Last Updated on March 17, 2023 by pg@petergamma.org
Here our answers to their questions:
1) The impact of meditation on the structure and functioning of the brain
We suggest you to read the book “Altered Traits” by Richard Davidson. Some aspects of the book are also reviewed in our journal:
check the categories and tags “meditation” in our journal.
2) The benefits of meditation in the treatment of mental health problems
Also here, we suggest to find information from Richard Davidson, founder of the Center of Healthy Minds in Madison Wisconsin, USA. Many talks of Richard Davidson can be found on YouTube.
3) The role of meditation in improving cognitive performance and attention
To start with, we suggest to check the reviews of Cody Rall MD with Techforpsych on his YouTube channel. Cody is an experienced medical doctor who has reviewed many EEG devices for meditation, and does reviews about cognitive performance and attention since many years.
4) The most effective types of meditation techniques and practices for different individuals
Matthieu Ricard, Buddhist monk with a PhD. In cellular genetics reviewed a PNAS paper on YouTube about the long-term effect of practicing meditation in which he participated:
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0407401101
Matthieu concluded in one of his YouTube reviews, that the study participators
where Olympic champions of Mind Training, who reached the highest gamma wave activities in the left prefrontal cortex, which correlates with happiness or well-being. We don t know the exact scientific sources of his conclusions. But if you are interested in books about the topic meditation written by a Buddhist monk with a PhD. in cellular genetics, we suggest to read the following books o Matthieu:
- Happiness
- Meditation
- Meditation and Brain Research with co-author and brain researcher Wolf Singer: “Hirnforschung und Meditation: Paperback – February 1, 2013, German Edition by Wolf Singer (Author), Matthieu Ricard”
- many other books from Matthieu about this topic.
The Meditation Research Institute at Swami Rama Sadhaka Grama in India studied the effectiveness of several meditation practices and wrote papers about this topic in scientific journals:
https://www.ahymsin.org/the-meditation-research-institute/
https://www.ahymsin.org/about-the-meditation-research-institute-m-r-i/
EEGLAB developer Arnaud Delorme was one of the scientist who has participated in these studies, and reviewed some of those on YouTube. According to Delorme, none of the meditation practices seemed to be extraordinary effective if compared to the others.
We are very happy about the interest of high school students in meditation and the impact on the brain and their choice of this topic for student projects and their new contributions and wish them all the best for their work to be successful.