Long Read via Fast Company Design

Forget what your kindergarten teacher taught you; there’s no such thing as the original Thanksgiving. “It’s a nice myth that was created in 1841,” says Andrew Smith, contributor to The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, referencing the story we all know so well. “The Puritans—the pilgrims—they’d celebrate days of thanksgiving, but it was a day you spent in church thanking God for a bountiful harvest, or maybe a victory over the Indians. What you didn’t do was sit down and eat. That would be a frivolous activity.”

So where did Thanksgiving come from? Why are we eating this meal with our inlaws and second cousins?

Excerpts:

The role that meditation plays in brain development has been the subject of several theories and a number of studies. One of them, conducted at the Laboratory of Neuro Imaging at the University of California, Los Angeles, found that long-term meditators like Ms. Splain had greater gyrification — a term that describes the folding of the cerebral cortex, the outermost part of the brain.

The U.C.L.A. study, like previous ones, is inconclusive but intriguing. “You could argue that more folds mean more neurons,” said Dr. Eileen Luders, the recent study’s lead author, who practices meditation herself. “These are the processing units of the brain, and so having more might mean that you have greater cognitive capacities.”

“We used to believe that when you were born, your brain would grow and reach a peak in the early 20s and then start shrinking,” Dr. Luders said. “It was thought there was nothing we could do to change that.” Her research suggests that there might be. As a meditator for four years, Dr. Luders understands the degree of mental discipline involved. “People ask, ‘What do you do? Just sit there with your eyes closed?’ It’s actually hard work, because you have to make a constant mental effort.”

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