Meditation may soon become the magic mantra to deal with distractions and a few disorders related to brain. In a small research that was recently conducted it was found that mindless meditation can be used to help brain block out distractions.
In a study which was carried out by Catherine Kerr and others from the Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging at Massachusetts General Hospital and the Osher Research Center at Harvard Medical School, it was found that participants who did meditation regularly were able to better direct their attention after a period of eight week course when compared to a control group who did not do any meditation. In addition to this, it was also found that meditation can help relieve pain and improve memory by regulating a brain wave known as alpha rhythm.
"Mindfulness meditation has been reported to enhance numerous mental abilities, including rapid memory recall. Our discovery that mindfulness meditators more quickly adjusted the brain wave that screens out distraction could explain their superior ability to rapidly remember and incorporate new facts" says study co-author Catherine Kerr. According to the scientists, the alpha rhythm is said to process senses such as touch, smell and sound in the brain's cortex. They claim that alpha rhythm can help the brain to concentrate more on one thing and ignore other distractions.
Catherine Kerr adds that mindful meditation can decrease pain sensation and hence this ability to turn the alpha rhythm up and down would enable the practitioners to control the sensation of pain. This new research may also shed light on the link between meditation and basic brain function. "Given what we know about how alpha waves arise from electrical currents in sensory cortical cells, these data suggest that mindfulness meditation practitioners can use the mind to enhance regulation of currents in targeted cortical cells. The implications extend far beyond meditation and give us clues about possible ways to help people better regulate a brain rhythm that is deregulated in attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder and other conditions," says study co-author Stephanie Jones, of the Martinos Center.
