{"id":97282,"date":"2020-01-04T18:09:57","date_gmt":"2020-01-05T01:09:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/?p=97282"},"modified":"2020-01-04T18:11:20","modified_gmt":"2020-01-05T01:11:20","slug":"research-on-meditation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/2020\/01\/04\/research-on-meditation\/","title":{"rendered":"Research on Meditation"},"content":{"rendered":"<h2><span style=\"color: #0000ff;\"><em><strong>Ruwan M Jayatunge M.D.&nbsp;<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/h2>\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"220\" height=\"175\" src=\"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/01\/Cortical_Areas_Thicker_in_Meditators_-1.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-97285\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>Meditation offers a  rich and complex field of study (Shapiro et al., 2010). The Western research on  meditation largely began in the 1960s (Rao, 1989).&nbsp; Meditation research has come  a long way (Loizzo, 2014) and the research on meditation is advancing (Sparby,  2018).&nbsp; According to the US National Library of Medicine, <a href=\"http:\/\/pubmed.com\">pubmed.com<\/a> (2018) there  are over 4,000 peer-reviewed scientific articles on the science of meditation  exist.&nbsp; The medical researchers are interested in studying the therapeutic  effects of meditation. They apply scientific methods and reasoning to study the  meditators.&nbsp; Clinical research on meditation focuses on randomized controlled  trials for therapeutic applications.&nbsp; The main areas of meditation studies  related to clinical conditions have been cancer care, depression, and pain  (Caspi &amp;, Burleson, 2005).&nbsp;&nbsp; <br> The researchers use  modern scientific techniques and instruments to study the neural activity during  meditation. There&nbsp; has&nbsp; been&nbsp; considerable&nbsp; research&nbsp; examining&nbsp; the&nbsp;  psychological&nbsp; and physiological&nbsp; effects&nbsp; of&nbsp; meditation&nbsp; &nbsp; (Andresen,&nbsp; 2000).  A vast amount of research on meditation has occurred in the past few decades  with mixed results (Holmes, 1987; Rajaraman, 2013).&nbsp; According to Sedlmeier and  team (2018) meditation research lacks a sound theoretical background and suffers  from methodological shortcomings concerning measurement techniques and study  design.&nbsp; Some meditation research studies have&nbsp; &nbsp;unique conceptual and  methodological problems.&nbsp; Meditation changes the body and mind together and  research on the impact of diverse kinds of meditation is the most favored trend  among the present day researchers (Rajaraman, 2013).&nbsp; <br> A systematic review  and meta-analysis of morphometric neuroimaging in meditation practitioners have  found that meditation can cause positive healthy changes in the brain. Pickut  and team (2013) found that mindfulness meditation increased the gray matter  density. Studies have shown meditators to have higher happiness than control  group (Hendriks, 2018). Furthermore meditation reduces pain perception (Nakata  et al., 2014).&nbsp; A large part of meditation research is dependent on technology.  Meditative experience is unique. Sometimes first-person meditative experience  cannot be measured accurately.&nbsp; Meditation is a complex, multifaceted  intervention with specific and non-specific effects and it is difficult to  standardise, quantify, authenticate and research (Caspi &amp; Burleson, 2005).  However modern science cannot fully explain the complex and multi-dimensional  scope of meditation practices (Duggal, 2015). It is important to underscore the  fact that research in meditation is still in its infancy (Davidson et al.,  2015).&nbsp; <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ruwan M Jayatunge M.D.&nbsp; Meditation offers a rich and complex field of study (Shapiro et al., 2010). The Western research on meditation largely began in the 1960s (Rao, 1989).&nbsp; Meditation research has come a long way (Loizzo, 2014) and the research on meditation is advancing (Sparby, 2018).&nbsp; According to the US National Library of Medicine, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-97282","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dr-ruwan-m-jayatunge-m-d"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97282","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97282"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97282\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97282"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97282"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lankaweb.com\/news\/items\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97282"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}