Meditation

Can meditation make you smarter?

A review of the evidence suggests that it might...

Links

• Controlled study suggesting that meditation improves intelligence
• Bibliography of research on transcendental meditation
• * you should be careful when taking for granted any "research" coming from Maharishi "University". While some of their meditation techniques may be beneficial and efficient (as are many other, non-TM meditation practices), the "Transcendental Meditation" comes with large overhead/baggage of spiritualist/anti-realist junk than no-one in any related science takes for serious. These issues are addressed here. See also the book, Transcendence, by Dr. Norman Rosenthal. There is a large body of excellent, peer-reviewed published research on TM, including randomized controlled trials, and ongoing funding from the NIH.
• Mindfulness - article at Wikipedia
• Article by Sharon Begley (author of "Train your mind, change your brain", suggesting that meditation can bring about positive changes in the brain
• Article in WSJ - Scans of Monks' Brains Show Meditation Alters Structure, Functioning
• Study shows compassion meditation changes the brain
• Alterations in Brain and Immune Function Produced by Mindfulness Meditation - academic paper
• Mental training affects distribution of limited brain resources - suggests meditation can improve performance related to the "attentional blink"
• Meditation builds up the brain - article in the New Scientist
• Google has several Tech Talks about Meditation. Shinzen Young gave an excellent talk called Divide and Conquer: How the Essence of Mindfulness Parallels the Nuts and Bolts of Science. Philippe Goldin also gave a talk called Cognitive Neuroscience of Mindfulness Meditation about neuroscience's research and adoption of meditation.
• Mindfulness In Plain English, a free book on mindfulness meditation (vipassana bhavana), one of the two main modes of Buddhist meditation (the other one being loving-kindness meditation, metta bhavana).