Neuroscience Archives - Minding The Bedside

Meditation Expertise Changes the Experience of Pain

Meditation can change the way a person experiences pain, according to a new study by UW–Madison neuroscientists. The researchers found that during a pain experiment, expert meditators felt the discomfort as intensely as novice meditators, but the experience wasn't as unpleasant for them. Images of brain regions linked to pain and anxiety may explain why. Compared to novice meditators, experts had less activity in the anxiety regions. Not only did the experts feel less anxiety immediately before pain stimulation, they also became accustomed to the pain more quickly after being exposed repeatedly to it.

2016-01-12T19:49:21-07:00By Jerome Stone|Science|0 Comments

Why Meditate? Science Has Proven the Benefits

Why Meditate? Science Has Proven the Benefits As a Westerner, and a skeptic, there's something about "hard science" that puts me at ease. While I am delighted with the mysteries of the universe, and truly believe that there are some things that have no "rationale" answers, like healing at a distance, I like it when science confirms my perception of the universe.

2013-07-16T15:31:06-06:00By Jerome Stone|Science|1 Comment

Scientific Research Proves the Benefits of Meditation (Again!)

Here are a few articles on the science of meditation and how it can create long-term benefits for you to alleviate stress, provide pain relief, increase your ability to respond compassionately, and maybe even live longer. I'm just offering a "taste" of what's been published and by doing so, I hope that you'll check into the literature on meditation research, it's great!

2014-09-17T13:04:00-06:00By Jerome Stone|Science|1 Comment

Meditation and Its Regulatory Role on Sleep

If you want the greatest benefits from your sleep, whether eight-hours of uninterrupted sleep, or a four-hour insomniac’s sleep, you've got to meditate!

2012-12-07T19:41:57-07:00By Jerome Stone|Science|1 Comment

Four Ways to Change Your Brain and Body Through Meditation

Science has continued to generate an ongoing stream of research showing empirical, scientific, measurable evidence that meditation really works!

2015-04-23T14:07:29-06:00By Jerome Stone|Neuroscience, Science|0 Comments

Using Meditation to Retrain Our Attention – A Great Video Presentation!

Daniel Goleman - Part 1 from WhatMeditationReallyIs on Vimeo. I just finished watching this video-presentation by Daniel Goleman and what strikes me most is the simplicity of the phrase that he uses, "attentional retraining." In these two words, we are reminded of what is is that we're working with during meditation - our attention - and what we're doing - retraining it. Sometimes, when we're working with our mind and practicing meditation, something as simple as remembering the phrase, "attentional retraining" is all that it takes to bring us back to our practice. Suppose that I sit down to meditate, [...]

2011-09-08T17:43:32-06:00By Jerome Stone|Meditation, Mindfulness|0 Comments

More Science, More Meditation!

For those of you who would like to jump right in to reading a book that is exemplary in terms of bringing the meditative mind into science, I would highly recommend James Austin’s Zen and the Brain.

2019-02-15T16:01:13-07:00By Jerome Stone|Science|0 Comments

Meditation is More Powerful Than Morphine!

How we experience our world, including our perceptions of the internal world, can be dramatically changed, and mediated, through meditation.

2015-05-05T13:53:16-06:00By Jerome Stone|Neuroscience, Science|5 Comments

Science Quantifies (again) Gains Made Through Meditation

Findings highlight the clinically and socially possibility that sustained training in meditation may impact distinct domains of human decision-making.

2012-12-07T20:25:20-07:00By Jerome Stone|Neuroscience, Science|1 Comment