From Mind Matters, August 15, 2021
Andrew Newberg and colleagues have found that extended periods of prayer and meditation
can change the brain:
We studied one such seven-day programme in Pennsylvania based on the spiritual exercises of Saint Ignatius. Our research on this retreat programme, which is typically conducted in silence and consists of extended periods of prayer and meditation, showed a number of differences in participants’ brains after the retreat compared with before it. For one, our study looked at the effects of the retreat programme on serotonin and dopamine, two critical neurotransmitters involved in many of our emotional and cognitive processes. The results suggested that a person’s brain becomes more sensitised to the effects of serotonin and dopamine, which might help us understand how retreat programmes of this nature can improve measures of wellbeing (in this case, decreased self-reported tension and fatigue). Our research also found that, after the retreat, there were changes in how different parts of the brain were functionally connected, particularly the frontal and parietal lobes.
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