RESEARCH
Allen M, Dietz M, Blair KS, van Beek M, Rees G, Vestergaard-Poulsen P, Lutz A, Roepstorff A. Cognitive-affective neural plasticity following active-controlled mindfulness intervention. Journal of Neuroscience, 2012;32(44):15601–15610. Results show that mindfulness training is effective at attention training.
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Apsornsawan Chatutain. Jindarut Pattana. Tunyakarn Parinsarum. Saitida Lapanantasin. Walking meditation promotes ankle proprioception and balance performance among elderly women. Journal of Bodywork and Movement Therapies, 2019 July;23(3):652-657. Age-related change of proprioception affects body balance among the elderly. Walking meditation (WM)—a mindfulness practice—involves focusing on leg movements while walking slowly, possibly improving brain processes for perception and balance adjustments. The WM group engaged in 8 weeks of WM practice (30 min/day, 3 days/week). WM group demonstrated significant improvements. WM practice improved the balance and ankle reposition sense among the elderly. It can be used as an alternative form of training to promote balance and ankle proprioception.
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Becerra R, Dandrade C, Harms C. Can specific attentional skills be modified with mindfulness training for novice practitioners? Curr Psychol 36, 657–664 (2017). This study examined the effect of daily mindfulness practice on changes in attention skills; alerting, orienting and executive control in novice practitioners. Significant improvement in orienting and executive control skills following the mindfulness intervention was noted. These findings add to existing literature that supports the positive and beneficial effect of regular mindfulness practice for the enhancement of attentional skills.
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Gotink RA, Meijboom R, Vernooij MW, Smits M, Hunink MG. 8-week Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction induces brain changes similar to traditional long-term meditation practice - A systematic review. Brain Cogn. 2016 Oct;108:32-41.
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Kurth F, Zsadanyi SE, Luders E. Reduced age-related gray matter loss in the subgenual cingulate cortex in long-term meditators. Brain Imaging and Behavior 15, 2824–2832 (2021). The results add further evidence to the emerging notion that meditation may slow the effects of ageing on the brain.
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Kwak S, Kim SY, Bae D, Hwang WJ, Cho KIK, Lim KO, Park HY, Lee TY, Kwon JS. Enhanced attentional network by short-term intensive meditation. Front Psychol. 2020 Feb 7;10:3073. a randomized control trial to investigate the effects of a 4-day intensive meditation on the neural correlates of three attentional functions: alerting, orienting, and executive attention showed significantly improved behavioral performance in the executive control network in the attention network test. Brain regions associated with the alerting and orienting networks also showed enhanced activity. Our study provides novel evidence on the enhancement of the attentional networks at the neural level via short-term meditation. We also suggest that short-term meditation may be beneficial to individuals at high risk of cognitive deficits by improving neural mechanisms of attention.
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Lazar, SW. Meditation experience is associated with increased cortical thickness. Neuroreport 2005 Nov 28;16(17):1893-7. Brain regions associated with attention, interoception and sensory processing were thicker in meditation participants.
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Lenhart L, Steiger R, Waibel M, Mangesius S, Grams AE, Singewald N, Gizewski ER. Cortical reorganization processes in meditation naïve participants induced by 7 weeks focused attention meditation training. Behav Brain Res. 2020 Oct 1;395:112828. Focused attention meditation training induced a broad range of dynamic brain alterations even within a few weeks.
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MacLean KA, Ferrer E, et al. Intensive meditation training improves perceptual discrimination and sustained attention. Psychological Science 21(6). 2010 June. The ability to focus one’s attention underlies success in many everyday tasks. We investigated improvements in sustained attention with training (5 hours a day for 3 months), which consisted of meditation practice that involved sustained selective attention on a chosen stimulus (e.g., the participant’s breath).
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Malinowski P. Neural mechanisms of attentional control in mindfulness meditation. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 7, 8. 2013 Feb 3. Meditation practice appears to positively impact attentional functions.
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Malinowski P, Moore A, Mead B, Gruber T. Mindful aging: the effects of regular brief mindfulness practice on electrophysiological markers of cognitive and affective processing in older adults. Mindfulness. 2017; 8:78–94. Positive behavioral and electrophysiological changes were observed after 55 to 75 year old adults engaged in mindful breath awareness practice. Results indicate that engaging in mindfulness meditation training improves the maintenance of goal-directed visuospatial attention and may be a useful strategy for counteracting cognitive decline associated with aging.
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Mirams L, Poliakoff E, Brown RJ, Lloyd DM. Brief body-scan meditation practice improves somatosensory perceptual decision making. Consciousness and Cognition, 2013;22:348-359.
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Moore A, Gruber T, Derose J, Malinowski P. Regular, brief mindfulness meditation practice improves electrophysical markers of attention control. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 2012;6:1-15.
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Mora Álvarez MG, Hölzel BK, Bremer B, Wilhelm M, Hell E, Tavacioglu EE, Koch K, Torske A. Effects of web-based mindfulness training on psychological outcomes, attention, and neuroplasticity. Sci Rep. 2023 Dec 19;13(1):22635. Mindfulness meditation training reliably reduces stress and anxiety while also improving attention. Results confirmed significant improvements in the overall reaction time.
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Slagter HA, Davidson RJ, Lutz A. Mental training as a tool in the neuroscientific study of brain and cognitive plasticity. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 5, 17. 2011. Cognitive control skills, such as the ability to focus attention in face of distraction, contribute to performance on virtually any task. Many meditation practices are explicitly designed to train such core cognitive skills. The ability to focus and sustain attention on an intended object requires skills involved in monitoring the focus of attention and detecting distraction, disengaging attention from the source of distraction, and (re)directing and engaging attention to the intended object. Meditation may also produce lasting changes in brain and mental function that translate to improved performance in novel task contexts. For instance, several recent studies of focused attention meditation have reported improvements in sustained voluntary attention during performance of external tasks that do not require meditation. Enhancements in sustained attention ability were still observed 3 months after the retreat ended. Findings suggest that purely mental training of focused attention generalizes to improvements in performance on novel tasks that call upon the trained skills and more generally, that attentional skills are subject to training.
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Slagter HA, Lutz A, Greischar LL, Francis AD, Nieuwenhuis S, Davis JM, Davidson RJ. Mental training affects distribution of limited brain resources. PLoS Biology, 2007 Jun; 5(6): e138. The results demonstrate that meditation, or mental training, can result in increased control over the distribution of limited brain resources. Meditation includes the mental training of attention, which involves the selection of goal-relevant information from the array of inputs that bombard our sensory systems. Meditation allegedly reduces ongoing mental noise in the brain, enabling the practitioner to remain in the present moment. These findings demonstrate that meditative training can improve performance on a novel task that requires the trained attentional abilities. Here we present a longitudinal study investigating effects of three months of intensive Vipassana meditation on the distribution of limited attentional resources. In this common style of meditation, one starts by focusing or stabilizing concentration on an object such as the breath. Then one broadens one's focus, cultivating a non-reactive form of sensory awareness or “bare” attention. Participants did not engage in formal meditation during task performance. Purely mental training of certain attention skills can influence performance on a novel task that calls upon those skills.