How Meditation Can Reshape Our Brains – TED Talk*

Segments from this talk by the neuroscientist Sara Lazar:

“So, what we know is that whenever you engage in a behavior over and over again, that this can lead to changes in your brain. And this is what’s referred to as neuro-plasticity. And what this just means is that your brain is plastic and that the neurons can change how they talk to each other with experience.

In this study, what we did is, we took people who had never meditated before, and we put them in the scanner, and then we put them through an eight-week meditation-based stress reduction program where they were told to meditate every day for 30 to 40 minutes. And then we scanned them again at the end of the eight weeks, and this is what we found.

So what you see is that several areas became larger, and what we see is that the hippocampus, this is the area that’s important for emotion regulation, is also important for emotion regulation.

Another region we identified was the temporo-parietal junction which is here above your ear, it’s important for perspective taking and empathy and compassion. And again, these are both functions which people report changing when they start practicing meditation and yoga.

Another region we identified was the amygdala. And the amygdala is the fight-or-flight part of our brain. And here we actually found a decrease in gray matter. And what was interesting was that the change in gray matter was correlated with the change in stress.

Because with the humans nothing has changed with their environment. They still had their stressful jobs, all the difficult problems still being difficult, and the economy still sucks, but yeah, their amygdala got smaller, and they were reporting less stress.

And then the other thing that the study shows is that, it wasn’t just the people were saying, “Oh, I feel better.” Or that it was a placebo response, or that they’re trying to please us, but there was actually a neuro-biological reason why they’re saying they felt less stressed.

And so the idea that I’d like to share with all of you today is that meditation can literally change your brain.”