Mindfulness Can Boost Mental Functioning

Mindfulness meditation, based on Buddhist tradition, is increasingly employed in Western psychology to help treat a variety of mental and physical conditions, including obsessive-compulsive disorder, anxiety, stress, chronic pain, and in the prevention of relapse in depression and drug addiction.  Many businesses, universities, government agencies, schools, hospitals, religious groups, law firms, and prisons offer training in mindfulness meditation, in the belief that it improves organizational efficiency as well as individual self-esteem.  A new study has suggested that brief mindfulness meditation can be used to sharpen cognition, or mental functions.

The study involved 49 student volunteers, who were randomly allocated to receive mindfulness meditation training or to listen to Tolkein’s The Hobbit being read aloud.  A broad battery of behavioral tests of mood, memory, visual attention, attention processing, and vigilance were administered before and after 4 of these sessions.

The scores of both groups were about the same before the sessions.  After 4 sessions, mood had improved in both groups, but only the brief meditation training reduced fatigue and anxiety, while increasing mindfulness, visual–spatial processing, working memory, and executive functioning (decision making).  On one test that involved sustained ability to focus attention while holding information in mind, the meditation group improved their scores ten-fold.

By now you’d like to know how to practice mindfulness meditation (and the emphasis must be on ‘practice’).  Before getting too far involved, have a look at the UCLA Semel Institute website, which has a number of brief audio sessions you can click on.  Next steps can involve training by an experienced professional;  but beware – as in many such fields, charlatans exist!