http://medicalxpress.com/ en-us Medical Xpress internet news portal provides the latest news on Health and Medicine. Scientists studying the Chinese mindfulness meditation known as integrative body-mind training (IBMT) say they've confirmed and expanded their findings on changes in structural efficiency of white matter in the brain that can be related to positive behavioral changes in subjects practicing the technique regularly for a month. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-06-chinese-meditation-ibmt-prompts-positive.html Neuroscience Mon, 11 Jun 2012 15:00:01 EST news258645102 (Phys.org) -- In our busy world most rarely have time to ponder the intricacies of subliminal messaging, despite the fact that it goes on all around us every day, in many cases as a direct means to incite us to buy an advertised product. Advertisers use hidden images embedded in photographs, for example, to cause reactions that we are generally unaware of, until we’re walking the aisles of a supermarket and suddenly find ourselves desiring a certain product. Now, new research by a team of psychologists and anthropologists from the Netherlands and Britain have found that practitioners of meditation appear to be more susceptible to subliminal messages than are those who don’t practice the ancient art. They have, as they describe in their paper published in Consciousness and Cognition, found through running two experiments, that engaging in meditation appears to open the mind to new insights which allows people to better remember subliminal messages they have received. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-06-psychologists-meditation-awareness-subliminal-messages.html Psychology & Psychiatry Fri, 08 Jun 2012 08:58:35 EST news258364640 Regular meditation could decrease the risk of developing cardiovascular disease in teens who are most at risk, according to Georgia Health Sciences University researchers. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-06-meditation-decrease-cardiovascular-disease-teens.html Health Thu, 07 Jun 2012 04:10:02 EST news258260215 (Medical Xpress) -- People who practice mindfulness meditation learn to accept their feelings, emotions, and states of mind without judging or resisting them. They simply live in the moment. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-long-term-meditation-brain.html Psychology & Psychiatry Thu, 24 May 2012 08:21:40 EST news257066494 (Medical Xpress) -- The experience of 'mental silence' is linked with better health outcomes and greater wellbeing according to a University of Sydney study. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-meditation-linked-wellbeing-health-mental.html Psychology & Psychiatry Fri, 11 May 2012 06:58:17 EST news255938283 For many Americans, "yoga" conjures up mental images of athletic-minded people engaging in a simultaneous "warrior pose" while being told to focus on their breathing. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-05-stanford-scholar-tracks-meditation-migration.html Psychology & Psychiatry Wed, 02 May 2012 04:10:02 EST news255148961 A small study from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) researchers found that online virtual communities may be an effective way to train patients in meditation and other mind/body techniques. The ability to learn and practice approaches that elicit the relaxation response – a state of deep rest that has been shown to alleviate stress-related symptoms – in a virtual environment could help surmount several barriers that can restrict participation. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-03-virtual-environment-mindbody-techniques.html Psychology & Psychiatry Fri, 30 Mar 2012 19:03:35 EST news252353005 Schoolteachers who underwent a short but intensive program of meditation were less depressed, anxious or stressed – and more compassionate and aware of others' feelings, according to a UCSF-led study that blended ancient meditation practices with the most current scientific methods for regulating emotions. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-03-om-meditation-big-emotional-issues.html Psychology & Psychiatry Wed, 28 Mar 2012 17:10:39 EST news252173397 Earlier evidence out of UCLA suggested that meditating for years thickens the brain (in a good way) and strengthens the connections between brain cells. Now a further report by UCLA researchers suggests yet another benefit. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-03-evidence-meditation-brain.html Neuroscience Wed, 14 Mar 2012 16:03:54 EST news250959806 Women recently diagnosed with breast cancer have higher survival rates than those diagnosed in previous decades, according to the American Cancer Society. However, survivors continue to face health challenges after their treatments end. Previous research reports as many as 50 percent of breast cancer survivors are depressed. Now, University of Missouri researchers in the Sinclair School of Nursing say a meditation technique can help breast cancer survivors improve their emotional and physical well-being. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-12-breast-cancer-survivors-benefit-mindfulness-based.html Psychology & Psychiatry Thu, 29 Dec 2011 16:13:52 EST news244397616 Experienced meditators seem to be able switch off areas of the brain associated with daydreaming as well as psychiatric disorders such as autism and schizophrenia, according to a new brain imaging study by Yale researchers. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-11-tuning-brains-benefit-meditation.html Psychology & Psychiatry Mon, 21 Nov 2011 15:00:20 EST news241097260 In times of stress, we're often encouraged to pause for a moment and simply be in the 'now.' This kind of mindfulness, an essential part of Buddhist and Indian Yoga traditions, has entered the mainstream as people try to find ways to combat stress and improve their quality of life. And research suggests that mindfulness meditation can have benefits for health and performance, including improved immune function, reduced blood pressure, and enhanced cognitive function. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-10-dont-happy-ndash-mindfulness-meditation.html Psychology & Psychiatry Mon, 31 Oct 2011 15:04:16 EST news239292211 For most of his life, 24-year-old Steven Bringas so feared humiliating himself if he spoke that only an emergency would get him to enter a store. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-08-stanford-vanquishes-social-anxieties-drugs.html Psychology & Psychiatry Fri, 19 Aug 2011 11:20:01 EST news232967949 (Medical Xpress) -- Two years ago, researchers at UCLA found that specific regions in the brains of long-term meditators were larger and had more gray matter than the brains of individuals in a control group. This suggested that meditation may indeed be good for all of us since, alas, our brains shrink naturally with age. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-07-meditation-push-up-brain.html Psychology & Psychiatry Thu, 14 Jul 2011 05:55:42 EST news229841722 In the late 1990s, Jane Anderson was working as a landscape architect. That meant she didn't work much in the winter, and she struggled with seasonal affective disorder in the dreary Minnesota winter months. She decided to try meditation and noticed a change within a month. "My experience was a sense of calmness, of better ability to regulate my emotions," she says. Her experience inspired a new study which will be published in an upcoming issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, which finds changes in brain activity after only five weeks of meditation training. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-07-neurons-meditate.html Psychology & Psychiatry Thu, 07 Jul 2011 17:06:31 EST news229277175 (Medical Xpress) -- Fulltime workers who used a traditional 'silent' form of meditation became much less stressed and depressed compared to more conventional approaches to relaxation or even placebo, according to a paper published today in the online journal Evidence Based Complementary Medicine, a leading publication in its field. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-06-meditation-basics.html Psychology & Psychiatry Fri, 10 Jun 2011 10:15:52 EST news226919660 (Medical Xpress) -- Dr. Beverly Thorn, chair of The University of Alabama's psychology department, is seeking volunteers for a key study into how "mindfulness meditation" can help manage chronic pain from headaches. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-05-ua-psychology-professor-relief-chronic.html Psychology & Psychiatry Tue, 10 May 2011 08:30:01 EST news224234105 Studies have shown that meditating regularly can help relieve symptoms in people who suffer from chronic pain, but the neural mechanisms underlying the relief were unclear. Now, MIT and Harvard researchers have found a possible explanation for this phenomenon. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-05-benefits-meditation-neuroscientists-tune-distractions.html Neuroscience Thu, 05 May 2011 06:42:19 EST news223796520 The positive effects of mindfulness meditation on pain and working memory may result from an improved ability to regulate a crucial brain wave called the alpha rhythm. This rhythm is thought to "turn down the volume" on distracting information, which suggests that a key value of meditation may be helping the brain deal with an often-overstimulating world. Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), Harvard Medical School and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology report that modulation of the alpha rhythm in response to attention-directing cues was faster and significantly more enhanced among study participants who completed an eight-week mindfulness meditation program than in a control group. The report will appear in the journal Brain Research Bulletin and has been released online. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-04-meditation-brain-volume-distractions.html Neuroscience Thu, 21 Apr 2011 12:56:17 EST news222609361 If a friend or relative won $100 and then offered you a few dollars, would you accept this windfall? The logical answer would seem to be, sure, why not? "But human decision making does not always appear rational," said Read Montague, professor of physics at Virginia Tech and director of the Human Neuroimaging Laboratory at the Virginia Tech Carilion Research Institute. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2011-04-functional-mri-mindfulness-meditation-decision-making.html Neuroscience Wed, 20 Apr 2011 11:05:10 EST news222516288