"Meditation and Neuroplasticity"
Guest Speaker: Dieter Borrmann
Wednesday, March 25, 5:30 p.m.
Williams Brice Building 133
Stress and burn out in modern, post-industrial society Meditation and similar tools as a possible strategy for coping Meditation, definition, etymology, different types of meditation Śamatha –
Dr. Dieter Borrmann is in the practice of NeurologyPsychology-Psychotherapy in Emmerich, Germany.
His clinic focuses on people with neurological
problems using new developments in meditation
therapy to treat patients with degenerative disorders
with excellent results. He is also a student of Tibetan
Buddhism under Geshe Topgyal at the Charleston
Tibetan Society, Charleston, SC.
Dr. Borrmann spoke from the dual perspectives of
both medicine (the modern study of mind & body)
and traditional Buddhist practice, a confluence of these idea seen more and more today. He
began his presentation with a short 2-minute meditation that began and ended with his i-phone
recording of Buddhist bells sounding three times.
He notes that everyone’s intention is to have a happy life, but
the objectives of post-industrial society lead to the increased
chatter of the mind and increased striving for material gains
that do not occur for most people. And the ubiquitous media
overload leads to awareness neglect . We are not taught how
to look beyond this chatter, which then increases exhaustion
and depression. He presented a chart showing the accelerated
increase in depression as well as paid sick days in Germany
over the past 20 years. From 2004-2010 sick days increased
from 4 days per year to more than 60 days on average.
In the 1980s the Dalai Lama first proposed the idea of a neurologic study of meditation; he
asked for research on the brains of meditators. He wanted to show the connection between the
mind and brain. The first MRIs of experienced meditators (Tibetan monks) showed a significant
difference to the brains of meditators and non-meditators. The remarkable results brought a
flurry of further studies.
Although the primary objectives of meditation are calming and pacifying the mind, enhancing
concentration, awareness, and clarity, there are also secondary medical objectives for the
practice. Since Dr. Borrmann has begun the use of therapeutic meditation practices in his clinic
they have been found to provide marked results in sleep management, regulation of emotion,
regulation of the autonomic nervous system, blood pressure, auto-immune diseases,
cardiovascular diseases, palliative care, and ergonomics. It has also been found to relieve some
of the side effects of cancer treatments.
Medical research in meditation is just a little more
than 20 years old has been focused particularly on
brain imaging procedures. Current areas/methods
of research in meditation research include use of
MRIs and DTI (diffusion tensure imaging), EEG,
and Psychometrics, among others.
Long term meditators show cortical neural
plasticity, the normal decrease in gray matter with
age, is slowed. Meditators maintain stable gray
matter and even show slight increase. Studies of
brain changes in meditators show shrinkage of areas of the brain associated with fear, anger,
hatred, and increased activity in the frontal lobe, the area associated with good for positive
emotions, awareness, creativity.
In addition, the white matter in the brain, the axions
which carry the signals throughout the brain, show an
increase in connectivity and organization with as little
as eight weeks of daily meditation. Also studies in
cognitive science and psychology have found that
mindfulness, awareness, and attentiveness are better
in meditators. In tests using Attention Blink, result
have shown the error rate for meditators to be half the
rate of non-meditators.
The results of these various studies, Dr. Borrmann
said, have shown the regular practice of meditation
to have clear positive neuro-biological effects: increase in stability of gray matter, improved
structure of white matter, and improved cognitive skills.