What Stress Does To Your Brain
So what do the brains of meditators look like? The exact opposite: more capacity for decision-making, less trigger-happy when faced with a perceived threat. “That’s probably not anything specific to meditation, but it’s just that reducing stress and changing patterns of thinking over a period of time is reflected in the structure of the brain,” author Jo Marchant told host Terry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air last week. Marchant, who holds a doctorate in genetics and medical microbiology and has written for New Scientist, Nature, and Smithsonian, recently wrote a book titled Cure that investigates the healing power of the mind, looking at the placebo effect, meditation, prayer, conditioning, and hypnosis....