditation can change the brain enough to be visibly detectable by MRI, shrinking the fear center and enlarging the centers responsible for happiness, love, and creative problem solving.”

- Emily Fletcher from Stress Less, Accomplish More