Meditation Changes More Than Your Mood: What Sara Lazar’s Research Tells Us About the Brain
For years, meditation and yoga occupied a space between ancient wisdom and scientific skepticism. Practitioners described feeling calmer and more focused, but those benefits were easy to dismiss as subjective. Then researchers began examining the brain.
Sara Lazar, Ph.D., has studied meditation, mindfulness, yoga, cognition, emotional regulation and brain structure. Her work asks a compelling question:
What happens inside the brain when we repeatedly practice paying attention?
Mindfulness and the Anxious Brain
Mindfulness means noticing thoughts, sensations, emotions and surroundings without immediately judging or reacting.
In a 2020 study, Lazar and colleagues reported that improvements in self-reported anxiety were associated with changes involving hippocampal circuits. The hippocampus helps with memory and context, making it relevant to anxiety and fear.
Mindfulness doesn't necessarily eliminate difficult experiences. It teaches us to relate to them differently. A racing heart, frightening thought or tense shoulder can be noticed without immediately taking over.
The goal isn't to stop having difficult thoughts or emotions. It is to change our relationship with them.
Can Mindfulness Help Us Let Go of Old Information?
Another study examined proactive interference—when previously useful information interferes with newer information.
Participants completed either four weeks of web-based mindfulness training or a creative-writing program. The mindfulness group showed fewer proactive-interference errors.
Researchers found no overall difference in hippocampal volume between groups. However, within the mindfulness group, improved performance was associated with increased left hippocampal volume.
That doesn't mean “meditation makes your hippocampus bigger.” It suggests that improvements in working memory may relate to measurable changes in a brain region involved in memory.
Mindfulness repeatedly asks us to notice when attention wanders and gently return.
Perhaps noticing the wandering and returning is the exercise.
Your Mind Will Wander. How You Respond May Matter More.
Lazar and colleagues also studied mind-wandering, depression and self-compassion.
Mind-wandering was associated with greater depressive symptoms, particularly among people with lower self-compassion. Self-compassion also predicted improvement in depressive symptoms.
After an eight-week mindfulness-based cognitive therapy program, participants showed increased self-compassion and reduced mind-wandering compared with treatment as usual.
We don't need perfectly silent minds. Your mind wandered. You noticed. You came back. That's the practice.
There is a meaningful difference between responding to worry with frustration—“Why can't I stop this?”—and responding with curiosity. The second approach doesn't deny difficulty; it avoids adding hostility toward ourselves.
What About the Aging Brain?
A 2014 systematic review by Tim Gard, Britta Hölzel and Sara Lazar examined meditation and age-related cognitive decline.
The studies suggested possible benefits involving attention, memory, executive function, processing speed and general cognition. However, many had small samples and a high risk of bias. The authors described the evidence as preliminary, not definitive.
Meditation isn't a force field against aging.
It is a feasible practice for older adults and a possible tool for supporting cognitive health—one that deserves further study.
Meditation Is Practice, Not Magic
Meditation repeatedly trains attention. We notice distraction, return to sensory experience, observe thoughts without automatically following them and experience discomfort without immediately escaping it.
Yoga can offer similar practice through movement, breath, balance, proprioception and awareness of tension.
None of this makes meditation or yoga a cure-all. Research must be interpreted carefully, and small studies shouldn't become sweeping promises.
But something doesn't need to be miraculous to be meaningful.
The possibility that intentional awareness may influence memory, emotional regulation, attention, cognition and related neural systems is remarkable enough.
Maybe “Doing Nothing” Isn't Doing Nothing
Meditation looks simple:
Sit.
Breathe.
Pay attention.
Notice when the mind wanders.
Return.
Repeat.
But the brain is still learning and adapting. We understand that practice changes the nervous system in music, movement and language. It shouldn't be surprising that practicing attention itself might matter.
That's what I find most compelling about Sara Lazar's work.
Meditation can be understood as training: noticing where attention goes, recognizing habitual reactions and learning to return to the present.
Again and again.
And perhaps, while we think we're simply breathing, our brains are learning with us.
Continued Reading
Sara Lazar, Ph.D. — Publications
Harvard University scholar profile and publication archive
Sevinc et al. (2020)
Hippocampal circuits underlie improvements in self-reported anxiety following mindfulness training.
Greenberg et al. (2018)
Reduced interference in working memory following mindfulness training is associated with increases in hippocampal volume.
Greenberg et al. (2018)
Compassionate hearts protect against wandering minds: Self-compassion moderates the effect of mind-wandering on depression.
Gard, Hölzel & Lazar (2014)
The potential effects of meditation on age-related cognitive decline: A systematic review.
Sources
Sevinc, G., et al. (2020). “Hippocampal circuits underlie improvements in self-reported anxiety following mindfulness training.” Biological Psychiatry.
Greenberg, J., et al. (2018). “Reduced interference in working memory following mindfulness training is associated with increases in hippocampal volume.” Mindfulness.
Greenberg, J., et al. (2018). “Compassionate hearts protect against wandering minds: Self-compassion moderates the effect of mind-wandering on depression.” Mindfulness.
Gard, T., Hölzel, B. K., & Lazar, S. W. (2014). “The potential effects of meditation on age-related cognitive decline: A systematic review.” Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences.