Research on meditationFrom Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaThis article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding reliable references. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Research on the processes and effects of meditation is a growing subfield of neurological research. By scanning the brain using modern technology such as fMRI and EEG scientists, working together with meditators, have helped to further our understanding of how meditation occurs. Meditation changes the brain and the body. It is similar to learning to ride a bike or play an instrument in that there are structural and functional changes that occur in the brain with repeated practice over an extended period of time.Meditation has historically been practiced within religious traditions especially by monks. Today much of what is considered meditation in the West is secular in nature, for instance mindfulness-based programs. Today mindfulness-based meditative practices have become popular within the wider medical and psychological Western community. For more information see Mindfulness (psychology) and Buddhism and psychology.It should be noted that the information about the research on meditation found on this page is incomplete. Some of the research on meditation is located on the individual pages describing a particular style of meditation. Those styles can be found through other pages on Wikipedia, such as Meditation and Buddhist meditation. It is also unlikely that this page will ever completely cover all the studies that are published discerning how meditation works because of the sheer quantity of studies on meditation and the relative newness of this field of neuroscience.Contents 1 Western Therapeutic Use1.1 Mindfulness-based stress reduction2 Flow3 Meditation and stress3.1 National Institutes of Health3.2 Goleman: Amygdala and pre-frontal cortex4 Gray and White Matter5 Theoria6 Meditation and EEG7 Meditation and Perception8 The Relaxation Response9 Adverse effects10 NCCAM studies11 See also12 References13 External linksWestern Therapeutic UseMeditation has entered the mainstream of health care as a method of stress and pain reduction. As a method of stress reduction, meditation has been used in hospitals in cases of chronic or terminal illness to reduce complications associated with increased stress that include depressed immune systems. There is growing agreement in the medical community that mental factors such as stress significantly contribute to a lack of physical health, and there is a growing movement in mainstream science to fund research in this area. There are now several mainstream health care programs which aid those, both sick and healthy, in promoting their inner well-being, especially those mindfulness based programs.Mindfulness-based stress reduction Mindfulness (psychology) and Mindfulness-based stress reductionA 2003 meta-analysis found that mindfulness-based stress reduction, which involves continuous awareness of consciousness, without seeking to censor thoughts, concluded that the form of meditation may be broadly useful for individuals attempting to cope with clinical and nonclinical problems. Diagnoses for which MBSR was found to be helpful included chronic pain, fibromyalgia, cancer patients and coronary artery disease. Improvements were noted for both physical and mental health measures.FlowMindfulness meditation, anapanasati, and related techniques, are intended to train attention for the sake of provoking insight. A wider, more flexible attention span makes it easier to be aware