Welcome, innovative viewers, to Science and Spirituality. The human brain is a vastly complex organ containing some 50 to 100 billion nerve cells or neurons. One of the amazing aspects of the brain is that it continues to produce new neurons throughout our life and is able to redefine its structure over time after new experiences such as learning a new skill or seeing a new city. This re-arranging of neural pathways is referred to as brain plasticity or neuro-plasticity.

What role does meditation play in the development of our brain, how it functions, and the conscious states we experience? For answers to these questions, we turned to Dr. Fred Travis, the Chair of the Maharishi Vedic Science Department and Director of the Center for Brain, Consciousness and Cognition at the Maharishi University of Management in Iowa, USA.

For the past 20 years he has researched the evolution of the human brain and investigated the nature of consciousness. He has published 40 academic papers regarding research in these areas.

I’m interested in how the brain changes over the whole lifespan and how different experiences affects the brain, how stress, how fatigue affects the brain, how learning affects the brain, also how meditation practice affects the brain.

We were fortunate to see first-hand some of the research Dr. Travis is conducting regarding how meditation influences the brain’s functions.

We have here today one of our first-year students, Tor Travis. We’re recording his brain waves while he’s doing computer tasks. And we’ll see how these change while he’s here at Maharishi University of Management.

What we find is the meditation that we practice here, the Transcendental Meditation technique, has very profound effects on increasing the orderliness in the front parts of the brain that has to do with thinking, decision making, and has to do with planning and judgment. So we’re just documenting how his education is affecting his brain.

Dr. Travis is using an EEG (electroencephalogram) machine to get a reading of Tor Travis’s brain. The EEG machine can detect different brain wave patterns known as beta, alpha, theta, and delta. These four patterns represent a continuum of consciousness. For example, beta waves are associated with a keen alertness of our surroundings, while delta waves are present when we are in deep sleep.

What we have here is electrical activity going on at thirty-two points on Tor’s scalp. And so we see there all the wires coming from different points on his head. Each wire is being reflected by one line here. These here on the top are the front left of the brain; these are the back; these are the front right. Here we have when he just put his attention to the screen to look at what is happening.

So now we’ll be looking at his brain waves while he’s performing his task. He’ll press begin, and he’ll see a star, hear a tone. So this is happening right here. So there’s the asterisk; there’s a response. We see this activity here when he actually responded. This is a simple task.

What types of brain waves are present when one is in a state of meditation? A student at the school now points out for us how Tor Travis’s brain waves change. He’s now doing his meditation. During this meditation you can look at the different changes in his brain pattern. Generally you can see that it’s more calm and more quiet. So it indicates that the activity of the brain has become subtle. So this is typical, it’s a very low brain wave.

Dr. Travis describes a research study in which he was involved that not only measured the brain activity of college students who learned Transcendental Meditation but the longer-term results of practicing meditation on the brain.

We followed 50 college students and half of them learned the Transcendental Meditation practice and half did not. Those who learned the TM practice, what we found is at the end of two and half months of practicing TM, they had much more of the brain signature seen during meditation. What was happening (was) the experience during meditation was being brought into activity.

Those students who did not learn TM actually had less integrated brain activity. We looked at their sleepiness. They had a greater chance of being more sleepy; they were more fatigued. We looked at their autonomic functioning, how irritable, how jumpy, how anxious they were, and that also went up. What this is finding is that experience is changing the brain.

One unique aspect of transcendental meditation is people can master it very quickly. It takes a matter of a few weeks. And then the benefits are seen in activity. You learn to contact a new state of mind, the source of all the many thoughts that you have during the day and take the attention to that level of creativity, of intelligence. Then when you come out into activity, you have that connection that you’re bringing with you.

And so we find people with Transcendental Meditation practice can quickly settle the mind down with the source of thought. We call that pure consciousness or transcendental consciousness. And then over time, they bring that into activity.

We will be right back with more from our interview with Dr. Fred Travis of the Maharishi University of Management after these brief messages. This is Science and Spirituality. Please stay tuned to Supreme Master Television.

Welcome back to Science and Spirituality. At the Center for Brain, Consciousness and Cognition at the Maharishi University of Management in Iowa, USA scientists are exploring how the brain develops over one’s lifespan and how meditation practice affects the this vital organ.

Dr. Fred Travis is the director of the center. As we saw in the last segment, Maharishi University student Tor Travis’s brain waves appeared different when he was doing a simple task versus meditating. We asked Dr. Travis about the nature of brain activity during meditation and whether it is more active at this time.

It’s not quantity, it’s quality. So it’s not that suddenly your brain is using more resources and is more active than ever before. Rather what you see is the quality of functioning, that is the activity in one part of the brain is now integrated, is coherent with activity in another part of the brain. You see a greater integration of brain functioning. When we have an integration of brain functioning, it means an integration also of psychological functioning, how you think.

Dr. Travis says the merging of activity from different regions of the brain that occurs during meditation then in turn influences our normal conscious state.

What happens as you practice the TM (Transcendental Meditation) program is you begin to have a broad angle focus. This is what I mean by integration of two styles of functioning. You have a problem and rather than being lost in the problem and not being able to see the solution, you still have that broader playful awareness, which is where you feel the solutions is. A lot of recent research on creativity and how you solve problems with intuition, what they find is diffused alpha activity over the whole brain during the minutes before you come up with that idea.

What you’re seeing is suddenly all parts of the brain are beginning to communicate. It’s not the logical linear thought of the frontal rational area, but it’s actually all parts of the brain playful, concrete, emotion; they can all be part of the problem solving. That’s where the creative insight comes. This is what we see with TM practice;

Dr. Travis also discussed the “fight or flight” response which is an automatic reaction of the autonomic nervous system, specifically the sympathetic nervous system, to a perceived danger and its relation to meditation. When such a response is set off, the body releases hormones like adrenaline and cortisol which influence such bodily functions such as heart rate and digestion, and gives a boost of energy in order for the individual to take action.

In modern day settings, this type of response by the sympathetic nervous system is likely due to stress experienced in our lives. While useful in situations where we must take quick action to protect ourselves or others, having our body respond this way to something routine like stress is not beneficial for our health. Dr. Travis says meditation can change the setting off of the reaction because, among other things, the brain has been changed by meditation practice.

We tend to get into activity and the sympathetic, the fight or flight response gets more and more active. We find when we practice TM (Transcendental Meditation) and the mind settles down to the source of thought, the physiology, the body, is also settling down. It's almost as if it’s resetting where its natural resting point is.

We find that the level of fight or flight is sympathetic activation. It goes down during meditation and then starts to go lower and lower in activity, afterwards. We find stress related diseases disappear. For instance hyper-tension, which means “chronic.” That means you have to take a pill to keep it under control. You find that adding TM Practice actually reduces hyper-tension.

Just because the whole mind, the whole body is settling down. We can understand the body is having its own intelligence. The body is really composed of many feedback loops. And what disease is, is when one of these feedback loops is disrupted. By settling the mind down, this inner intelligent, the body is enlivened. And so we find the body, the immune system is stronger, and we’re healthier.

To close, with the scientific work of dedicated researchers like Dr. Travis, the world is seeing how important meditation is to constructively shaping our brain’s development. Research data is showing that by meditating, our brain benefits and in return we enjoy a more peaceful life, we have the enhanced ability to reach our true potential and we are better able achieve optimum health.

Our sincere appreciation goes to Dr. Fred Travis at the Center for Brain, Consciousness and Cognition at Maharishi University of Management in Iowa, USA for sharing his time and knowledge on the subject of the effects of meditation on the brain.

Thank you, intelligent viewers, for joining us for today’s show. Please stay with us for Words of Wisdom, coming up next after Noteworthy News on Supreme Master Television. May peace and good health be upon you and your family.