A Week of Meditation May Mimic Psychedelic Effects: Milky Way News

EARTH, Laniakea Supercluster—A week of meditation may be able to bend your brain in some of the same ways psychedelics do—no drugs required.

Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, tracked 20 healthy adults through an intensive seven-day retreat. None of the participants took any drugs, but changes in their brains resembled changes linked to substances like psilocybin.

The retreat combined three practices: meditation, lectures aimed at reshaping people’s beliefs about their mind’s power over their body, and healing rituals where small groups took turns focusing attention and compassion on one person. Participants underwent brain scans and blood draws before and after the retreat.

Meditation caused the default mode network (the part of the brain that’s tied to self-referential thinking, rumination and the sense of a continuous “self”) to become less synchronized, according to the study published in Communications Biology. During meditation, the participants’ brains also became less compartmentalized overall, with different regions communicating more freely across boundaries rather than remaining siloed. These changes echo patterns previously reported in psychedelic research.

In a post-retreat questionnaire, participants, especially those who showed greater biological shifts, also reported deeper “mystical-type experiences” during meditation.

So is the subjective experience, or feeling, driving the biology, or is it the other way around?

Are We on the Same Wavelength? Science May Show How You’re Vibing with Someone

Researchers studied what happens when brain waves sync up, using community neuroscience samples that include everyone from students and artists to Bad Bunny and Bob Weir.

Hemal H. Patel, one of the study authors and the director of Cardiac/Neuro Protection Laboratories at UCSD, told Milky Way News via email that the team is currently working to answer that question.

“The changes in behavior that are reflected in the change in the brain happen throughout the week. The biological changes in the body appear to be a consequence of this,” Patel wrote in an email.

“Since the sampling of the subjects happened only before and after the retreat, the granularity of the effect starting in the body or mind cannot be completely sorted. In prior studies, we collected mid-week blood samples and saw that the effects are less so than at the end of the week, suggesting that it is mind leading to change in the body. We have future studies in the works to do more sampling throughout the week and in a circadian manner throughout the day to get more specific on this conclusion.”

The retreat participants’ blood work told a similar story as their brain scans, just in different terms. When plasma collected after the retreat was applied to lab-grown neuroendocrine cells, it caused those cells to grow significantly longer neurite branches, the “wires” of the brain, than plasma from before the retreat. Psychedelics promote the growth of a type of neurite called dendrites (these stimulate the creation of new functional and structural connections between brain cells).

More neurites increase neuroplasticity. And that’s how you literally rewire your brain.

Time to Stop Being Human-Centric About Consciousness

Philosophers argue in a new draft paper that humans are probably not uniquely conscious, and that consciousness is probably not unique.

The retreat’s activities also switched on the body’s own opioid system. Blood tests showed jumps in beta-endorphin and dynorphin—chemicals tied to pain relief and euphoria. However, these chemicals are also linked to exercise and stress, so they could also just be the byproduct of a week of intensive activity, altered sleep or a totally different daily routine.

“That is definitely possible,” Patel wrote in response. “We have self-reported health data in many individuals that suggests pain is impacted in a positive way through the week-long meditation (not a part of the current manuscript). The increased endogenous opioids would be in line with this observation. To address this head on, we are currently working on a manuscript that has an active vacationing control that does everything at the retreat site except experience the event. Using control groups like this as well as health controls that go through the week-long event will allow us to tease out the nuances of the effects of the retreat itself to all the other peripheral things that may be happening.”

So do you need to attend an intensive, seven-day retreat to achieve similar, brain-rewiring results, even fractionally? Maybe, says Patel.

“I think it is possible to do this with practiced meditations over weeks and months. However, there is something about the intensive practice at longer retreats that allows one to learn and achieve faster. Also, there are the group and socialization aspects (which we are currently actively studying) that have a very dramatic effect on the individual.”

It’s important to note that the comparison to psychedelics is suggestive, not proven. This was a small, uncontrolled study of people who already believed deeply in the retreat’s premises, with no placebo or comparison group and no drug condition run side-by-side to directly confirm the similarities.

Scientists Found The Deep-Sleep Circuit That Builds Muscle, Burns Fat, and Stimulates the Brain

Ready to get some rest and get ripped?

The authors themselves call for more rigorous, controlled follow-up studies. Patel said the team plans to look closer at the individual techniques in the future to figure out if one, rather than all three, is doing most of the work.

But for now, the findings hint that you can rewire your brain through practice alone, so maybe next time, replace the magic mushrooms with a cushion.