The Science of Meditation: The expert guide to the neuroscience of mindfulness and how to harness it

by Daniel Goleman

The amygdala, a key node in the brain’s stress circuitry, shows dampened activity from a mere thirty or so hours of MBSR practice. Other mindfulness training shows a similar benefit, and there are hints in the research that these changes are traitlike: they appear not simply during the explicit instruction to perceive the stressful stimuli mindfully but even in the “baseline” state, with reductions in amygdala activation as great as 50 percent. Such lessening of the brain’s stress reactions appears in response not simply to seeing the gory pictures used in the laboratory but also to more real-life challenges like the stressful Trier interview before a live audience. More daily practice seems associated with lessened stress reactivity. Experienced Zen practitioners can withstand higher levels of pain, and have less reaction to this stressor. A three-month meditation retreat brought indicators of better emotional regulation, and long-term practice was associated with greater functional connectivity between the prefrontal areas that manage emotion and the areas of the amygdala that react to stress, resulting in less reactivity. And an improved ability to regulate attention accompanies some of the beneficial impact of meditation on stress reactivity. Finally, the quickness with which long-term meditators recover from stress underlines how trait effects emerge with continued practice.