Short-term meditation training improves attention and self-regulation

Yi Yuan Tang, Yinghua Ma, Junhong Wang, Yaxin Fan, Shigang Feng, Qilin Lu, Qingbao Yu, Danni Sui, Mary K. Rothbart, Ming Fan, Michael I. Posner

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

1004 Scopus citations

Abstract

Recent studies suggest that months to years of intensive and systematic meditation training can improve attention. However, the lengthy training required has made it difficult to use random assignment of participants to conditions to confirm these findings. This article shows that a group randomly assigned to 5 days of meditation practice with the integrative body-mind training method shows significantly better attention and control of stress than a similarly chosen control group given relaxation training. The training method comes from traditional Chinese medicine and incorporates aspects of other meditation and mindfulness training. Compared with the control group, the experimental group of 40 undergraduate Chinese students given 5 days of 20-min integrative training showed greater improvement in conflict scores on the Attention Network Test, lower anxiety, depression, anger, and fatigue, and higher vigor on the Profile of Mood States scale, a significant decrease in stress-related cortisol, and an increase in immunoreactivity. These results provide a convenient method for studying the influence of meditation training by using experimental and control methods similar to those used to test drugs or other interventions.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)17152-17156
Number of pages5
JournalProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America
Volume104
Issue number43
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 23 2007

Keywords

  • Anterior cingulate gyrus
  • Attention training
  • Control
  • Mental training

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