Practicing mindfulness meditation helps people learn to accept their feelings, emotions and states of mind without judgment or resistance. Several studies have shown it has beneficial effects on long-term emotional stability, and both anxiety and depression, and a new study shows it also contributes to better concentration and more objective self-thought, MedicalExpress.com reported.

“We studied the brains of 13 meditators with over 1,000 hours of practice and 11 beginners by analyzing functional connectivity,” said Veronica Taylor, the lead author of the study published in the journal “Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Advance Access,” in March 2012.

Functional connectivity is the synchronization between two or more brain regions that changes over time during a specific task or at rest, the report stated. “Participants remained in a CT scanner for a few minutes and were asked to do nothing,” explained Taylor. “We wanted to assess whether the effects of mindfulness meditation persisted beyond the practice.”

The resulting hypothesis is the default brain network of meditators – which is associated with daydreaming and self-thought when one is doing nothing — is structured differently, showing that these people thing about themselves more objectively.