New research claims that ‘meditation could make you more intelligent as it boosts the size of your brain, reported The DailyTelegraph. It said that research found that brain scans revealed ‘significantly larger amounts of grey matter in long-term meditators. This small study compared the brain anatomy of 22 people who meditated with 22 people who didn’t. Although it did find some small differences in some parts of the brain, there were also many non-significant results. Overall brain size was not any larger in the meditators. Importantly, the researchers themselves acknowledge that to establish if meditation actually causes changes in brain anatomy, it would be necessary to look at the brains of meditators and non-meditators over a period of time. Where did the story come from? The study was carried out by Dr Eileen Luders and colleagues from University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) School of Medicine and the University of Jena. The research was funded by grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The study was published in the peer-reviewed medical journal NeuroImage. What kind of scientific study was this? This brain imaging study investigated whether people who meditate have different brain anatomy […]