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Distinct patterns of brain waves during the Transcendental Meditation Technique indicate that there is a state of restful alertness during the practice.
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by Global Good News staff writer
8 June 2010
In a video interview featured in the Video Cafe of Maharishi University of Management, Dr Fred Travis, Director of the Center for Brain, Consciousness and Cognition, explains the experience of restful alertness and growth of brain coherence during practice of Transcendental Meditation and how this coherence is reflected in activity even in a complex computer task.
Dr Travis explained that the main measure seen to change during Transcendental Meditation practice, is in the frontal areas of the brain—the executive centres of the brain—which become more coherent, more orderly.
Coherence means more integrated functioning. ‘Coherence means that what one part of the brain is doing,’ Dr Travis said, ‘the other part of the brain is involved; [they are] communicating back and forth. Because they are both involved in the same task, the electrical pattern, the electrical signature, is similar.’
This is how coherence is measured. The brain is not acting as a lot of independent modules functioning, but these modules begin to be functioning together.
Dr Travis continued: ‘What we are finding is that the whole brain is beginning to communicate during Transcendental Meditation practice. It’s called “total brain functioning”.
It is the brain measurement that allows us to make a very strong objective statement about something happening very privately and deep within the individual. Their whole sense of Self—where they are thinking from, where they are appreciating the world from—is becoming deeper, fuller, more expanded.’
Dr Travis explained that first year students at Maharishi University of Management were measured before they learnt the Transcendental Meditation Technique. Their EEG [Electroencephalograph measurement of brain waves] was taken as they were sitting with eyes closed, and when doing a complex task. The question the scientists were posing was how will the brain change during the meditation practice and afterwards?
Dr Travis said the results were ‘quite exciting.’ After two months, the level of coherence—the level of integration of the frontal lobes, the executive centres—reached a very high level during Transcendental Meditation practice. The coherence reached [an increased level] at six months and at twelve months.
‘So that was one fascinating finding,’ Dr Travis said. ‘The other was that during a challenging computer task each time the students post-tested, there was increasing frontal coherence during the task.
‘What we were seeing was the brain patterns during Transcendental Meditation beginning to be seen more and more in activity.’
Dr Travis went on to explain that every time one experiences something, it creates a cascade of electrical activity that goes back and forth and left and right and leaves its imprint on the brain.
He used an analogy to explain this—it is like water coming up onto sand by the ocean. The water comes up and then goes out, but it leaves some imprint in the sand. ‘The imprint that is being left in your brain is the connection between specific groups of neurons, which are now stronger,’ Dr Travis said.
He explained that this happens with every experience: ‘Meditation is a new type of experience, and different meditations give different types of experience,’ he said.
‘Transcendental Meditation gives you a unique experience and that is of “restful alertness”. Restful alertness.'
He explained that we know how to be restful, that's called “sleep.” We know how to be alert, that's called “being in a football game.” But how do you have both together? This is what the experience of Transcendental Meditation gives you.
‘When you look at the neural imaging of the brain, the very centre of the brain,’ Dr Travis continued, ‘the thalamus, which is at the outlet of all the information going up to the brain, to the higher brain centres that process it, that part of the brain is more quiet.
‘The frontal area, the executive area, the whole attentional system, is more active than just sitting with eyes closed. So it's a state of being highly alert, highly awake, but in a very quiet state of mind and body.’
Continuing to have this experience of restful alertness strengthens the brain circuits so one can be more restfully alert in activity—for example, in a calculus class, when playing music, or when walking with a friend.
‘So what we're seeing,’ said Dr Travis, ‘is that the brain pattern of transcending, of inner wakefulness, of alertness, intelligence, creativity, vibrancy, that is beginning to be there more and more even in the middle of a very challenging, demanding task.
‘This is when you need it. If Transcendental Meditation only had some nice effects when your eyes are closed, it wouldn’t be very valuable because your eyes are closed, you're not doing anything,’ he said. ‘The bottom line for students is that you can have more settledness, very quiet, but you're fully alert and you're ready to go.
‘This is the brain state you bring with you. This is the inner conscious experience state that you bring with you into class,’ he said.
‘This is something we're actually seeing. Students and faculty, have commented [about] the wakefulness, the alertness, the excitement. . . and this is where it comes from.
‘Taking the brain back and forth from the state of transcending into activity brings more of that inner value of life out into activity,’ he concluded.
© Copyright 2010 Global Good News®
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