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Blood from a Meditation Retreat Made Lab Neurons Grow, and the Journal Just Corrected the Paper
['Amelia Palmer']
Medical Daily
Researchers took blood plasma from people who had just finished a week-long meditation retreat, dripped it onto neurons growing in a dish, and watched the cells extend longer branches than they did with the same people's pre-retreat plasma.
An author correction rewrote the paper's title to clarify that the study was observational rather than interventional.
Funding came from the InnerScience Research Fund, which backs a multimillion-dollar UC San Diego meditation initiative, alongside a Veterans Administration Research Career Scientist Award.
An author correction is a routine amendment requested by the authors.
Plasma drawn after the retreat caused laboratory-grown neurons to extend significantly longer branches than the same participants' pre-retreat plasma.