A half hour of daily mindfulness meditation during your work week might improve your mental well-being and self-control, a new study suggests.
Undergraduate students who took part in 10, 30-minute mindfulness meditation training sessions over the course of two weeks saw significant improvements in the white matter of their brain’s anterior cingulate cortex — a part of the brain involved in self-regulation, decision-making, and empathy — compared to students who did only relaxation-oriented meditation, researchers from the University of Oregon and Weill Cornell Medical College found.
White matter is a type of brain tissue that aids communication from one part of the nervous system to the other, and helps the brain adapt to change, HealthDay News reported June 12.
Previous studies have suggested big benefits from mindfulness meditation, ranging from helping you lose weight and manage pain, to aiding you in making better life choices. But skeptics say there’s not enough hard evidence of meditation’s advantages over traditional drug treatment.
This study, on the other hand, shows direct “evidence for changes in the structure of the brain and a dynamic process at work” with mindfulness meditation, says Nicholas Schiff, M.D., an associate professor of neurology and neuroscience at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City.
The study appears online in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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