‘You Can Sculpt Your Brain’
This is an excerpt of Prayer May Reshape Your Brain … And Your Reality
by Barbara Bradley Hagerty
Andrew Newberg, a neuroscientist at the University of Pennsylvania, has been scanning the brains of religious people for more than a decade. So far, scientists have focused on people who pray or meditate for one, two or more hours a day. They think that studying spiritual virtuosos will offer clues to the brain workings of more typical believers. But now Newberg and others are turning their attention to people who want to enrich their spiritual lives, but don’t have that kind of time.
So there’s hope for people with jobs and kids.
Neuroscientist Richard Davidson says you can change your brain with experience and training.
“You can sculpt your brain just as you’d sculpt your muscles if you went to the gym,” he says. “Our brains are continuously being sculpted, whether you like it or not, wittingly or unwittingly.”
It’s called neuroplasticity. For years Davidson, who is at the University of Wisconsin, has scanned the brains of Buddhist monks who have logged years of meditation. When it comes to things like attention and compassion, their brains are as finely tuned as a late-model Porsche. Davidson wondered: Could ordinary people achieve the same kind of connection with the spiritual that the monks do — without so much effort?
I wondered that, too. And when I heard his lab was launching a study lasting two weeks, I said, “Sign me up.”
It turned out I was too old for the study. But they let me see what it was about. For 30 minutes every morning, I settled into my chair to the soothing tones of a meditation CD. The voice of a University of Wisconsin graduate student urged me to shower compassion on a loved one, a stranger, myself.
The trouble came when I was asked to visualize someone I had difficulty with in life. I became surly, as I reflected on the minor tragedies in my life and the people who caused them. When I saw Richard Davidson, I didn’t mention how ill-tempered I had grown.
“Is there a capacity to change my brain if I continue with this?” I asked.
“Absolutely,” he responded enthusiastically. “I would say the likelihood is that you are already changing your brain.”
I hope not. Others, however, were far more successful in cultivating a spiritual mind-set. Davidson couldn’t tell me about the results of my study, which have yet to be published. But he could say there were detectable changes in the subjects’ brains within two weeks. Another similar study, where employees at a high-tech firm meditated a few minutes a day over a few weeks, produced more dramatic results.
“Just two months’ practice among rank amateurs led to a systematic change in both the brain as well as the immune system in more positive directions,” he said.
For example, they developed more antibodies to a flu virus than did their colleagues who did not meditate.
This is an excerpt of Prayer May Reshape Your Brain … And Your Reality
