Close your eyes and expand your mind: the effects of meditation on neuroplasticity. The waves gently roll over the sand over your bare feet as you inhale deeply the slightly salty scent of the fresh ocean air. Tension is released from your body as you exhale, inhale, and exhale again, until all tension is released and you feel a fulfilling sense of calm. Continue this deep breathing. Rock back and forth in time with the waves: backwards as you inhale and forwards as you exhale. Centralize your attention on this motion and only this motion. In the distance, you hear the gentle call of seagulls as the glow of the sun warms the sand around you, warming your body. These experiences are noticed, but your attention remains focused on synchronizing your rocking with the rolling waves. As you do this, you inhale, exhale, inhale. . .Say no to plagiarism. Get a Custom Essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”?Get the original essayDaniel J. Sigel, an award-winning educator and distinguished fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, says that practicing mindfulness, a aspect of mediation, can literally expand their minds by promoting a neural phenomenon known as neuroplasticity (Siegel, 2010). Neuroplasticity, according to Richard Widdett in his honors thesis on “Neuroplasticity and Mindfulness Meditation,” is a phenomenon that occurs throughout a person's life; the brain changes shape following the birth of neurons and neuronal connections following external or even internal experiences (Widdett, 2014). Experiences such as these facilitate changes within the physical structures of the brain, thereby modifying or improving the function of these structures. Therefore, just as there are a plethora of different experiences in which an individual can engage, there are an equal or greater number of possible neural responses that can give rise to these experiences. The repetition of neuronal responses is at the origin of the neurological spectacle that is neuroplasticity. Interestingly enough, only recently have researchers begun to look more closely at the effects of internal experiences on the brain. Internal experiences are what they seem; they are experiences that one has in the realm of one's own mind (Begley, 2004). In recent times, internal experiences, such as meditation practice, have become a central part of the study of neuroplasticity. Psychology today defines meditation as a practice involving focusing attention on a single physical object or phrase (called a mantra). During meditation, the individual's focus remains on the present moment and all distractions are removed (Meditation, 2016). Successfully maintaining this level of intensive concentration required by meditation would obviously require repeated practice; repeated practice, in turn, would initiate the physical changes of neuroplasticity. Extensive research into the recently hypothesized effects of mediation on neuroplasticity has uncovered several areas in which the physical structures of the brain can be altered through the repetitive practice of mediation. These changes in the physical structures of the brain have revealed interesting developments in the very nature of an individual's overall sense of well-being. In other words, structural changes in the brain due to mediation practice have been shown to alter areas of the brainresponsible for cognitive processes such as an individual's ability to remain attentively focused on a task for an extended period of time, as well as those responsible for the regulation of emotional and executive processes (Pagnoni & Cekic, 2007). Above all, mediation is essentially work designed specifically for the brain to promote its structural and neural development. This evolution, as mentioned earlier, brings countless changes in the way the brain perceives and processes information. In addition to these possibilities, there is a main aspect of mediation that also affects what is perceived from the environment and how the perceived stimulus is received by the normally inquisitive mind: attention. TIME Magazine recently reported in May of last year that the human attention span has steadily declined since the year 2000; a recent study on human attention span reveals that the average adult attention span lasts no more than eight seconds: one second less than that of the average goldfish (McSpadden, 2015). The remaining question is how mediation can change physical regions of the brain to support longer attention spans. The answer to such a question rests on the results revealed by extensive studies carried out on the fundamental effects of meditation on the brain by researchers such as Antonino Raffone and Narayanan Srinivasan, who conducted a study on mediation regarding the neuroscience of attention and consciousness. their research, Raffone and Narayanan concluded that since focusing attention on a singular object or mantra is an imperative aspect of meditation, repeated practice of mediation revealed an increase in one's ability or skill. individual to retain their attention for longer durations, with a reduction in effort to achieve this (Raffone & Srinivasan, 2010). A specific style of mediation known as focused attention mediation, or meditation (FA), may cause these changes in attention span after prolonged practice. (FA) mediation is exactly what the name suggests; it is a style of mediation that involves not only focusing attention on a single object or mantra, but also recognizing and disengaging from distraction. Another style of meditation, called Open Monitoring (OM) mediation, also involves disengagement from distractions as it calls for the individual to maintain a non-judgmental awareness of their surroundings, focusing only on the present moment. With repeated practice, meditators (FA) are able to notice a distracting thought, but they let it pass without even another moment of attention. An interesting result of practicing this form of mediation concerns the effects on the brain systems responsible for conflict monitoring (Raffone & Srinivasan, 2010). It is plausible that with the development of attention skills resulting from mediation practice (FA), an individual may be able to treat conflict as a distraction. Thus, they would be better able to handle the situation more objectively thanks to their ability to let go of distracting thoughts that would otherwise interfere with the resolution of the conflict. In fact, brain regions such as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and the superior and intraparietal sulci, visible in fMRI images, were activated during mediation; these areas are associated respectively with the processes of attentional engagement and attentional orienting (Davidson & Lutz, 2008). Generally speaking, practicing mediation (FA) or (OM) has been shown to significantly improve a person's ability to stay focused andignore distracting environmental stimuli. Thus, an individual may be better able to maintain attention on certain tasks that require greater concentration; Successful completion of tasks such as driving, studying, or even playing strategic games like chess could benefit significantly from an increased ability to focus and ignore distractions. Meditation provides such abilities through the neural changes that occur in response to its practice. Neuroplasticity is the perceptible solidification of new neural pathways that mediation encourages and facilitates in those who practice it regularly. Not only does meditation facilitate the development of attention skills; Mediation has been scientifically shown to affect gray matter volume, as well as white matter myelin density. A cross-sectional design study by Guiseppe Pagnoni and Milos Cekic, about the physical effects of meditation on the typical decrease in gray matter volume associated with aging, used yet another style of meditation called Zen meditation. Zen meditation is a third style of mediation very similar to mediation (OM) which requires the practitioner to maintain an open attitude and a regular breathing rhythm, while maintaining good posture (Pagnoni & Cekic, 2007). Participants in their study were separated into two groups, one of long-term Zen meditators and the other of controls, and asked to complete a sustained attention task while the researchers administered morphometrics to each participant based on Voxel for an MRI. Data collected at the end of the study showed that the brains of participants who did not practice mediation regularly showed a normal level of decline in gray matter volume due to aging, but those who did did not show a normal level of gray matter volume. such reduction. Regarding the meditator group, a slight increase in gray matter volume was observed, particularly in the putamen (Pagnoni & Cekic, 2007). Thus, as overall gray matter volume increases, it is reasonably predictable that individuals who practice meditation perform better on tasks related to regions responsible for sensory perception, emotions, attention, etc., because this are areas located in the gray matter. area. Regarding the putamen structure of the brain; Pagnoni and Cekic revealed that the greatest increase in gray matter in the meditator's brain was found in this area (2007). The putamen, located at the base of the forebrain, are involved in motor control. That being said, individuals with more gray matter volume in their putamen would likely perform better in tasks related to skilled motor control due to the greater amount of volume readily available to strengthen these neural connections in the putamen. Aside from gray matter, the almost equally extensive regions of white matter, in this case the anterior cingulate cortex, have also shown dramatic changes in neuroplasticity, resulting from prolonged practice of mediation, as reported by a study carried out by Tang et al. in 2012. Along with 4 other colleagues, Tang discovered in 2012 that neuroplasticity, resulting from mediation, significantly changed ACC neuronal activity. Due to neurodevelopment within the anterior cingulate cortex, Tang et al. saw an elevation in connections between the ACC and other brain regions. Using fractional anisotropy as a measure of neuronal connectivity, researchers were able to detect neuroplastic changes in the ACC using diffusion tensor imaging...