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Comment by lcedp | Hacker News Reader

> More grey matter

Well as study shows [1] meditation not only thickens cortex in some parts of the brain but also makes it thinner in other parts. Just saying.

[1] http://scan.oxfordjournals.org/content/8/1/27.long

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Interestingly enough, the parietal region (which is shown to be thinner in the meditation group) is shown to be thicker than average in the brains of mathematicians: http://www.ajnr.org/content/28/10/1859.abstract?ijkey=c47242...

Interesting because this is a rarely reported consequence. It seems no one would object to have denser grey matter, but if it is thinner somewhere, it feels like you lost something.

Perhaps it's because there is only so much expression in our genetics. Don't think of it as if you lost something. Think of it as if you are investing and building up in the areas with max rio. By max rio I mean it on all levels of genome. Individual, your family & our society. I also believe the results can compound over time.

As a side note, I was raised Roman Catholic. Although I have not gone to church since college I hear interesting sciency things now and then. One, which I don't have a citation for, is that nuns who are experienced at prayer exhibit similar fMRI results when they pray.

I don't really think you are 'losing' something in the literal sense when meditating. It is probably more akin to exercising/reshaping it. I was just commenting on the public perception.

What I was referring to was that our bodies can only produce and manage so much brain tissue. This is dictated by genetics. So if connections are managed in one area they will strophe in another.

I think lose is an ok word but not quite right for what's really going on.

> max rio

Do you mean ROI?

Yes.

I wouldn't mind loosing some gray matter areas which makes me nervous, angry and lazy.

Smaller isn't necessarily worse (and vice-versa). Maybe its a refactoring process where some abstractions builds, rendering other sub-graphs unnecessary.

Indeed

In the same vein as what everyone else is saying, perhaps what's being thinned out could be related to the types of activity within the brain that meditation seeks to ease, the racing of thoughts, short attention span, etc.

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