You can grow your brain volume with fear or compassion
I can’t believe this study I just ran across. I am wondering if it hits you in the same way as it hit me? I just have to share.
The study looked at two areas of the brain: the anterior cingulate and the amygdala.
The amygdala is involved when:
• we are fearful.
• we have anxiety.
• we experience the emotions of fight or flight.
• have an impulsive unrestrained response to something.
The amygdala will have more volume in a person who tends to be more fearful than someone who is not.
The anterior cingulate is involved in:
• empathy
• compassion
• social awareness
• intuition
• measured responses to external influences
The anterior cingulate is dominant when you meditate and when you consider the plight of someone else. So, when you have compassion for other people over and over, this area gets stimulated and actually becomes greater in volume. The more we meditate, the more stimulation to the anterior cingulate. The more caregiving we do or the more community or volunteer work participate in, the more volume the anterior cingulate will have.
Political orientations have been correlated with brain structures in young adults in a study looking at both the size of one’s anterior cingulate or the amygdala.
Using a 5 point scale of a self reported survey and MRIs to measure the volume of these brain centers, 90 healthy young adults were enrolled.
Findings:
• Anterior Cingulate volume was greater if you held more liberal beliefs.
• Amygdala volume was greater if you held more conservative beliefs.
Why is this so interesting? Liberals tend to have more compassion towards the environment, animals, and other people’s plight. Conservatives tend to hold fear-based beliefs (e.g. gun control and immigration). It signals that the brain is changeable, that what we are born with we shape based on our experience and thoughts, and if this is true, then changing our brain- not just our minds, is possible.
Experience coupled with attention leads to physical changes of the nervous system. The good news continues to be: We can sculpt our ever-changing minds. We choose who we will be and what our tendency to react will be, and these changes result in changes in brain volume in different areas of our brains. The ability of neurons and their networks to change based on their experience! If you tend to react immediately with fear, gather some tools to help your nervous system default to meditation, trust, acceptance. If you meditate we now see that all areas of the brain benefit, including the amygdala.
The brain we develop reflects the life that we lead - Dalai Lama
