Transcendental meditation correlated with specific changes in the brain

A new study conducted at IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca shows that the subjective feeling of well-being experienced by many people with the practice of meditation is correlated with specific changes in the brain.

The research, which appeared in Brain and Cognition, examined the effects of the technique known as Transcendental Meditation (TM), which consists in the silent repetition of a meaningless sound, a "mantra".

For the study, conducted at the Molecular Mind Laboratory (MoMiLab) of IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, the researchers enrolled 34 healthy young volunteers and divided them in two groups. The first one practiced Transcendental Meditation 40 minutes per day in two sessions of 20 minutes each, one in the morning and the other in the evening; the second group did not change its daily routine.

At the beginning of the study, the researchers also measured through psychometric questionnaires the anxiety and stress level of all the participants, as well as their ability to manage stressful situations. Each individual was also subjected to a functional magnetic resonance imaging test (fMRI), in order to measure brain activity at rest and changes in the functional connectivity among different cerebral areas. After three months, at the end of the study, the same tests were repeated.

The analysis of the data clearly showed that levels of anxiety and stress perceived by the subjects who followed the meditation program were significantly reduced in comparison with those of the volunteers who did not practice TM.

Magnetic resonance imaging also shows that the reduction of anxiety levels is associated with specific changes in the connectivity between different cerebral areas, such as precuneus, left parietal lobe and insula, which all have an important role in the modulation of emotions and inner states. In the control group, instead, none of these changes was observed".    Giulia Avvenuti, Ph.D. fellow at IMT School and first author of the study.

"The fact that Transcendental Meditation has measurable effects on the 'dialogue' between brain structures involved in the modulation of affective states opens new perspectives for the understanding of brain-mind relationships" says Pietro Pietrini, IMT School's Director and coordinator of the study. "It also extends the results of recent research suggesting that drugs therapies and psychotherapy leverage on the same biological mechanism".

Transcendental Meditation has recently gained an increasing success worldwide as a relaxation practice also thanks to the David Lynch Foundation, which co-financed the study along with the Fondazione Cassa di Risparmio di Lucca. Founded in 2005 by the movie director David Lynch, who is himself a longtime practitioner and supporter of the social value of Transcendental Meditation, the David Lynch Foundation promotes TM practice as an approach to reduce stress in schools (as for the 'Quiet Time-Meditate Lucca' project at the Pertini High School) and workplaces, and to build resilience in victims of trauma.

"I am very happy of the results of this study that used the latest technology to show the beautiful benefits for the human beings of TM. Now I'm working to form my foundation also in Italy, with teachers who teach transcendental meditation in schools, work places and other groups, reaching as many people as possible" says David Lynch.

This new study, coherently with previous ones, shows that even a few months of practice of Transcendental Meditation have positive effects on psychological well-being and that these effects are correlated with measurable changes in the brain.

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Specific gut bacteria may be linked to high BP

Researchers have identified a distinct collection of bacteria found in the gut that may contribute to and predict the development of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH).

PAH is a chronic and progressive disease in which the arteries that supply blood to the lungs are constricted, resulting in symptoms such as shortness of breath, heart palpitations, fatigue and others.

In PAH, persistently high blood pressure in lung arteries makes the right side of the heart work too hard to pump blood, resulting in right-sided heart failure.

According to the study, published in the journal Hypertension, everyone has a collection of bacteria in their gut -- known as microbiota -- that aid in digestion.

The researchers found that having a specific microbiota profile in their gut predicted the presence of PAH with 83 per cent accuracy.

"We showed for the first time that specific bacteria in the gut are present in people with PAH. While current PAH treatments focus on the lungs, looking at the lung/gut axis could open the door to new therapies centered in the digestive system," said  study lead author.

For the study, stool samples were collected from 18 PAH patients and 12 people without a history of cardiopulmonary disease. The microbiota DNA from the stool samples were isolated and sequenced.

The testing revealed a group of bacteria unique in the PAH patients that were associated with PAH.

According to the study, this is the first link between a specific collection of bacteria and pulmonary arterial hypertension. However, it is not the first time that gut bacteria have been connected to medical conditions.

A variety of different gut microbiota profiles have been linked to a variety of cardiovascular diseases including high blood pressure, the study added.

Gut microbiota are constantly changing, depending on what we eat, our environment and especially our genetic makeup.

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Brain zapping can help retrieve forgotten memories

Forgotten memories can be retrieved by stimulating a specific brain region using electrical currents, scientists have found for the first time.

The research,  shows that the left rostrolateral prefrontal cortex plays a critical role in memory recall. 

"We found dramatically improved memory performance when we increased the excitability of this region," said a Prof.

The left rostrolateral prefrontal cortex is important for high-level thought, including monitoring and integrating information processed in other areas of the brain, he said. 

This area is located behind the left side of the forehead, between the eyebrow and the hairline.
"We think this brain area is particularly important in accessing knowledge that you formed in the past and in making decisions about it," said the Prof.

The psychologists conducted experiments with three groups of people whose average age was 20. Each group contained 13 women and 11 men.

Participants were shown a series of 80 words on a computer screen. For each word, participants were instructed to imagine either themselves or another person interacting with the word, depending on whether the words "self" or "other" also appeared on the screen.

The following day, the participants returned to the laboratory for three tests -- one of their memory, one of their reasoning ability and one of their visual perception.

Each participant wore a device that sent a weak electrical current through an electrode on the scalp to decrease or increase the excitability of neurons in the left rostrolateral prefrontal cortex.
Increasing their excitability makes neurons more likely to fire, which enhances the connections between neurons, he said.

For the first half of the hour-long study, all participants received "sham" stimulation -- meaning that the device was turned on just briefly, to give the sensation that something was happening, but then turned off so that no electrical stimulation was applied.

This allowed the researchers to measure how well each participant performed the tasks under normal conditions.

For the next 30 minutes, one group of participants received an electrical current that increased their neurons' excitability, the second group received current that suppressed neuron activity and the third group received only the sham stimulation.

The researchers analysed which group had the best recall of the words they saw the previous day
Memory scores for the group whose neurons received excitatory stimulation during the second half of the study were 15.4 percentage points higher than their scores when they received the sham stimulation.

Scores for those who received fake stimulation during both sessions increased by only 2.6 percentage points from the first to the second session -- a statistically insignificant change that was likely was due to their increased familiarity with the task, researchers said.

Scores for the group whose neuron activity was temporarily suppressed increased by just five percentage points, which was not statistically significant, researchers said.

"Our previous neuroimaging studies showed the left rostrolateral prefrontal cortex is highly engaged during memory retrieval," he said.

"Now the fact that people do better on this memory task when we excite this region with electrical stimulation provides causal evidence that it contributes to the act of memory retrieval," he said. 

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Gene therapy could wipe immune memory and "turn off" severe allergies

Scientists may be one step closer to discovering a way to genetically "turn off" allergic responses with a single injection. A team of researchers have developed a new process that has successfully silenced a severe allergic response in mice, using blood stem cells engineered with a gene that can target specific immune cells.

The big challenge previous allergy researchers faced was that immune cells, known as T-cells, tended to develop a form of "memory" so that once someone developed an immune response to an allergen, it would easily recur upon future contact. The key was finding a way to erase that "memory" response to the protein in the allergen causing the immune reaction.

"We take blood stem cells, insert a gene which regulates the allergen protein and we put that into the recipient," says the researcher, explaining the new process developed by his team. "Those engineered cells produce new blood cells that express the protein and target specific immune cells, 'turning off' the allergic response."

The team's initial clinical investigations looked at an experimental asthma allergen, with the new process found to successfully terminate established allergic responses in sensitized laboratory mice. While the initial research has focused on a very specific asthma allergen, Professor  believes the process could be applied to many other severe allergic responses, such as peanuts, bee venom and shell fish.

The long-term goal of the research would be to develop a therapy that could cure specific allergies with a single injection, much like a vaccine. 

"We haven't quite got it to the point where it's as simple as getting a flu jab," says Professor, "so we are working on making it simpler and safer so it could be used across a wide cross-section of affected individuals."

The team is realistic about the time it will take before this discovery results in practical benefits for allergy sufferers, with at least five years more laboratory work needed before even human trials can be conducted. But this new discovery could mean that, within 10 or 15 years, asthma and other lethal allergic responses might be eliminated with a single, one-time treatment.

The findings were recent published in a journal .


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Blood test to accurately detect cancers and how advanced disease is

A quick and simple new blood test may soon diagnose which type of cancer a patient has and how advanced the disease is, scientists say.

Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine say the approach, which should be broadly applicable to many types of cancers, is highly sensitive and specific.

With it they were able to accurately identify about 50 per cent of people in the study with stage-1 lung cancer and all patients whose cancers were more advanced.

"We set out to develop a method that overcomes two major hurdles in the circulating tumour DNA field," said Maximilian Diehn, assistant professor of radiation oncology.

Even in the absence of treatment, cancer cells are continuously dividing and dying.

As they die, they release DNA into the bloodstream, like tiny genetic messages in a bottle.

Learning to read these messages — and to pick out the one in 1,000 or 10,000 that come from a cancer cell — can allow clinicians to quickly and noninvasively monitor the volume of tumour, a patient's response to therapy and even how the tumour mutations evolve over time in the face of treatment or other selective pressures.

"We needed a comprehensive strategy for isolating the circulating DNA from blood and detecting the rare, cancer-associated mutations. To boost the sensitivity of the technique, we optimised methods for extracting, processing and analysing the DNA," said Bratman.

The researchers' technique, dubbed CAPP-Seq, for Cancer Personalised Profiling by deep Sequencing, is sensitive enough to detect just one molecule of tumour DNA in a sea of 10,000 healthy DNA molecules in the blood.

Although the researchers focused on patients with non-small-cell lung cancer (which includes most lung cancers, including adenocarcinomas, squamous cell carcinoma and large cell carcinoma), the approach should be widely applicable to many different solid tumours throughout the body.

It's also possible that it could be used not just to track the progress of a previously diagnosed patient, but also to screen healthy or at-risk populations for signs of trouble.

CAPP-Seq may also be useful as a prognostic tool, the researchers found.

The findings were published in the journal Nature Medicine.

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