In her current work, she is exploring meditation’s effects on the brains of clinically depressed patients, a group for whom studies have shown meditation to be effective. Sign up for daily emails to get the latest Harvard news. ![]() The scans still detected changes in the subjects’ brain activation patterns from the beginning to the end of the study, the first time such a change - in a part of the brain called the amygdala - had been detected. She scanned them not while they were meditating, but while they were performing everyday tasks. Desbordes took before-and-after scans of subjects who learned to meditate over the course of two months. In 2012, she demonstrated that changes in brain activity in subjects who have learned to meditate hold steady even when they’re not meditating. “If we want that to become a therapy or something offered in the community, we need to demonstrate scientifically.”ĭesbordes’ research uses functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which not only takes pictures of the brain, as a regular MRI does, but also records brain activity occurring during the scan. Then, being a scientist, asking ‘How does this work? What is this doing to me?’ and wanting to understand the mechanisms to see if it can help others,” Desbordes said. “My own interest comes from having practiced those and found them beneficial, personally. Her experience convinced her that something real was happening to her and prompted her to study the subject more closely, in hopes of shedding enough light to underpin therapy that might help others. She began meditating as a graduate student in computational neuroscience at Boston University, seeking respite from the stress and frustration of academic life. I’m not sure that is exactly how the public understands it at this point.”ĭesbordes’ interest in the topic stems from personal experience. And then there’s a bunch of other things under study with preliminary evidence that is encouraging but by no means conclusive. “We’re talking about moderate effect size, on par with other treatments, not better. But the effects are by no means earth-shattering,” Desbordes said. “There are a few applications where the evidence is believable. Still, there are a handful of key areas - including depression, chronic pain, and anxiety - in which well-designed, well-run studies have shown benefits for patients engaging in a mindfulness meditation program, with effects similar to other existing treatments. But some of those findings have been called into question because studies had small sample sizes or problematic experimental designs. Studies have shown benefits against an array of conditions both physical and mental, including irritable bowel syndrome, fibromyalgia, psoriasis, anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder. The number of randomized controlled trials - the gold standard for clinical study - involving mindfulness has jumped from one in the period from 1995‒1997 to 11 from 2004‒2006, to a whopping 216 from 2013‒2015, according to a recent article summarizing scientific findings on the subject. Paralleling, and perhaps feeding, the growing popular acceptance has been rising scientific attention. ![]() In recent decades, public interest in mindfulness meditation has soared. Shapero is working with Gaëlle Desbordes, an instructor in radiology at HMS and a neuroscientist at MGH’s Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging, to explore one alternative approach: mindfulness-based meditation. There’s a great need for alternative approaches.” But it’s also the case that many people don’t benefit from them as well. “Individual cognitive behavioral therapy is helpful for many people antidepressant medications help many people. “Many people don’t respond to the frontline interventions,” said Benjamin Shapero, an instructor in psychiatry at Harvard Medical School (HMS) and a psychologist at Massachusetts General Hospital’s (MGH) Depression Clinical and Research Program. There’s an arsenal of treatments at hand, including talk therapy and antidepressant medications, but what’s depressing in itself is that they don’t work for every patient. ![]() In 2015, 16.1 million Americans reported experiencing major depression during the previous year, often struggling to function while grappling with crippling darkness and despair.
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