Category: Mindfulness

“The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will.” — William James

A lack of concentration can be combated using a short form of mindfulness training, a study of undergraduates finds.

Mind wandering in general is often associated with increased stress and a lack of academic success.

The college experience, however, offers many distractions much more absorbing than academic work.

The recent study, published in the journal Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, split students into two groups: one which received the mental training, the other which received no training (Morrison et al., 2014).

All the students were tested for how much their minds wandered and how they did on a test of sustained attention.

Students in the mindfulness group were taught to observe and be aware of the activity in their own minds, as well as keeping their focus in the present moment.

One of the benefits of mindfulness is that while being mindful it is harder to ruminate: to worry about things that have already happened or which are going to happen in the future.

The training took 1 hour a week for 7 weeks.

The results showed that the groups did not differ at the start of the experiment, but by the end those that had received the training scored better on the test of sustained attention.

Not only that but the mindfulness group reported that their minds wandered less than those who had received no training.

Amishi Jha, who co-authored the study, said:

“This work was the first to integrate mindfulness training into the academic semester by embedding training in students’ course schedules, hosting training in the academic building to best accommodate their schedules, and providing a supervised space for mindfulness exercises.”

Read on: the benefits of mindfulness meditation (includes beginner’s guide to meditation) and how to get rid of unwanted thoughts.

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Study finds least mindful people benefit most from a surprisingly small amount of meditation.

A very brief meditation intervention — just 75 minutes spread over three days — can reduce the psychological reaction to stressful events.

The conclusion comes from a study which also found that the short training session was most beneficial for those who were naturally the least mindful in their everyday lives (Creswell et al., 2014).

Lead author, J. David Creswell, explained the motivation for the study:

“More and more people report using meditation practices for stress reduction, but we know very little about how much you need to do for stress reduction and health benefits.”

Many previous studies on meditation look at the effects of 8 or 10-week courses: a length of time that is not practical for many.

For this study, 66 participants were given three 25-minute training sessions on consecutive days:

• In a control group, half the participants critically analysed poetry to improve their problem-solving skills.
• In a meditation group, the other half of the participants were taught the basics of mindfulness meditation: how to focus on your breath, focus your attention and be ‘in the moment’.

After their brief training sessions, people had to give a stressful speech and complete math tasks in front of a panel of stern-faced evaluators.

Once completed, they were asked how stressed they were during the tests and asked to provide a sample of their saliva to measure their levels of cortisol, the ‘stress hormone’.

Those in the mindfulness training group reported feeling less stressed but their cortisol levels spiked higher.

The researchers think this reflects a dual effect of the meditation.

Not only does it make you feel less stressed, but it also represents more active coping and greater engagement with the task, which is why cortisol levels were higher.

Cresswell continued:

“When you initially learn mindfulness meditation practices, you have to cognitively work at it — especially during a stressful task.

And, these active cognitive efforts may result in the task feeling less stressful, but they may also have physiological costs with higher cortisol production.”

→ Find out more about the benefits of meditation.

• Now try these 10 mindfulness exercises.

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In psychology experiment one man shocked himself 190 times rather than sit doing nothing.

Most people would rather be doing something than sitting alone thinking, a new study finds, even if it involves self-administering a painful electric shock.

Across 11 studies, psychologists at the University of Virginia and Harvard University had people sitting on their own in a featureless room for between 6 and 15 minutes (Wilson et al., 2014).

Professor Timothy Wilson, who led the study, which is published in the journal Science, said:

“Those of us who enjoy some down time to just think likely find the results of this study surprising — I certainly do — but our study participants consistently demonstrated that they would rather have something to do than to have nothing other than their thoughts for even a fairly brief period of time.”

People consistently said that the short thinking period was not enjoyable and they found it difficult to concentrate.

Most people said they’d rather be listening to music or using their smartphones.

Shocking

In the most dramatic finding from the research, participants were left alone in the room with a button which administered a mild electric shock to them.

Of the 18 men in the study, 12 gave themselves at least one shock over a 15-minute ‘thinking period’.

One unusually bored man pressed the button 190 times, although this was not typical.

Of the 24 women in the study, 6 gave themselves at least one shock.

The much higher rate amongst men is likely down to greater sensation-seeking amongst males.

The authors note that:

“What is striking is that simply being alone with their own thoughts for 15 minutes was apparently so aversive that it drove many participants to self-administer an electric shock that they had earlier said they would pay to avoid.” (Wilson et al., 2014).

Distracted generation?

This might look like evidence of a chronically distracted generation, but the findings were not confined to young people.

In one of the studies, people from 18 to 77-years-old, and from a wide range of backgrounds, took part.

The results were the same, Wilson said:

“That was surprising — that even older people did not show any particular fondness for being alone thinking.”

Wilson does not think these findings reflect the fast pace of modern society, rather a fundamental aspect of the way the mind works:

“The mind is designed to engage with the world.

Even when we are by ourselves, our focus usually is on the outside world. And without training in meditation or thought-control techniques, which still are difficult, most people would prefer to engage in external activities.”

It may also be that it’s difficult to daydream or let the mind wander when you are forced into it.

However, in one of the studies people were allowed to try the period of quiet reflection at home.

Wilson explained that the results were much the same:

“We found that about a third admitted that they had ‘cheated’ at home by engaging in some activity, such as listening to music or using a cell phone, or leaving their chair.”

And they didn’t enjoy this experience any more at home than at the lab.”

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People with musical training make better choices and their brains process information more efficiently.

Musical training can boost the executive brain function of both adults and children, according to new research.

Both the brains and behaviour of adult and child musicians were compared with non-musicians in the study by researchers at the Boston Children’s Hospital.

Fifteen musically trained children and 15 adult professional musicians were recruited and matched with non-musicians on a number of variables, like family income, IQ, parental education and so on.

They found that:

“Adult musicians compared to non-musicians showed enhanced  performance on measures of cognitive flexibility, working memory, and verbal fluency.

Musically trained children showed enhanced performance on measures of verbal fluency and processing speed…” (Zuk et al., 2014)

Collectively these skills are known by psychologists as ‘executive functioning’.

High levels of executive functioning are what allow people to make good choices, effective plans and be flexible when situations change.

It also enables them to process information quickly and efficiently.

Unsurprisingly these skills are strongly associated with academic achievement.

One of the study’s authors, Nadine Gaab, said:

“Since executive functioning is a strong predictor of academic achievement, even more than IQ, we think our findings have strong educational implications.

“While many schools are cutting music programs and spending more and more time on test preparation, our findings suggest that musical training may actually help to set up children for a better academic future.”

Along with these behavioural measures, the researchers also looked at activity in the brain.

They found enhanced activity in areas of the prefrontal cortex which are involved in how we switch efficiently between tasks.

Magic of music

Musical training has already been linked with a remarkable range of cognitive enhancements:

“Musicians have shown enhanced language skills compared to non-musicians across several domains, namely vocabulary knowledge, pitch processing in speech, selective attention for speech in noise, and prosody perception.

Perceptual abilities in the music domain have been shown to correlate with early reading skills and phonological processing in pre-readers and kindergarten-age children.

In addition, musical training has been demonstrated to significantly relate to academic performance, specifically reading ability and mathematical achievement.” (Zuk et al., 2014)

On top of these, this study provides good evidence for the powerful effects of music in enhancing the executive functioning of both children and adults.

Musical training can now be added to three other activities which have been shown to increase children’s executive functioning:

• Physical exercise
• Mindfulness training
• Martial arts

Nadine Gaab concludes:

“Our results may also have implications for children and adults who are struggling with executive functioning, such as children with ADHD or [the] elderly.

Future studies have to determine whether music may be utilized as a therapeutic intervention tools for these children and adults.”

Image credit: Will-travel

During meditation the mind may wander, but is that necessarily a bad thing?

A new study on what happens in the brain when you meditate finds that more thoughts and emotions may be processed in ‘non-directive’ forms of meditation.

All the different types of meditation can be split into two main types:

• In non-directive types of meditation, people focus on their breathing or a sound, but also allow their mind to wander where it will.
• In concentrative types of meditation, people try to focus closely on their breath, or something else, in order to suppress other thoughts and feelings they experience.

To examine the differences, a Norwegian study had some meditators practising concentrative meditation and others non-directive meditation, while their brains were scanned (Xu et al., 2014).

One of the study’s authors, Svend Davanger, explained the results:

“The study indicates that nondirective meditation allows for more room to process memories and emotions than during concentrated meditation.”

“This area of the brain has its highest activity when we rest.

It represents a kind of basic operating system, a resting network that takes over when external tasks do not require our attention.

It is remarkable that a mental task like nondirective meditation results in even higher activity in this network than regular rest.”

When the experienced meditators practised a directive meditation technique — focusing on one thing to the exclusion of all else — the activity in their brains was similar to when they were simply resting without meditating.

Is mind wandering bad for you?

A complex issue at the heart of this study is whether mind wandering in meditation is good for you or not.

Some types of directive meditation, like mindfulness, see mind wandering as something to be avoided; whereas psychologists think mind wandering may be beneficial, even necessary.

The study’s authors point out that the…

“…types of meditation that allow spontaneous thoughts, images, sensations, memories, and emotions to emerge and pass freely without actively controlling or pursuing them, over time may reduce stress by increasing awareness and acceptance of emotionally charged experiences.

“…mind wandering and activation of the default mode network in general may serve introspective and adaptive functions beyond rumination and daydreaming.

Potentially useful functions would include mental simulations, using autobiographical memory retrieval to envision the future and conceiving the perspective of others.”  (Xu et al., 2014).

→ Find out more about the benefits of meditation.

Image credit: Moyan Brenn

Mindfulness meditation works because of four central meditation benefits.

With studies pouring in on the benefits of mindfulness, psychologists’ attention is turning to why mindfulness works, and the results are fascinating.

For example, mindfulness meditation has been shown to have therapeutic benefits in depression, anxiety, substance abuse, chronic pain and eating disorders.

Its benefits extend out to physical features like lower blood pressure and lower cortisol levels.

How is it that this type of practice can have these beneficial effects on such a broad range of conditions?

A recent study by Hölzel et al. (2011) finds four central components to how mindfulness works:

1. Body awareness

Awareness of your own body has long been taught as one of the foundations of mindfulness meditation.

The Buddha says the mindful monk finds through…

“…his mindfulness that “There is a body” is maintained to the extent of knowledge and remembrance.

And he remains independent, unsustained by (not clinging to) anything in the world. This is how a monk remains focused on the body in and of itself.”

As a result of practising mindfulness, people report higher awareness of the sensations in their body, of the thoughts in their minds, how things taste and so on.

Being mindful may also help with empathising with others because knowledge of the self provides insight into others.

All these are often missed as the mind wanders randomly around.

2. Emotional control

After practising mindful meditation, people typically become much less reactive to things which previously piqued their emotions.

You can measure this through their skin conductance or with neuroimaging.

This is why it can be so useful for anxiety, since anxiety is (partly) a heightened emotional reaction to both thoughts and events.

3. Attentional control

One of the first challenges for anyone learning to meditate for the first time is maintaining attention.

It’s only when you try to concentrate on something as simple as your breath going in and out  for any length of time that you discover the full spectrum of your distractability.

With practice, though, it becomes easier and the blossoming of attentional control has all sorts of wonderful knock-on effects.

As the great psychologist William James once wrote, controlling attention is at “the very root of judgement, character and will”.

4. New perspective on the self

Becoming mindful leads to being able to see in action the thought processes that manufacture what feels like ‘the self’ to us.

This can produce a startling revelation that is a central tenet of Buddhism: there is no such thing as a permanent, unchanging self.

What this allows is a kind of meta-awareness: you are watching your own mind in action.

The Dalai Lama says:

“This seemingly solid, concrete, independent, self-instituting I under its own power that appears actually does not exist at all.”

Liberation comes with the realisation that there is no ‘I’.

Studies have found that this realisation leads to greater self-acceptance, higher self-esteem and a more positive self-representation.

These changes can also be seen physiologically in the brain with lower activation of the ‘default mode’ network.

This network has been implicated in our  self-referencing mind-wandering (you know, all that worrying about whether YOU said the right things to so-and-so or where YOU are going on holiday or what YOU are going to say to your boss about the project that isn’t completed yet).

Free from some of these endless and tiring concerns, we can find more peace.

• Now try these 10 mindfulness exercises.

Image credit: Mitchell Joyce

Meditation thickens critical areas of the cortex, changes attitudes to pain and more…

One of the many remarkable ways psychological studies have shown that meditation benefits the mind is by reducing pain.

A recent review of 47 clinical trials found it was the effects of meditation on pain that were the largest, compared with other advantages such as reducing depression and anxiety.

Until recently, though, we knew little about exactly how meditation helps reduce pain.

Fortunately that is beginning to change and not a moment too soon because knowing how meditation works will help us understand which type works best for what, who it can benefit most and why.

1. Crucial changes in brain activity

Meditation can change the brain’s activity in important ways.

Researchers have tested this by applying heated paddles to participants’ feet and scanning their brains (Zeidan et al., 2011).

They found that meditators who’d done nothing more than four 20-minute classes showed lower activation in the somatosensory cortex, an area of the brain crucial to the experience of pain.

At the same time, they had higher levels of activation in the anterior cingulate cortex, anterior insula and the orbito-frontal cortex.

The lead author of the study explains the relevance of these areas:

“These areas all shape how the brain builds an experience of pain from nerve signals that are coming in from the body.

“Consistent with this function, the more that these areas were activated by meditation the more that pain was reduced.

One of the reasons that meditation may have been so effective in blocking pain was that it did not work at just one place in the brain, but instead reduced pain at multiple levels of processing.”

2. Cortical thickening

Over time meditation can actually thicken certain critical areas of the brain.

One study has compared the brains of those who meditate regularly with non-meditators (Grant et al., 2010).

They found that certain areas of the cortex — in particular the anterior cingulate — were thicker in meditators than non-meditators.

This shows that meditation not only changes the activity in this part of the brain, but also seems to make it larger.

3. Lower anticipation of pain

Sometimes the anticipation of pain is worse than the actual pain itself.

Many people who have to face pain on a regular basis — such as those with serious medical conditions — often prefer more pain sooner, rather than less pain later because it helps to reduce the anticipation.

However, meditators seem to anticipate pain less than non-meditators, thereby causing them less distress.

That’s the conclusion of a study which focused on the prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain central to how we allocate our attention to potential threats (Brown & Jones, 2010).

In comparison to non-meditators, those who meditated regularly showed lower activity in this area of the brain (the midcingulate cortex).

As well as changing how people anticipated the pain, their results also suggested that it reduced the negative way they thought about pain.

4. Reduces dwelling

Like anticipation, the way a person thinks about their pain is crucial to how they experience it.

Brain imaging data from a study by Grant et al. (2010) of Zen meditators versus non-meditators has shown less activity in the areas of the brain associated with emotion, cognition and memory (the amygdala, prefrontal cortex, and hippocampus).

The study’s lead author Joshua Grant, explains:

“…we suggest it is possible to self-regulate in a more passive manner, by ‘turning off’ certain areas of the brain, which in this case are normally involved in processing pain.

The results suggest that Zen meditators may have a training-related ability to disengage some higher-order brain processes, while still experiencing the stimulus.”

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