Memorizing ancient mantras in Vedas in Hindu religion
increases the size of brain regions associated with cognitive function.
India's Vedic Sanskrit pandits train for years to orally
memorize and exactly recite 3,000-year old oral texts ranging from 40,000 to
over 100,000 words.
….the structural MRI scanning was remarkable. 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.
Most interestingly for verbal memory was that the pandits'
right hippocampus—a region of the brain that plays a vital role in both short
and long-term memory—had more gray matter than controls across nearly 75
percent of this subcortical structure.
The pandits also showed substantially thickening of right
temporal cortex regions that are associated with speech prosody and voice
identity.
Does the pandits’ substantial increase in the gray matter of
critical verbal memory organs mean they are less prone to devastating memory
pathologies such as Alzheimer's? ... though anecdotal reports from India's
Ayurvedic doctors suggest this may be the case. If so, this raises the
possibility that verbal memory “exercising‘ or training might help elderly
people at risk of mild cognitive impairment retard or, even more radically,
prevent its onset.