If you ever thought practice meditationyou may believe that you need to relax, breathe, and clear your mind of distracting thoughts. Newbies may think of meditation as resting the brain, but a new international study concludes that this ancient practice is quite the opposite: Meditation is a state of heightened brain activity that dramatically changes brain dynamics.

Researchers from the University of Montreal and Italy’s National Research Council recruited 12 monks of the Thai Forest Tradition at Santacittārāma, a Buddhist monastery outside Rome. In a laboratory in Chieti-Pescara, scientists analyzed the brain activity of these meditation practitioners using magnetoencephalography (MEG), a technology capable of recording very precise electrical signals in the brain.

The study focuses on two classical forms of meditation: Samatha, a technique that focuses on continuous attention to a specific purpose, always steady breathing, with the aim of stabilizing the mind and achieving a deep state of calm and concentration, and Vipassana, which is based on the simultaneous observation of sensations, thoughts, and emotions as they arise and a deep understanding of the mind of the explanation.

“With Samatha, you narrow your field of attention, as if narrowing the beam of a flashlight; with Vipassana, on the contrary, you widen the beam,” explained Karim Jerbi, professor of psychology at the University of Montreal and one of the study’s partners. “Both practices actively engage the mechanisms of attention. While Vipassana is more challenging for beginners, in mindfulness programs the two techniques are often practiced in alternation.”

The researchers recorded several indicators of brain dynamics, including neural oscillations, measures of signal complexity, and parameters related to the so-called “criticality,” a concept borrowed from statistical physics that has been applied to neuroscience for 20 years. Criticality describes systems that effectively operate on the border between order and chaos, and in neuroscience, it is considered an optimal state for information processing in a healthy brain.

“A brain that lacks flexibility adapts poorly, while too much chaos can lead to malfunction, such as epilepsy,” Jerbi explained in a press release. “At the critical point, neural networks are strong enough to transmit information reliably, but flexible enough to quickly adapt to new situations. This balance optimizes the brain’s processing, learning, and response capacity.”

During the experiment, the monks’ brain activity was recorded by a high-resolution MEG system as they switched from one type of meditation to another with short rest periods in between. The data is then processed using advanced signal analysis and machine learning tools to extract various indicators of neural complexity and dynamics.

Calculating Balance

result PUBLISHED in the journal Neuroscience of Consciousness showed that both forms of meditation increased the complexity of brain signals compared to a resting brain. This finding suggests that the brain during meditation not only calms down but enters a dynamic state full of information. At the same time, the researchers observed a widespread decrease in some parameters involved in the global organization of neural activity.

One of the most surprising findings of the criticality deviation coefficient analysis shows a clear difference between Samatha and Vipassana. This shows that, although both practices increase the complexity of the brain, they do so through different dynamic configurations, which are consistent with their subjective experiences. In other words, Vipassana brings the practitioner closer to a balance of strength and flexibility, while Samatha produces a somewhat more stable and focused state. According to researchers, the closer the brain is to this critical state of balance, the more responsive and efficient it works. This is shown, for example, in a greater capacity to transfer tasks or to store information.