Each month our editorial team sifts through hundreds of papers and curates notable findings—for practitioners and informed readers who want to stay current with the evidence. Subscribe to the monthly Research Digest for expert analysis and concise summaries of key papers.
This 2013 review explains how physical and psychological stress change the brain and body. It describes how stress activates the HPA (hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal) system and alters brain chemicals such as GABA, dopamine, norepinephrine and serotonin. The paper also covers short-term memory effects, animal models used to study chronic stress, and both…
Researchers scanned the brain activity of one very experienced meditator (more than 23,000 hours of practice) while they entered deep concentration states called jhanas. They used two brain-measuring tools — fMRI, which shows which brain areas are communicating, and EEG, which records electrical rhythms — and also had the person…
