A new study finds that people skilled at meditation seem able to turn off areas of the brain associated with daydreaming and psychiatric disorders such as autism and schizophrenia.
Learning more about how meditation works could help advance research into a number of diseases according to experts. Doctors used functional MRI to assess brain activity in experienced and novice meditators as they performed three different meditation techniques.
Regardless of the type of meditation, skilled meditators had decreased activity in the brain's default mode network, which has been linked to attention lapses and disorders such as anxiety, attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder, and the buildup of beta amyloid plaques associated with Alzheimer's disease.
The researchers also found that when the default mode network (which consists of the medial prefrontal and posterior cingulate cortex) was active, brain regions associated with self-monitoring and cognitive control were also activated in experienced meditators, but not novices.
This suggests that skilled meditators constantly monitor and suppress the emergence of "me" thoughts and mind wandering. If they become too strong, these two states of mind are associated with diseases such as autism and schizophrenia.
