Can a mouse meditate? A new study suggests the answer is ...kind of.

Researchers from the University of Oregon in Eugene have replicated some of the same brain patterns exhibited by human meditatorsin the brains of mice no tinymeditation cushions or squeaky oms required.

Still, experiments show that the meditating mice were more relaxed and less stressed than those with no rodent meditation training.

The authors say the work, published Monday in PNAS, provides aproof of concept that will allow them to learn more abouthowmeditation affects the brain.

Previous research has shown thatjust one month of mindfulmeditationcan have a significant impact on humans both physically and psychologically.

Itreduces self-reported anxiety and decrease the amount of the stress hormone cortisol in theblood.

Imaging studies of meditators brains also have detectedincreased activity in the anterior cingulate cortex, or ACC. This areaof the brain is involved in a wide variety of functions, including emotional regulation and cognitive control.

Scientists also have seen an increase inwhite matteraround the ACCof meditators. Thats important because white matter serves as a kind of insulator, enablingelectrical impulses to move more easilybetween neurons.

Although scientists have observed these positive physical effects of meditation on the human brain, they still dont know what causes them.

We think of meditation as a human thing, a high-level thing, but we want to examine the low levelbiology of it, said Cris Niell, a neuroscientist at the University of Oregon who co-led the study.

The teams first step in this quest was to create a mouse model that could replicate a human meditators brain.

Theycalled it, jokingly, the mouse meditation project.

Training mice to focus on thebreath, orspend 20 minutes on abody scan was obviously not an option, but the scientists had another plan up theirsleeves.

Michael Posner, a psychologist at the University of Oregon, had shown in earlier work that another effect ofmeditation in humans was achangein the rhythms of the brain. Specifically, he found that particular oscillations near the ACC became louder after a meditation session.

Everyone has these oscillations in their ACC, but they are stronger and more powerful in people after they do meditation, said Aldis Weible, a researcherat the University of Oregons Institute of Neuroscience and thefirst author on the study.

The authors knew they couldnt get mice to meditate in a traditional way, but they wondered if they could make the mouses ACC oscillate in the same rhythm as human meditators.

To do this, they genetically engineered mice that have a special protein in their brains that causes neurons to fire when they areexposed to light. The researchers were able to put the genetic code for these proteins exclusively in the neurons of the ACC.

Next they connected a light source to the mices brains so they could expose these proteins to different patterns of light. By flashing the light, theywere able to make the ACC neurons fire at the same pace that they saw in human meditators.

We are not necessarily making the mice meditate, but we are changing the pattern of activity in the brain region,Niell said.

Tests revealed that mice that were exposed to the same patterns exhibited by human meditators were more relaxedthan those that did not get the meditation treatment.

When placed in a box that had a dark side and a light side, the meditating mice were more likely to explore the light side, and to rear up on their little hind legs and look around than other mice.

Both these behaviors indicate a de-stressed mouseand suggest that the behavioral effects of meditation in humans can be recreated in mice.

The authors also experimented with getting the ACC to oscillate at different frequencies, but they saw the most calming effects when the mouse brain was set to oscillate at the same pace as a human meditators brain about eight times per second.

Niell said the work is significant because it gives researchers a scientific tool to study how meditation works in the brain, and it suggests that periodic stimulation could be used to affect change in the brains of people who dont want to meditate.

The researchers wonder if one day a similar protocol could be used to help people recover from stroke or post-traumatic stress disordermore rapidly.

This first publication is a proof of principle, he said. But hopefully in six months or a year, Ill be talking to you about what it is that actually changes in the brain as a result of meditation.

deborah.netburn@latimes.com

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