The Brain Blog by Russell Simmons

“Teen drinking may cause irreversible brain damage: A recent study by neuroscientist Susan Tapert of the University of California, San Diego, compared the brain scans of teens who drink heavily with the scans of teens who don’t. Tapert’s team found damaged nerve tissue in the brains of the teens who drank. The researchers believe this damage negatively affects attention span in boys, and girls’ ability to comprehend and interpret visual information.”—National Public Radio Doctors used to say, “It’s all in the mind.” Now they add, “It’s also in the brain.”

That’s because every experience changes your brain.

Sleep six hours, balance your checkbook, write a poem, drink too much alcohol, pray, meditate, shoot a free throw, do a line of cocaine, fast, overeat, listen to music, play music, watch a movie, make a movie…

Each of these distinct experiences changes your brain in unique ways—sometimes healthy, sometimes damaging.

My desire to bring meditation to schools peaked when I heard about studies conducted on students who meditate—in particular, research on how Transcendental Meditation impacts the brain of students in very positive ways.

My friend and meditation teacher, Bob Roth, a national director with the David Lynch Foundation, pointed out a new study on the brain wave patterns of meditating college students, which was conducted at American University in Washington, D.C., and published last month in the scientific journal, Cognitive Processing. The study found that when students practice Transcendental Meditation, their whole brain functions in a far more “coherent” manner. That means the left and right sides (hemispheres) of the brain, and the front and back of the brain, which are often disconnected, communicate much better during TM practice. In the technical language of the researchers, there were also higher “alpha” brain waves (which means greater inner wakefulness), along with smaller “beta” and “gamma” waves (which means deeper inner relaxation).