# zen: short daily mental practices induce structural plasticity in socio-affective and socio-cognitive brain networks

AA << have recently discovered that different types of mental training positively affect either our attention abilities or our social competencies such as compassion and perspective-taking. These improvements in attentional-, socio-emotional or cognitive capacities are parallelled by structural changes in dissociable brain networks supporting these skills. In addition, the scientists were able to show that the release of the stress hormone cortisol after exposure to a psychosocial stressor was significantly reduced only after practising mental techniques aiming at improving social competencies but not by mindfulness-based attention-increasing techniques >>

Tania Singer,  Verena Muller. Improving social skills through mental training changes brain structure and reduces social stress. Max Planck Institute. Oct 4, 2017

http://www.cbs.mpg.de/press-release/improving-social-skills

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171004142653.htm

Sofie L. Valk, Boris C. Bernhardt, et al.  Structural plasticity of the social brain: Differential change after socio-affective and cognitive mental training. Sci Adv  2017; 3(10) e1700489    doi: 10.1126/sciadv.1700489 Oct 4, 2017
   
http://advances.sciencemag.org/content/3/10/e1700489