How brain zapping can supercharge meditation

Life is not just a deluge of bad news. Every day, all kinds of wonderful things are happening. People fall in love. New vaccines are coming fairly close to being safe 500,000 children who die of malaria every year. And for those of us interested in the science of meditation, which promises a deeper understanding of human psychology and the upper bounds of subjective well-being, the field is entering an incredibly exciting new era.

Research in the early 1990s helped establish the therapeutic potential of mindfulness, while recent years have seen investigations into the actual mechanisms linking meditation to various health benefits. Now, as I’ve written before, meditation science is exploring much bigger questions that go beyond the simple promise of mindfulness-based stress relief.

According to neuroscientists Matthew Satchett — who manages a bridge project between Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital called Meditation Research Program– Today’s new wave of research is characterized by the search for underlying mechanisms Advanced meditation.

This includes various techniques that don’t relax the mind so much It’s conversion. Advanced practices “lead to meditative states and stages that unfold with time and skill” but can also uncover insights relevant to consciousness in general, Sachet told me.

And it’s not just for Buddhist monks. In addition to shedding light on one of humanity’s most stubborn mysteries, this deep insight into the workings of consciousness makes us think more broadly about mental health and how to cultivate it.

The expanding field is leading cognitive scientists to study a bewildering array of strangely powerful meditative states, from absorption in a beam of ecstatic bliss to temporarily shutting down consciousness in a self-induced form of drug-free general anesthesia.the end“

But the field still suffers from a heavy reliance on data that show a lot of correlation, while failing to demonstrate real causation. Neuroimaging studies that scan a meditator’s brain at a single point in time using tools like EEG and fMRI give us the relationship between meditation and brain structure or function.

So far, though, they can’t actually tell us what meditation actually does to the brain or what changes it causes. It may be that people who are drawn to meditation are predisposed to certain patterns of brain activity, and our stack of correlations tells us more about willingness to meditate than what meditation actually causes.

Sachette explains that the neuroscience of meditation is almost entirely informed by studies that have stuck to questions of correlation. That’s why he’s so excited about a new technique: the possibility of combining meditation research with non-invasive brain stimulation, or “neuromodulation” techniques, which use electric currents and magnetic fields to manipulate brain activity in ways that can help isolate changes. Meditation actually does.

In late August, Sachet Co-authored a review That looked across all the recent research combining neuromodulation with meditation, trying to organize the field and understand where things stand. It’s still early days, but early signs are promising, and next steps are emerging

The science of electrically zapping and magnetically meditating brain pulses

In the land of non-invasive brain stimulation, there are two giants: Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), and Transcranial electrical stimulation (tES).

During TMS, a power source pulses an electric current through a loop of copper wire, creating a magnetic field along the coil.

Hold the coil above someone’s head, and the field passes through the scalp like a ghost through a wall. Depending on where you aim the coil, how often the electrical pulses are being delivered, and the intensity of the field, the process increases or decreases activity in the targeted brain. TMS has been used for years to treat psychiatric disorders such as major depression.

Meanwhile, TES is a family of techniques that alter brain activity by sending weak electrical currents through electrodes placed on the scalp.

There is a lot of research on neuromodulation techniques in general, with TMS 1985and TES before There is no less that can be seen directly in their combination with meditation. And there are even fewer studies that focus only on healthy participants, which were the inclusion criteria for Sachet’s review.

That’s worth dwelling on for a second. Much of the existing research on both meditation and neuromodulation positions them as potential treatments for recognized illnesses such as depression. But a deeper understanding of how advanced meditation and neuromodulation affect well-being could have implications for everyone, not just those currently classified as mentally ill.

Overall, only six studies met all criteria for inclusion in Sachet’s review. Across them, neuromodulation was generally found to improve outcomes when compared with control groups. Combining TES and mindfulness meditation, for example, Improved working memory.

in Another studyA single round of TES while walking mindfully on a treadmill temporarily reduces anxiety. another one TMS study of 32 participants found that engaging in “self-compassion” exercises while receiving TMS pulses Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex Exercise without TMS increased self-compassion compared to controls.

Obviously, six studies do not make a field. But early trials are proving a positive safety profile, and more general insights and hypotheses are beginning to emerge.

Why does pulsing magnetic fields or zapping certain brain networks seem to enhance the effects of meditation? Giving a review is an idea Neural efficiency hypothesis. If two brains both solve the same puzzle, but show less activity in one process, that brain can be considered more efficient, solving the same task with less energy. And more skills can support higher intelligence.

In the case of brain stimulation plus meditation, it’s like running a marathon while benefiting from a tailwind. Pushing in the direction you’re already going can help you progress faster while expending less energy.

The next generation of modulated meditation research

Both fields – neuromodulation and meditation science – are still growing rapidly. As each develops new insights, they can inform new ways of integrating the fields more effectively.

For example, A increasing the pile Research shows that a collection of brain regions known as the default-mode network (DMN) is important for meditative experiences (Psychedelic ones, too) DMN is associated with self-referential thoughts – autobiographical memories, The mind wandersOr daydreaming about yourself. give all Buddhist talk As a form of self-delusion, you won’t be surprised to learn that meditation is often one decrease of activity in parts of the DMN. The mind becomes less self-centered.

But neuromodulation research has yet to really study when you use external means to help calm the DMN during meditation, creating a very obvious next step for the field.

That research is already underway. Meditation teacher Shinzen Yong and neuroscientist Jay Sanguinetti work together at the University of Arizona. Sonication Enhanced Mindful Awareness (SEMA) Lab. They are not the only ones study cooking Those who target the DMN in meditators are also working on a new generation of neuromodulation technology — transcranial focused ultrasound, or TFUS.

Instead of magnetic fields or electric currents, tFUS uses very high-frequency sound waves, which provide about a tenfold increase over TMS and tES in their accuracy for targeting specific areas of the brain. in A pilot study published earlier this yearA group of researchers, including Sanguinetti and Young, showed that they could successfully reduce the activity of the DMN by injecting tFUS into one of its main centers, the posterior cingulate cortex. Although participants were not meditating during the process, they reported an increase in awareness and a modest decrease in their sense of self.

Now, they are Crowdfunding For what would be the first experiment combining tFUS with a meditation retreat.

If ultrasound continues on its current trajectory, it is going to make a really exciting addition to the neuromodulation arsenal. In addition to using these techniques to amplify the effects of meditation, neuroscientists will benefit from a greater ability to perform what is known as boring The method essentially means being able to safely, non-invasively turn the activity up and down in certain areas of the brain, just to see what happens.

To date, neuroimaging studies have helped establish correlations between meditation practice and changes in brain structure and function. More targeted neuromodulation studies, however, would help to truly elucidate causality.

“This field has a lot of promise,” Sachet said, but “a lot of work needs to be done to get it right.”

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