INDIA, August 16, 2015 (Scroll.in): Yoga has so far been almost entirely within the ambit of India’s Ministry of AYUSH (Ayurveda, Yoga, Unani, Siddha and Homeopathy). Now the Ministry of Science wants in on it too. The Department of Science and Technology has launched a new research program it calls SATYAM, short for Science and Technology of Yoga and Meditation, which allows scientists studying these matters to apply for three years of funding support from the department.
Scientists studying yoga in various institutes are asking hard science questions, conducting clinical trials, conducting molecular biology experiments to identify whether and why yoga works and what its limits are. The Department of Science and Technology already funds some of these studies. It has given more than US$124,000 to the researchers at Bengaluru’s Swami Vivekananda Yoga Anusandhana Samsthana to map neurophysiological, neurochemical and cerebral blood flow changes in attention processes related to yoga
Scientists at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences in Bengaluri, better known as NIMHANS, have been asking four clinical questions about yoga – how does yoga affect cognition in patients with depression, what neurochemical alterations can the practice of yoga cause, how yoga affects cognition in healthy seniors, and how it might affect dementia. NIMHANS researchers have found that impaired cognition in depression patients can become normalized after they practice yoga for a few weeks. In another randomized trial, healthy senior citizens were given neuro-psychological tests after six months of yoga. Their cognition, it was found, was improved.
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