What we know about mindfulness and the brain

NEIL BAILEY: We don’t actually know yet whether it’s synaptogenesis or neurogenesis that’s increasing the brain volumes as a result of meditation. It could be synaptogenesis, which is growth in the connections of the cells of the brain, or it could be neurogenesis, where new brain cells are actually grown and produced. But I guess at the end of the day, it’s not so important the exact mechanism by which it works, because we do know things like the brain grows. We also know that meditation decreases the default mode network activity which is associated with depression. It’s associated with anxiety, and maybe later on, associated with Alzheimer’s. We also know it decreases the activity of the amygdala, which is related to fear and anxiety.

And we know that across many, many studies, people who have practised mindfulness meditation have better mental health than 70% of the rest of the population on average. So even though we don’t know the exact mechanism by which mindfulness meditation can help the brain, we do know that it does pretty good things, and generally makes us happier and healthier.