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Article appeared in the Corriere della Sera:
With deep concentration areas of the brain linked to emotions increase in volume


MILANO - Gymnastics, toolmaking, personal trainer: everyone knows how to increase size and strength of their muscles and make stronger bones. But you can also increase the volume of the brain? How? Meditating, experts say. And no matter what technique: Zazen (Zen Japanese school), Samatha and Vipassana (the two major forms of Buddhist meditation) are all effective, according to a survey just published on NeuroImagine by a group of researchers at the University of California at Los Angeles (UCLA).

MAGNETIC RESONANCE - analysis, magnetic resonance imaging, the brains of people accustomed to meditation, the researchers showed that the volume of gray matter of who uses techniques of deep concentration is on average higher than that of people who rather not resort to such practices. In particular the increase in size about some particular areas, such as the hippocampus, the orbitofrontal cortex, thalamus and the lower part of the temporal lobe, all areas that have to do with the regulation of emotions. "We know - said Eileen Luders, coordinator of the research - that people used meditation to acquire a particular ability to experience positive emotions, are more emotionally stable and reach a greater degree of awareness regarding their behavior. All these features could be related to anatomical differences we have shown with our study. "

immune - This then, adds new information to those who already knew the benefits of meditation because they control their emotions better, people who regularly attend these practices are less stressed and have better immune defense capacity . In the recently published study has examined the group of Luders 44 people, half of which has a long history of meditation practices (4 to 46 years, with an average of 24 years). Among these subjects, at least a fifty percent said that the deep concentration was an essential part of the practice and each day devoted to this activity 10 to 90 minutes. The

NEURONS - But it's worth it, if it means not only increase the size of certain brain areas, but to improve, therefore, the ability to control emotions. It remains now to discover whether, apart from the increase in size, there is also, at the microscopic level, an increase in the number of brain cells, their size and especially if, through meditation, develop special systems of activation of these cells.