Older news items (pre-2010) brought over from the old website
More on how meditation can improve attention
Another study adds to research showing meditation training helps people improve their ability to focus and ignore distraction. The new study shows that three months of rigorous training in Vipassana meditation improved people's ability to stabilize attention on target tones, when presented with tones in both ears and instructed to respond only to specific tones in one ear. Marked variability in response time is characteristic of those with ADHD.
[1500] Lutz, A., Slagter H. A., Rawlings N. B., Francis A. D., Greischar L. L., & Davidson R. J.
(2009). Mental Training Enhances Attentional Stability: Neural and Behavioral Evidence.
J. Neurosci.. 29(42), 13418 - 13427.
http://www.physorg.com/news177347438.html
Meditation may increase gray matter
Adding to the increasing evidence for the cognitive benefits of meditation, a new imaging study of 22 experienced meditators and 22 controls has revealed that meditators showed significantly larger volumes of the right hippocampus and the right orbitofrontal cortex, and to a lesser extent the right thalamus and the left inferior temporal gyrus. There were no regions where controls had significantly more gray matter than meditators. These areas of the brain are all closely linked to emotion, and may explain meditators' improved ability in regulating their emotions.
[1055] Luders, E., Toga A. W., Lepore N., & Gaser C.
(2009). The underlying anatomical correlates of long-term meditation: Larger hippocampal and frontal volumes of gray matter.
NeuroImage. 45(3), 672 - 678.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-05/uoc--htb051209.php
Meditation technique can temporarily improve visuospatial abilities
And continuing on the subject of visual short-term memory, a study involving experienced practitioners of two styles of meditation: Deity Yoga (DY) and Open Presence (OP) has found that, although meditators performed similarly to nonmeditators on two types of visuospatial tasks (mental rotation and visual memory), when they did the tasks immediately after meditating for 20 minutes (while the nonmeditators rested or did something else), practitioners of the DY style of meditation showed a dramatic improvement compared to OP practitioners and controls. In other words, although the claim that regular meditation practice can increase your short-term memory capacity was not confirmed, it does appear that some forms of meditation can temporarily (and dramatically) improve it. Since the form of meditation that had this effect was one that emphasizes visual imagery, it does support the idea that you can improve your imagery and visual memory skills (even if you do need to ‘warm up’ before the improvement is evident).
[860] Kozhevnikov, M., Louchakova O., Josipovic Z., & Motes M. A.
(2009). The enhancement of visuospatial processing efficiency through Buddhist Deity meditation.
Psychological Science: A Journal of the American Psychological Society / APS. 20(5), 645 - 653.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090427131315.htm
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-04/afps-ssb042709.php
Transcendental Meditation reduces ADHD symptoms among students
A pilot study involving 10 middle school students with ADHD has found that those who participated in twice-daily 10 minute sessions of Trancendental Meditation for three months showed a dramatic reduction in stress and anxiety and improvements in ADHD symptoms and executive function. The effect was much greater than expected. ADHD children have a reduced ability to cope with stress.
A second, recently completed study has also found that three months practice of the technique resulted in significant positive changes in brain functioning during visual-motor skills, especially in the circuitry of the brain associated with attention and distractibility. After six months practice, measurements of distractibility moved into the normal range.
Grosswald, S. J., Stixrud, W. R., Travis, F., & Bateh, M. A. (2008, December). Use of the Transcendental Meditation technique to reduce symptoms of Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) by reducing stress and anxiety: An exploratory study. Current Issues in Education [On-line], 10(2). Available: http://cie.ed.asu.edu/volume10/number2/
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-12/muom-tmr122408.php
Meditation speeds the mind's return after distraction
Another study comparing brain activity in experienced meditators and novices has looked at what happens when people meditating were interrupted by stimuli designed to mimic the appearance of spontaneous thoughts. The study compared 12 people with more than three years of daily practice in Zen meditation with 12 others who had never practiced meditation. It was found that, after interruption, experienced meditators were able to bring activity in most regions of the default mode network (especially the angular gyrus, a region important for processing language) back to baseline faster than non-meditators. The default mode network is associated with the occurrence of spontaneous thoughts and mind-wandering during wakeful rest. The findings indicate not only the attentional benefits of meditation, but also suggest a value for disorders characterized by excessive rumination or an abnormal production of task-unrelated thoughts, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety disorder and major depression.
[910] Pagnoni, G., Cekic M., & Guo Y.
(2008). “Thinking about Not-Thinking”: Neural Correlates of Conceptual Processing during Zen Meditation.
PLoS ONE. 3(9), e3083 - e3083.
Full text available at http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0003083
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-09/eu-zts082908.php
Improved attention with mindfulness training
More evidence of the benefits of meditation for attention comes from a study looking at the performance of novices taking part in an eight-week course that included up to 30 minutes of daily meditation, and experienced meditators who attended an intensive full-time, one-month retreat. Initially, the experienced participants demonstrated better executive functioning skills, the cognitive ability to voluntarily focus, manage tasks and prioritize goals. After the eight-week training, the novices had improved their ability to quickly and accurately move and focus attention, while the experienced participants, after their one-month intensive retreat, also improved their ability to keep attention "at the ready."
[329] Jha, A. P., Krompinger J., & Baime M. J.
(2007). Mindfulness training modifies subsystems of attention.
Cognitive, Affective & Behavioral Neuroscience. 7(2), 109 - 119.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-06/uop-mtc062507.php
Brain scans show how meditation affects the brain
An imaging study comparing novice and experienced meditators found that experienced meditators showed greater activity in brain circuits involved in paying attention. But the most experienced meditators with at least 40,000 hours of experience showed a brief increase in activity as they started meditating, and then a drop to baseline, as if they were able to concentrate in an effortless way. Moreover, while the subjects meditated inside the MRI, the researchers periodically blasted them with disturbing noises. Among the experienced meditators, the noise had less effect on the brain areas involved in emotion and decision-making than among novice meditators. Among meditators with more than 40,000 hours of lifetime practice, these areas were hardly affected at all. The attention circuits affected by meditation are also involved in attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.
[1364] Brefczynski-Lewis, J. A., Lutz A., Schaefer H. S., Levinson D. B., & Davidson R. J.
(2007). Neural correlates of attentional expertise in long-term meditation practitioners.
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 104(27), 11483 - 11488.
Full text is available at http://tinyurl.com/3d6wx4
http://www.physorg.com/news102179695.html
Meditation may improve attentional control
Paying attention to one thing can keep you from noticing something else. When people are shown two visual signals half a second apart, they often miss the second one — this effect is called the attentional blink. In a study involving 40 participants being trained in Vipassana meditation (designed to reduce mental distraction and improve sensory awareness), one group of 17 attended a 3 month retreat during which they meditated for 10–12 hours a day (practitioner group), and 23 simply received a 1-hour meditation class and were asked to meditate for 20 minutes daily for 1 week prior to each testing session (control group). The three months of intense training resulted in a smaller attentional blink and reduced brain activity to the first target (which was still detected with the same level of accuracy. Individuals with the most reduction in activity generally showed the most reduction in attentional blink size. The study demonstrates that mental training can result in increased attentional control.
[1153] Slagter, H. A., Lutz A., Greischar L. L., Francis A. D., Nieuwenhuis S., Davis J. M., et al.
(2007). Mental Training Affects Distribution of Limited Brain Resources.
PLoS Biol. 5(6), e138 - e138.
Full text available at http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pbio.0050138
http://www.physorg.com/news97825611.html
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2007-05/uow-mmf050407.php
Meditation skills of Buddhist monks yield clues to brain's regulation of attention
Recent research has suggested that skilled meditation can alter certain aspects of the brain's neural activity. A new study has now found evidence that certain types of trained meditative practice can influence the conscious experience of visual perceptual rivalry, a phenomenon thought to involve brain mechanisms that regulate attention and conscious awareness. Perceptual rivalry arises normally when two different images are presented to each eye, and it is manifested as a fluctuation in the "dominant" image that is consciously perceived. The study involved 76 Tibetan Buddhist monks with training ranging from 5 to 54 years. Tested during the practice of two types of meditation: a "compassion"-oriented meditation (contemplation of suffering within the world), and "one-point" meditation (involving the maintained focus of attention on a single object or thought). Major increases in the durations of perceptual dominance were experienced by monks practicing one-point meditation, but not during compassion-oriented meditation. Additionally, under normal conditions the monks showed longer stable perception (average 4.1 seconds compared to 2.6 seconds for meditation-naïve control subjects). The findings suggest that processes particularly associated with one-point meditation can considerably alter the normal fluctuations in conscious state that are induced by perceptual rivalry.
[350] Carter, O., Presti D., Callistemon C., Ungerer Y., Liu G., & Pettigrew J.
(2005). Meditation alters perceptual rivalry in Tibetan Buddhist monks.
Current Biology. 15(11), R412-R413 - R412-R413.
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2005-06/cp-mso060205.php