Sadhguru meditation can reverse brain aging by six years
An advanced meditation programme designed by Coimbatore-based spiritual guru Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev can reverse brain aging by almost six years, says a new study conducted by researchers at Harvard Medical School’s Massachusetts General Hospital and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. Researchers measured meditators’ brain activity using sleep-based EEG headbands. They found that meditators who had completed Sadhguru’s eight-day silent Samyama retreat — preceded by a 40-day prelude involving breathing exercises and meditative kriyas — showed brain ages six years younger than their biological age. Many participants reported feeling mentally sharper, emotionally steadier, and even more connected with others.
“It’s inspiring to see traditional yogic practices stand up to scientific scrutiny. Samyama, combined with preparatory practices like Shambhavi Mahamudra and Shakti Chalana Kriya, may offer a path to long-term brain health,” says Dr. Balachundhar Subramaniam, co-senior author and an anaesthesiologist researching consciousness.
Children from high-crime neighbourhoods prone to depression
Children who grow up in neighbourhoods with high levels of crime and deprivation are at risk of lapsing into depression, says a study published in Research on Child and Adolescent Psychopathology (May). Psychologists at Binghamton University, New York found that the brains of children from poorer suburbs showed less response to reward and loss.
Researchers interviewed over 200 children in the 7-11 age group to determine if their parents had a history of depression. Each child’s zip code was also collected for information about their neighbourhood. The researchers then measured the brain activity of every child via sleep-based EEG technology while they completed a simple guessing task in which they won or lost money.
“When something good and bad happens to us, our brain responds and we can measure that brain activity. But how we respond to good and bad events can increase the risk of depression. This research shows that it’s not just something happening to us personally, but the levels of stress around us may also be directly or indirectly impacting us,” says Brandon Gibb, professor of psychology at Binghamton University and lead author of the study.
AI-powered handwriting analysis may detect dyslexia, dysgraphia
AI-powered handwriting analysis could serve as an early detection tool for dyslexia and dysgraphia in young children, reveals a study published in SN Computer Science (May). The study conducted by University of Buffalo (UoB) builds on prior research using machine learning, natural language processing and other forms of AI to analyze handwriting to detect symptoms of children’s dyslexia and dysgraphia.
“Catching these neurodevelopmental disorders early is critically important to ensuring that children receive the help they need before it negatively impacts their learning and socio-emotional development. Our ultimate goal is to streamline and improve early screening for dyslexia and dysgraphia, and make these tools available more widely,” says Venu Govindaraju, SUNY Distinguished Professor in the department of computer science and engineering at UoB and the study’s corresponding author of the study.
Men more prone to die from ‘broken heart syndrome’
Men are more than twice as likely as women to die from takotsubo cardiomyopathy (TC) aka “broken heart syndrome,” according to a new study published in the Journal of American Heart Health (May).
University of Arizona researchers used Nationwide Inpatient Sample, a public database, to identify cases of TC from 2016-2020. The study identified 200,000 cases during this period, with women comprising 83 percent of patients. Although men made up a much smaller number of TC patients, they had more than double the likelihood of dying — 11.2 percent compared to 5.5 percent for women.
“We were surprised to find that the death rate for men from TC was relatively high without significant changes over the five-year study, and their rate of in-hospital complications also was elevated,” says study author Mohammad Reza Movahed, an interventional cardiologist and clinical professor of medicine at the University of Arizona’s Sarver Heart Center in Tucson.