Extraordinary Brain States Transform Ordinary People

New MRI and EEG research is using advanced imaging tools to map the way our brain activity changes as we shift our awareness. Paying attention, relaxing, meditating, focusing and mood are among the many states of awareness that change brain functions

In a new book called Bliss Brain, award-winning science writer Dawson Church focuses on positive and negative mood. Negative thinking is associated with the activation of brain regions like the mid prefrontal cortex, the “seat of self.” Positive emotions such as altruism and compassion light up the insula, key to social interactions.

Blending cutting-edge neuroscience with the stories of people who’ve had firsthand experience of brain change, Bliss Brain examines the effects of emotional states on brain structure. Neural plasticity—the discovery that the brain is capable of rewiring itself—is now widely understood. But what few people have grasped yet is how quickly this is happening, how extensive brain changes can be, and how much control each of us exerts over the process by our thinking.

Bliss Brain reviews studies that provide remarkable evidence of rapid and radical brain change. In just eight weeks of meditation practice, 12 minutes a day, brain remodeling begins. Over time, these structural changes in brain anatomy make us calmer, happier, and more resilient.

When we cultivate these pleasurable states over time, they become traits. We don't just feel more blissful as a temporary state; the changes are literally hard-wired into our brains, becoming stable and enduring personality traits.

The startling conclusions of Church’s research show that neural remodeling goes much further than scientists have previously understood, with stress circuits shriveling over time. Simultaneously, the “Enlightenment Circuit”—associated with happiness, compassion, productivity, creativity, and resilience—expands.

During deep meditation, Church shows how “the 7 neurochemicals of ecstasy” are released in our brains. These include anandamide, a neurotransmitter that's been named “the bliss molecule” because it mimics the effects of THC, the active ingredient in cannabis. Meditation also boosts serotonin and dopamine; the first has a chemical structure similar to psilocybin (“magic mushrooms”), the second to cocaine. He shows how cultivating these elevated emotional states literally produces a self-induced high.

The foreword is by Dave Asprey, of “Bulletproof” fame. The book includes numerous “Deeping Practices” that apply this brain science in a practical program of self-transformation. Presenting the latest research in non-technical language understandable to a lay audience, Bliss Brain makes an intriguing case for the potential each of us has to rewire our brains for happiness.