This link describes Chinese Meditation integrating our body, mind and
spirit into one. Its bases are similar to Traditional Chinese Medicine
and Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon.
http://chanliving.org/whats-chan-living/heart-chan-meditation.html
On 6/15/2012 1:11 AM, Merle Lester wrote:
Chinese Meditation Prompts Double Positive Punch in Brain White Matter
ScienceDaily (June 13, 2012) — A Texas Tech University scientist
studying the Chinese mindfulness meditation known as integrative
body-mind training (IBMT) said he and other researchers have confirmed
and expanded on changes in structural efficiency of white matter in
the brain that can be related to positive behavioral changes in
subjects practicing the technique for a month and a minimum of 11
hours total.
In a paper appearing in the online Early Edition of the Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), scientists Yi-Yuan Tang of
Texas Tech and Michael Posner of the University of Oregon (UO)
reported improved mood changes coincided with increased
brain-signaling connections. They also found an expansion of myelin,
the protective fatty tissue that surrounds the nerves, in the brain's
anterior cingulate region.
Deficits in activation for this area of the brain have been associated
with attention deficit disorder, dementia, depression, schizophrenia
and many other disorders, said Tang, who is now the director of Texas
Tech's Neuroimaging Institute and holder of the Presidential Endowed
Chair in Neuroscience and professor in the Department of Psychology.
"When we got the results, we all got very excited because all of the
other training exercises, like working-memory training or
computer-based training, only have been shown to change myelination,"
Tang said. "We believe these changes may be reflective of the time of
training involved in IBMT. We found a different pattern of neural
plasticity induced by the training."
IBMT was adapted from traditional Chinese medicine in the 1990s in
China, where it is practiced by thousands of people. It differs from
other forms of meditation because it depends heavily on the inducement
of a high degree of awareness and balance of the body, mind and
environment. The meditation state is facilitated through training and
trainer-group dynamics, harmony and resonance.
In 2010, research led by Tang, then a visiting research professor at
the University of Oregon, and Michael I. Posner, professor of
psychology at UO, first reported positive structural changes in brain
connectivity, based on functional magnetic resonance imaging, that
correlated to behavioral regulation. The study was done at the Robert
and Beverly Lewis Center for Neuroi maging with 45 participating UO
undergraduate students.
The new findings came from additional scrutiny of the 2010 study and
another that involved 68 undergraduate students at China's Dalian
University of Technology. The researchers revisited data obtained from
using an MRI technique known as diffusion tensor imaging. The research
team found improved density of the nerves involved in brain
connections but no change in myelin formation after two weeks.
After a month, or about 11 hours of IBMT, both increases in nerve
density and myelin formation were found as measured by fractional
anisotropy, axial diffusivity and radial diffusivity -- the important
indexes for measuring the integrity of white matter fibers.
This dynamic pattern of white matter change involving the anterior
cingulate cortex, a part of the brain network related to
self-regulation, could provide a means for intervention to improve or
prevent mental disorders.
"This study gives us a much more detailed picture of what it is that
is actually changing," Posner said. "We did confirm the exact
locations of the white-matter changes that we had found previously.
And now we show that both myelination and axon density are improving.
The order of changes we found may be similar to changes found during
brain development in early childhood, allowing a new way to reveal how
such changes might influence emotional and cognitive development."
The improved mood changes noted in this and earlier studies are based
on self-ratings of subjects based on a standard six-dimensional
mood-state measure, Tang said.
Both researchers first reported findings related to IBMT in 2007, also
in PNAS. They found that doing IBMT for five days prior to a mental
math test led to low levels of the stress hormone cortisol among
Chinese students. The experimental group also showed lower levels of
anxiety, depression, anger and fatigue than students in a relaxation
control group.
In 2009 in PNAS, Tang and his Chinese colleagues, with assistance from
Posner and UO psychology professor Mary K. Rothbart, found that IBMT
subjects in China had increased blood flow in the right anterior
cingulate cortex after receiving training for 20 minutes a day over
five days. Compared with the relaxation group, IBMT subjects also had
lower heart rates and skin conductance responses, increased belly
breathing amplitude and decreased chest respiration rates.
www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/06/120613183813.htm
