Teaching the Mind to Treat Insomnia

Changing bad sleep habits and clearing the mind with meditation may offer drug-free alternatives to traditional insomnia treatments.

Two new studies suggest that cognitive behavioral therapy to change people’s attitudes and actions about sleep and using meditation to encourage relaxation can help insomniacs get a better night’s sleep without pills.

By Jennifer Warner (WebMD)

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Meditation: Changing the way we focus our attention.

Suggested by Pocholo Peralta (Plato On-line)

The Dalai Lama’s interest in neuroscience has been reciprocated by at least some members of the neuroscience community. Reasoning that studying the brains of people who meditate might lead to novel insights about the human brain, investigations of long-term meditators has been fertile ground for scientific investigation, with some of the more rigorous work emerging from Richard Davidson’s laboratory at the University of Wisconsin.

When expert meditators practiced focused attention meditation, demonstrable changes were seen using fMRI in the networks of the brain that are known to modulate attention.

By Peter B. Reiner (Scientific American)

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Scientists explore how Zen meditation reduces pain perception

The centuries-old practice of Zen meditation might help reduce sensitivity to pain, say researchers in Montreal who compared pain responses in people trained in the technique and those who are not.

In the journal Psychosomatic Medicine, Joshua Grant, a doctoral student in physiology at the University of Montreal and his colleague Prof. Pierre Rainville looked at how or why meditation might influence pain perception.

By CBC News

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Attention, Memory and the Mind: A Synergy of Psychological, Neuroscientific, and Contemplative Perspectives

Beginning in the twentieth century, science has become the dominant paradigm for understanding the natural world by way of objective, quantitative measurements, using the instruments of technology. The integration of scientific knowledge and technology has vastly contributed to our understanding of the physical world and to improving the human standard of living. Furthermore, over a much longer time period spanning the past 2,500 years, Buddhism has emerged in multiple cultures throughout Asia as the dominant paradigm for understanding the natural world by way of subjective, qualitative observations by way of highly sophisticated meditative training.

By (Mind & Life Institute)

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Mind over matter

Neuroscientist Shanida Nataraja has proved meditation does more than clear your head, it can put both halves of your brain to work, improving your concentration, memory and decision-making. She tells Andy Darling how it works.

By Andy Darling (guardian.co.uk)

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