The Mindfulness Room at Carnegie Mellon in Pittsburgh. Courtesy of Carnegie Mellon University

At the University of Vermont, a popular brain science class begins and ends with mindful meditation.

The class is part of the

"Mindfulness can take many forms meditation, mindful eating, mindful walking, mindful relationships," said Dr. James Hudziak, chief of child psychiatry at the UVM College of Medicine and program founder.

It can help regulate aggression and impulsivity, as well as improve attention and performance on academic tests.

"It's weightlifting for the brain," he told NBC News.

And research backs this up.

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The randomized study recruited unemployed adults and took them to a three-day retreat. Half the group got skill training and did mindful meditation and the other half had a relaxing group activity.

Researchers took brain scans before and after the retreat.

"We know that unemployment is a massive stressor for folks and we wanted to see if mindful meditation could manage that," said lead author J. David Creswell, who is an associate professor of psychology and the director of the Health and Human Performance Laboratory at Carnegie Mellon University.

The researchers did brain scans before and after the experience.

"The folks in both programs loved it," Creswell told NBC News. "But what we found were changes in how the resting brain was wired in the mindfulness group."

In those who meditated, scans showed more connections in the stress regulatory areas of the prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain that manages emotions and attention.

"It suggests how meditation training might foster resilience," he said.

But are those changes permanent? Scientists don't know, said Creswell, but a four-month study follow-up suggests, "there is some lasting benefit."

"Like any other type of behavior, it has a benefit over time, but won't persist, if we don't do it," he said.

But CMU senior Rob Stephens says that for him, he hopes mindfulness will be a lifelong practice.

"You have this one body and this one life to live," he said. "Especially at a place as rigorous as CMU, we often don't check in with ourselves. I always make sure to take a moment to see how how I am doing with life."

"Less stressful people are more successful because they lead more fulfilling lives."

Read more here:

Mindfulness Meditation May Help Students Combat High Levels of Stress, Depression - NBCNews.com