Meditation May Have Shaved 8 Years of Aging off Buddhist Monk’s Brain

Source: LiveScience.com
By Laura Geggel

While there’s no fountain of youth, a Tibetian Buddhist monk may have tapped into the next best thing, according to an analysis showing that his 41-year-old brain actually resembles that of a 33-year-old.

The monk, Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche (YMR), a renowned meditation practitioner and teacher, began meditating at age 9. The “extraordinary number of hours” that YMR spent meditating may explain why, in part, his brain looks eight years younger than his calendar age, researchers of a new longitudinal study said. (A longitudinal study looks at the same metric over time.)

The findings add to a growing pile of evidence “that meditative practice may be associated with slowed biological aging,” the researchers wrote in the case study, published online Feb. 26 in the journal Neurocase.

In the study, done at the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, researchers used structural MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) to scan the brain of YMR four times over the course of 14 years, starting when he was 27 years old.

During this time, 105 adults from the Madison, Wisconsin, area who were about the same age as YMR also had their brains scanned. These people became the control group, so researchers would know what normal brain aging looked like.

Scientists took MRI brain scans of Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche (YMR), a Tibetan Buddhist monk, and used a machine learning network known as BrainAGE to analyze his gray matter. YMR’s brain-aging rate appeared slower than that of the control population used in the study. At 41 years of age, his brain resembled that of a 33-year-old from the controls.(Image credit: Adluru, N. et al. Neurocase. 2020)

After the MRI scans were collected, the researchers used a machine learning tool called the Brain Age Gap Estimation (BrainAGE) framework, which estimates the age of a person’s brain by looking at its gray matter.

Taking an inventory of gray matter structure is a good way to tell brain age, said the study’s senior researcher, Richard Davidson, professor of psychology and psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and founder and director of the Center for Healthy Minds. “Gray matter is the neural machinery of the brain,” Davidson told Live Science. “When the brain atrophies, there is a decline in gray matter.”

BrainAGE’s analysis revealed that YMR’s brain had delayed aging in comparison with the controls, who fell onto the “typical aging band” when graphed, the researchers found.

“The big finding is that the brain of this Tibetan monk, who has spent more than 60,000 hours of his life in formal meditation, ages more slowly than the brains of controls,” Davidson said.

BrainAGE also showed that specific regions of YMR’s brain didn’t differ from controls, “suggesting that the brain-aging differences may arise from coordinated changes spread throughout the gray matter,” the researchers wrote in the study.

Davidson noted, however, that it’s unknown whether having a young brain means that a person will live longer.

Even so, the study suggests that meditation can be healthy for those who practice it, said Dr. Kiran Rajneesh, a neurologist at The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, who was not involved with the research.

“It kind of makes sense biologically, because stress is a thing that causes aging,” Rajneesh told Live Science, “Not just psychological stress, which is definitely a part of it, but also stress happening at the cellular level.”

Rajneesh added “it’s definitely something each of us could take home. Perhaps doing those few minutes of meditation and slowing down our lives, even for some amount of time, is likely to help.”

Read the entire article here:
https://www.livescience.com/buddhist-monk-meditation-brain.html

Vihara News

Vihara Is Now Open with Restrictions

As informed in a previous message, the Vihara is now open to the community with restrictions. You are welcome to visit the Vihara and participate in the religious activities by following these restrictions, which are meant for the resident monks’ and your wellbeing.

1. Maha Sangha will perform any special service or Puja and accept a special Dana at the Vihara. We encourage only one family or a group of friends living in the same place to participate in those events. If you invite anybody else, the number of the participants should be limited to ten persons, including children. All special Pujas will be held in the main shrine hall and the Dana at the dining hall. Please call the Vihara (713 944 1334) or Ven. Rahula Thero (713 501 9084) to arrange your visit.

2. We are requesting the Dayaka families who offer daily Dana to resume bringing Dana to the Vihara. Please call the Vihara to inform the time of your visit. Only Ven. Sirirathana and a layperson, (as well as Sati and Good Girl), will be at the Vihara during week days.

Depending on what you prefer:

You may hand over the Dana to the monks at the door of the Avasa.

You may visit the inside of the Avasa and leave the Dana inside the kitchen.

You may participate in the Buddha Puja with monks.

If you wish to stay at the Vihara through to the end of the Dana, please keep distance. Monks will serve themselves and partake the Dana.

3. Please visit the Vihara with your masks on for any event. In a service, from the time you visit the Vihara until the Puja is placed on the altar, please wear the masks. When the Gathas are recited while sitting, you may not have to wear the masks. Whenever you do not wear the masks, please keep distance from monks. When monks give blessing strings, you will have to wear the masks.

4. No other classes or events that require your physical participation will be held at the Vihara. If any of you need to have a private visit to the Vihara, please call any of the numbers given above to arrange your visit.

Saturday’s and Sunday’s Live-Stream Chanting

Saturday’s and Sunday’s live-stream chanting will continue from 7: 00 to 7:40 pm during summer. You can make it a weekend schedule to participate in the chanting.

Next Live-Stream Service on Sunday, June 7th

Now that parents and children will mostly stay home during summer, Maha Sangha will conduct a live-stream morning service every other Sunday at 9:00 am. Accordingly, the next service will be held on Sunday, June 7th.

We are requesting parents to mark the service on calendar and participate with their children.