By When you memorize Sanskrit mantras, this will help increase the size of brain regions associated with cognitive function, including memory and thinking skills, says a report in the Scientific American.
The research was done by a team of scientists from the University of Trento, Italy and they analysed a group of verbal memory specialists who are professional Vedic pundits to determine whether there is a link between intensive oral text memory and physical structure of the brain — structural features of hippocampal and lateral-temporal regions implicated in the language processing.
The researchers also used MRI at India’s National Brain Research Centre to scan the brains of professionally trained Sanskrit pandits and conducted a structural analysis of grey matter density, cortical thickness, local gyrification, and white matter structure, relative the matched controls.
The findings of the study were extremely remarkable – results from the MRI scan of the brains of pandits revealed increases in grey matter density and cortical thickness in language, memory and visual systems.
James Hartzell, one of the researchers who is conducting the study, writes:”Numerous regions in the brains of the pandits were dramatically larger than those of controls, with over 10 percent more grey matter across both cerebral hemispheres, and substantial increases in cortical thickness.
Their findings also revealed that the pandits’ right hippocampus had more grey matter than controls across nearly 75 percent of this sub cortical structure. The right hippocampus is a region of the brain that plays a vital role in both short and long-term memory. Our brains have two hippocampi, one on each side of the brain, and without them, we will not able to record any new information.
In Alzheimer’s disease, the hippocampus is one of the first regions of the brain to suffer damage.
Even though researchers could not conclude that only reciting Sanskrit mantras alone can produce the effect, the study, which was the first to foray into imaging the brains of pandits, suggests that intensive verbal memory training may help.
We will confidently encourage all especially the kids to learn Sanskrit, so that they can enjoy all the scientific benefits on top of the cultural benefits. Also we will highly recommend the adults and big kids to not only to learn but also to serve the families in community by teaching them voluntarily with the mission to spread the knowledge of Sanskrit Language and the goodness comes with that.
