Can anybody actually explain what the result implies?
> Meditators, compared with controls, showed significantly greater cortical thickness in the anterior regions of the brain, located in frontal and temporal areas, including the medial prefrontal cortex, superior frontal cortex, temporal pole and the middle and interior temporal cortices. Significantly thinner cortical thickness was found in the posterior regions of the brain, located in the parietal and occipital areas, including the postcentral cortex, inferior parietal cortex, middle occipital cortex and posterior cingulate cortex. Moreover, in the region adjacent to the medial prefrontal cortex, both higher fractional anisotropy values and greater cortical thickness were observed.
I don't think a non-professional could have any idea what this passage actually means, without knowing what each above-mentioned brain area is actually responsible for. Apparently some areas got thicker while some others got thinner. Is it unconditionally a good thing?
can't explain, but I can point to the discussion section of that paper, where that sentence is expanded and some of the mentioned cortexes (cortices? I don't know) are associated with presumed body/mental functions.
Variously I've heard those who work on brains (physically and mentally) say that locating function in a particular area is akin to Phrenology and has no place in modern scientific understanding of the brain. As an outsider that seemed wrong as brain functions are always described in pop science as being located strongly, but presumably the individual brain's adaptations make this something that can't be generalised too broadly?
The left brain / right brain thing is wrong, but different functions of the brain are definitely localized. This is seen in studies of people with unusual brain damage, and sometimes when sticking an electrode in a certain part of the brain has an effect.
Inference is very difficult when it comes to brain regions. There are lots of reports along the lines of that famous one - "the brain's love centre lights up when your iPhone rings" - when they're talking about the anterior cingulate cortex. Thing is, the anterior cingulate cortex is also involved in vomiting.
The current understanding of brain regions is very basic. You can make predictions about gross defects - for example, if your temporal lobe were to be damaged somehow then you'd very likely experience some kind of problem with language, whether that's reading, writing, speaking or listening. But what kind of defect would vary widely. There are very unintuitive disorders, such as someone not being able to name an object that they can see, but as soon as they pick it up they can.
So what we can tell from this study is not much other than just describing what happens to the brain of someone who meditates, and it needs further study to unpick what functional effect that might have. This is about brain structure, so a follow-on study might use fMRI to see what effect that has on brain activity. The cortex is the outside layer of the brain, and (although this is a gross oversimplification) is where a lot of "processing" gets done, so one way of looking at it might be that it allows more "bandwidth" for thought in general given the effects seems to be widespread in the brain.
However, intuitive thought about the brain can be terribly wrong. For example, fMRI studies which show brain activity are actually measuring the oxygenation of blood in the brain. The more "work" an area is doing, the more blood it needs, therefore there's a reasonably assumption that an area with more oxygenated blood is doing more "work". To take just one issue as an example, there are circuits in the brain involved in suppressing other regions. So if that system is more active, is actually means that it's doing work to suppress activity in other areas rather than doing any processing as such.
TL;DR Inference in neuroscience is wildly complicated, and this study is a tiny step in the direction of eventually understanding what meditation's effect is on the brain.
> Meditators, compared with controls, showed significantly greater cortical thickness in the anterior regions of the brain, located in frontal and temporal areas, including the medial prefrontal cortex, superior frontal cortex, temporal pole and the middle and interior temporal cortices. Significantly thinner cortical thickness was found in the posterior regions of the brain, located in the parietal and occipital areas, including the postcentral cortex, inferior parietal cortex, middle occipital cortex and posterior cingulate cortex. Moreover, in the region adjacent to the medial prefrontal cortex, both higher fractional anisotropy values and greater cortical thickness were observed.
I don't think a non-professional could have any idea what this passage actually means, without knowing what each above-mentioned brain area is actually responsible for. Apparently some areas got thicker while some others got thinner. Is it unconditionally a good thing?