WHAT CAUSES THE BENEFITS?
SARAH WILD: Mice help humans understand how meditation works
It’s a problem you don’t see every day: how do you get a mouse to meditate? For those of us who have been promising faithfully each new year that we’ll set aside the time to meditate and be mindful, perhaps this new piece of research will finally motivate us. Mice have beaten us to it. We know there are benefits to meditation: reduced stress and anxiety and a lower risk of developing certain diseases. A 2011 study even showed that meditation could help people lose weight and keep it off. But while researchers have documented the benefits, we’re not quite sure what causes them. Previous studies had shown that if people meditated regularly over a prolonged period — a month or more — they had reduced amounts of the stress hormone cortisol compared with those who didn’t meditate and there was more activity in their ventral anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a small part of the brain often associated with higher-level decision making and emotions. This part of the brain is home to a rare t...
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