A new brain imaging study led by researchers at Yale University shows how people who regularly practise meditation are able to switch off areas of the brain linked to daydreaming, anxiety, schizophrenia and other psychiatric disorders. The brains of experienced meditators appear to show less activity in an area known as the "default mode network", which is linked to largely self-centred thinking. The researchers suggest through monitoring and suppressing or "tuning out" the "me" thoughts, meditators develop a new default mode, which is more present-centred.
A report of their findings is due to be published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
... " ... the hallmarks of many forms of mental illness is a preoccupation with one's own thoughts, a condition meditation seems to affect"
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