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SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH STUDIES AND ARTICLES
A List of Additional Research Papers
WHAT IS MINDFULNESS?
Mindfulness techniques have been used by many traditions for thousands of years and for many reasons. For our purposes they are powerful, secular, simple and practical tools that can be practiced and applied under any circumstance.
They are sometimes called mind fitness training, warrior-mind training, mindfulness or awareness meditation. A brief sampling of theoretical descriptions and quotes are offered below. However, professional, personal instruction and guidance is necessary in order for these disciplines to be beneficial, authentic and effective.
Mindfulness techniques allow the mind to relax in an attentive, alert, awake state, while not identifying with, being swayed by, and not judging any inner or outer stimuli, thoughts or feelings. This cultivates our awareness and ability to remain present, realistic and focused on what happens moment by moment, developing confidence and strength in our inherent discriminating awareness and intuitive intelligence, and the ability to choose intentional responses to stimuli.
“The concept of mindfulness, conscious attention and awareness, is most commonly defined as the state of being attentive to and aware of what is taking place in the present. For example, Nyanaponika Thera (1972) called mindfulness “the clear and single-minded awareness of what actually happens to us and in us at the successive moments of perception”. Hanh (1976) similarly defined mindfulness as “keeping one’s consciousness alive to the present reality”.
Kirk Warren Brown and Richard M. Ryan
University of Rochester
“Mindfulness has been described as a process of “bringing one’s attention to the present experience on a moment-by-moment basis”.”
Marlatt & Kristeller (1999), p. 68
“The faculty of voluntarily bringing back a wandering attention, over and over again, is the very root of judgment, character, and will. No one is compos sui if he have it not. An education which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence. But it is easier to define this ideal than to give practical directions for bringing it about.”
James, W. (1890/1981).
The principles of psychology.
Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, p. 401.
SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH STUDIES AND ARTICLES
Excerpts, Summaries and ReferencesRecent scientific research has been directed towards specific questions about mindfulness in relation to brain functions and neuroplasticity, cognitive and behavioural psychology, learning and health. All findings provide understanding as to the benefits for a wide range of application. A small sampling of findings is quoted below. There are many more elaborate research papers, power-point presentations and videos from reputable universities and institutions, which we have not included in this document.
can be found at the end of this page.
From an article in Psychology Today on ‘Your Brain At Work’, a book by Dr David Rock:
When the direct experience network is active, several different brain regions become more active. This includes the insula, a region that relates to perceiving bodily sensations. The anterior cingulate cortex is also activated, which is a region central to switching your attention. When this direct experience network is activated, you are not thinking intently about the past or future, other people, or yourself, ... rather, you are experiencing information coming into your senses in real time.
David Rock in his book ‘Your Brain At Work’ talks about how you can experience the world through your narrative circuitry (left brain), which will be useful for planning, goal setting, and strategizing. You can also experience the world more directly, which enables more sensory information to be perceived. Experiencing the world through the direct experience network allows you to get closer to the reality of any event. You perceive more information about events occurring around you, as well as more accurate information about these events. Noticing more real-time information makes you more flexible in how you respond to the world. You also become less imprisoned by the past, your habits, expectations or assumptions, and more able to respond to events as they unfold.
In the Farb experiment, people who regularly practiced noticing the narrative and direct experience paths, such as regular meditators, had stronger differentiation between the two paths. They knew which path they were on at any time, and could switch between them more easily. Whereas people who had not practiced noticing these paths were more likely to automatically take the narrative path.
This isn't just a theory. A study by Kirk Brown found that people high on a mindfulness scale were more aware of their unconscious processes. Additionally these people had more cognitive control, and a greater ability to shape what they do and what they say, than people lower on the mindfulness scale. When you make this change in your attention, you change the functioning of your brain, and this can have a long-term impact on how your brain works too.
The Benefits of Being Present:
Mindfulness and Its Role in Psychological Well-Being
Kirk Warren Brown and Richard M. Ryan
Department of Clinical and Social Sciences in Psychology, University of Rochester
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/12703651
Mindfulness is an attribute of consciousness long believed to promote well-being. This research provides a theoretical and empirical examination of the role of mindfulness in psychological well-being. The development and psychometric properties of the dispositional Mindful Attention Awareness Scale (MAAS) are described. Correlational, quasi-experimental, and laboratory studies then show that the MAAS measures a unique quality of consciousness that is related to a variety of well-being constructs, that differentiates mindfulness practitioners from others, and that is associated with enhanced self-awareness. An experience-sampling study shows that both dispositional and state mindfulness predict self-regulated behaviour and positive emotional states. Finally, a clinical intervention study with cancer patients demonstrates that increases in mindfulness over time relate to declines in mood disturbance and stress.
Mindfulness and Acceptance: Expanding the Cognitive-Behavioral Tradition
Hayes, Stephen, Victoria Follette, and Marsha Linehan, . New York: Guilford Press, 2004.
Helmus, Todd, and Russell W. Glenn.
Steeling the Mind: Combat Stress Reactions and Their Implications for Urban Warfare.Arlington, VA: Rand Corporation, 2004. (Vergara 2003, 276)
"An emphasis is placed on attending to any and all thoughts, feelings, sensations, and experiences in the field of consciousness without judgment or interpretation. One of the central purposes of mindfulness meditation practices, in behavioural medicine, is to become a detached observer of one's own mental activity, so that one thereby may identify its habits and distortions."
On the Neuroscience of Leadership
David Rock & Jeffrey Schwartz
There is however one aspect of wilful mental activity that seems particularly critical to emotional self-regulation and that seems to be the critical factor in its effective application --- the factor of focused dispassionate self-observation that, in a rapidly growing number of clinical psychology studies, has come to be called mindfulness or mindful awareness (Segal et al. 2002).
The mental act of clear-minded introspection and observation, variously known as mindfulness, mindful awareness, bare attention, the impartial spectator, etc. is a well-described psychological phenomenon with a long and distinguished history in the description of human mental states (Nyanaponika 2000). The most systematic and extensive exposition is in the canonical texts of classical Buddhism preserved in the Pali language, a dialect of Sanskrit. Because of the critical importance of this type of close attentiveness in the practice of Buddhist meditation, some of its most refined descriptions in English are in texts concerned with meditative practice (although it is of critical importance to realize that the mindful mental state does not require any specific meditative practice to acquire, and is certainly not in any sense a "trance-like" state).
A working hypothesis for ongoing investigation in human neurophysiology, based on a significant body of preliminary data, is that the mental action of mindful awareness specifically modulates the activity of the prefrontal cortex. Because of the well established role of this cortical area in the planning and wilful selection of self-initiated responses (Spence & Frith 1999; Schwartz & Begley 2002), the capacity of mindful awareness, and by implication all emotional self-regulating strategies, to specifically modulate activity in this critical brain region has tremendous implications for the fields of mental health and related areas.
Illuminating the Theory & Practice of Change
RUTH A. BAER, PH.D.
Professor at University of Kentucky, Department of Psychology
Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice 10, no. 2 (2003), 125–143
‘Working Memory Capacity’ and Mindfulness:
In sum, a review of the literature on Working Memory Capacity (WMC) suggests many compelling links with mindfulness training. First, processes sensitive to WMC are also sensitive to mindfulness training, including attentional orienting (Unsworth et at., 2004; Jha et aI., 2007), conflict monitoring (Redick & Engle, 2006; Chan' & Woollacott, 2007), and the attentional blink (Coizato, Spape, Pannebakker, & Hommel, 2007; Slagter et aI., 2007). Second, both WMC (Schmeichel, 2007) and mindfulness training (Carmody & Baer, 2008) correspond to the ability to bolster both cold cognitive performance on these attention tasks and hot emotion regulation processes. Finally, our recent results suggest that mindfulness training alters WMC and that improvements in WMC due to mindfulness training are related to changes in negative affect. Thus, as suggested by Asanga, nonforgetfulness and nondistraction, operationalized in the present-day construct of working memory capacity, may indeed be important components of mindfulness.
Mind fitness: Improving operational effectiveness and building warrior resilience
Amishi P. Jha, Department of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania;
Elizabeth A. Stanley, Georgetown University Walsh School of Foreign Service and Department of Government.
Joint Force Quarterly, (2009) 55, 144-151.
A growing body of empirical scientific evidence supports the efficacy of mindfulness-based interventions. Clinical studies demonstrate that civilian patients who participated in such programs saw improvement in many physical and psychological conditions and reported a decrease in mood disturbance from, and stress related to, these conditions. Similarly, numerous studies have documented how mindfulness training positively alters emotional experience by reducing negative mood as well as improving positive mood and well-being.15
Mindfulness training has also been shown to increase tolerance of unpleasant physical states, such as pain,16 produce brain changes consistent with more effective handling of emotions under stress, and increase immune functioning.17 Finally, many studies have shown that mindfulness training improves different aspects of attention, which is the ability to remain focused on task-relevant information while filtering out distracting or irrelevant information.18
While this research draws from civilian populations, its findings clearly have implications in the military context. These techniques have already been extended to war veterans with PTSD, and preliminary results from this work suggest a reduction in symptoms.19 In addition, mindfulness training could help optimize warrior performance by cultivating competencies critical for the modern battlefield, such as improved self-regulation, better attentional skills, and enhanced situational awareness.
Working Memory Capacity and Mental Armor:
Mind fitness, as we have operationalized it here, comprises mental faculties critical for military effectiveness, such as mental agility, emotion regulation, attention, and situational awareness. Interestingly, the cognitive neuroscience construct of “working memory capacity” (WMC) has also been linked to these faculties. WMC is the ability to maintain relevant information online while resisting interference from irrelevant information. Growing evidence suggests that working memory capacity is tied to the ability to engage in abstract problem-solving and counterfactual thinking. Recently, neuroscientists report that in addition to these “cold” cognitive processes requiring a high degree of mental flexibility and agility, “hot” emotional
regulation processes also rely on WMC. While individuals differ in their baseline WMC, everyone’s WMC can be fatigued and degraded after engaging in highly demanding cognitive or emotional tasks.20
Conversely, WMC can be improved and strengthened through training. Studies have shown that individuals with higher WMC have better attentional skills, abstract problem-solving skills, and general fluid intelligence (that is, the ability to use rather than simply know facts). They also suffer less from emotionally intrusive thoughts and are more capable of suppressing or reappraising emotions when required. In contrast, individuals with lower WMC have poorer academic achievement, lower standardized test scores, and more episodes of mind-wandering. They are more likely to suffer from PTSD, anxiety disorders, and substance abuse, and are more likely to exhibit prejudicial behaviour toward personally disliked groups.21
Thus, WMC corresponds to an individual’s success at wilfully guiding behaviour while overcoming cognitive or emotional distractions or impulsive tendencies. Warriors with higher WMC are more likely to have better mind fitness and thus be better equipped for responding to the cognitive and emotional challenges that come from preparing for and experiencing deployment. These warriors are also more likely to maintain an effective level of performance when confronted by obstacles, setbacks, and distractions, and return to their baseline functioning after being exposed to stressors or traumatic experiences. Nonetheless, all warriors (even those with higher WMC) are likely to suffer from some degree of WMC degradation through the deployment cycle because the stressors of this time period are so depleting of cognitive and emotional resources. Moreover, an individual’s position within the military command structure may exacerbate the problem because recent evidence suggests that being lower in a power hierarchy reduces WMC.22
Thus, an important component of optimal combat readiness should be to maintain or increase baseline levels of WMC, despite the increase in stressors over the deployment cycle. Because WMC can be strengthened through training, performance on both cold cognitive processes and hot emotional regulation can be enhanced. Maintaining or enhancing warriors’ baseline levels of WMC could have cascading effects for effective decision-making, complex problem-solving, and emotional regulation processes, all of which are heavily taxed over the deployment cycle and are crucial for mission effectiveness.
In other words, training to improve WMC may provide “mental armor” to protect against impending deployment-related degradation in mind fitness.
References for the above article:
15 P.C. Broderick, “Mindfulness and Coping with Dysphoric Mood: Contrasts with Rumination
and Distraction,” Cognitive Therapy and Research 29, no. 5 (2005), 501–510. See also, Ruth A. Baer,“Mindfulness Training as a Clinical Intervention: AConceptual and Empirical Review,” Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice 10, no. 2 (2003), 125–143.
16 Joshua Grant, “Pain Perception, Pain Tolerance, Pain Control and Zen Meditation,” presentation at the Mind and Life Summer Research Institute, June 5, 2007.
17 Richard J. Davidson et al., “Alterations in brain and immune function produced by mindfulness meditation,” Psychosomatic Medicine 65, no. 4 (2003), 564–570.
18 A.P. Jha et al., “Mindfulness Training Modifies Subsystems of Attention”; E.R. Valentine and
P.L.G. Sweet, “Meditation and attention: A comparison of the effects of concentrative and mindfulness meditation on sustained attention,” Mental Health, Religion and Culture 2 (1999), 59–70; Heleen Slater et al., “Mental Training Affects Distribution of Limited Brain Resources,” PLoS Biology 5, no. 6 (2007), 138.
19 A.P. King et al., “Pilot Study of a Mindfulnessbased Group Therapy for Combat Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD),” poster presented to American Psychosomatic Society, Baltimore, MD, 2008.
20 B.J. Schmeichel, “Attention control, memory updating, and emotion regulation temporarily
reduce the capacity for executive control,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 136, no. 2 (2007), 241–255.
21 A.R. Conway et al., “Working memory span tasks: A methodological review and user’s guide,” Psychonomic Bulletin & Review 12, no. 5 (2005), 769–786.
22 P.K. Smith et al., “Lacking power impairs executive functions,” Psychological Science 19, no. 5 (2008), 441–447.
23 A.P. Jha et al., “Examining the Protective Effects of Mindfulness Training on Working Memory Capacity and Affective Experience,” Emotion (in review).
Also: C.R. Brewin, and L. Smart, “Working memory capacity and suppression of intrusive thoughts,” Journal of Behavioral Therapy and Experimental Psychiatry 36, no. 1 (2005), 61–68; T. Dalgleish et al., “Reduced autobiographical memory specificity and posttraumatic stress: Exploring the contributions of impaired executive control and affect regulation,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 117 (2008), 236–241; T. Dalgleish et al., “Reduced specificity of autobiographical memory and depression: The role of executive processes,” Journal of Experimental Psychology: General 136 (2007), 23–42.
Key Research Findings from ‘Mindfulness Meditation and Higher Education’
A Review of Research from the Center for Contemplative Mind in Society
Shauna L. Shapiro, Santa Clara University; Kirk Warren Brown, Virginia Commonwealth University; John A. Astin, California Pacific Medical Center, - October 2008
Cognitive and Academic Performance
• Mindfulness meditation may improve ability to maintain preparedness and orient attention.
• Mindfulness meditation may improve ability to process information quickly and accurately.
• Concentration-based meditation, practiced over a long-term, may have a positive impact on academic achievement.
Mental Health and Psychological Well-Being
• Mindfulness meditation may decrease stress, anxiety, and depression.
• Mindfulness meditation supports better regulation of emotional reactions and the cultivation of positive psychological states.
Development of the Whole Person
• Meditation can support the development of creativity.
• Meditation supports and enhances the development of skills needed for interpersonal relationships.
• Empathetic responses are increased with meditation and mindfulness practices.
• Meditation may help to cultivate self-compassion.
(This complete research review paper can be downloaded at: http://www.contemplativemind.org/resources/research.html )
Attentional Processes and Meditation
Holley S. Hodgins
Psychology Department, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY 12866
Visual awareness, concentration, and flexibility were examined in adult meditators and non-meditators on behavioural measures of concentration, selective attention, change blindness, and perspective-shifting. Results showed that those who meditated regularly, compared to those who did not, counted more accurately in a challenging concentration task, showed less interference from invalid cues in a visual selective attention task, indicating flexibility, noticed more changes in flickering scenes and noticed them more quickly, and identified a greater number of alternative perspectives in multiple perspectives images, also indicating flexibility. Together, results showed that regular meditation is associated with greater visual, awareness, concentration, and flexibility across diverse and highly generalizable tasks assessed in a context separate from meditation practice. This is also true in adults who meditate regularly, and that those benefits occur even when not immediately meditating.
Meditation also enhances specific attention measures; for example, it improves short-term attention switching (Chambers, Lo, & Allen, 2008), decreases Stroop interference and improves concentration (Moore & Malinowski, 2009), and changes brain-resource allocation, reducing “attentional-blink” (Slagter et al., 2007).
Many meditation practices involve techniques that direct attention to current experience, allowing individuals to notice distractions and then return attention to monitoring experience. Thus, meditation training is directed at developing an inherently open quality of non-judgmental attention to experience. The finding that meditation is associated with literally seeing more accurately is consistent with this focus, and suggests that regular meditation practice might open individuals to experience ongoing events with relatively less distortion. Openness to experience is associated with low responsiveness to threat (Hodgins, 2008; Hodgins & Knee, 2002), which enhances individual performance on tasks unrelated to the threat (Hodgins et al., 2009) and joint dyadic creative performance (Weinstein, Hodgins & Ryan, 2009). Thus, it is possible that the superior attentional processing associated with meditation might have broad and helpful consequences for relating to others, for joint task performance, and individual performance on tasks not directly related to meditation.
Referneces for the above study:
Brown, D., Forte, M., Dysart, M. (1984). Visual sensitivity and mindfulness meditation. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 58, 775-784.
Chambers, R., Lo, B. C. Y., Allen, N. B., Allen, N. B. (2008). The impact of intensive mindfulness training on attentional control, cognitive style, and affect. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 32, 303-322.
Moore, A. & Malinowski, P. (2009). Meditation, mindfulness and cognitive flexibility. Consciousness and Cognition, 18, 176-186
Slagter, H. A., Lutz, A., Greischar, L. L., Francis, A. D., Nieuwenhuis, S., Davis, J. M. & Davidson, R. J. (2007). Mental training affects distribution of limited brain resources. PLoS Biology, 5, 1228-1235.
Jha, A. P., Krompinger,J. Baime, M. J. (2007). Mindfulness training modifies subsystems of attention. Cognitive, Affective and Behavioral Neuroscience, 7, 109.
Lutz, A., Slagter, H. A., Dunne, J. D., Davidson, R. J. (2008). Attention regulation and monitoring in meditation. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 12, 163-169.
Moore, A. & Malinowski, P. (2009). Meditation, mindfulness and cognitive flexibility. Consciousness and Cognition, 18, 176-186
Posner, M. I. (1980).Orienting of attention. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, 32, 3-25.
Posner, M. I., Petersen, S.E. (1990). The attention system of the human brain. Annual Review of Neuroscience, 13, 25-42.
Rensink, R.A., O’Regan, J..K., & Clark, J.J. (1997). To see or not to see: The need for attention to perceive changes in scenes. Psychological Science, 8, 368-373.
Tang, Y., Ma, Y., Wang, J., Feng, S., Yu, Q., Rothbart, M. K., Posner, M. I., Fan, M., Sui, D., Lu, Q., Fan, Y. (2007). Short-term meditation training improves attention and self-regulation. PNAS Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 104, 17152-17156.
Tloczynski, J., Santucci, A. Astor-Stetson, E. (2000). Perception of visual illusions by novice and longer-term meditators. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 91, 1021-1026.
Mindfulness training modifies subsystems of attention.
Jha, A., Krimpinger, J., & Baime, M.J. (2007). Cognitive, Affective, and Behavioral Neuroscience 7, 109-119.
Participants in MBSR course improved ability to endogenously orient attention. Retreat participation facilitated receptive attention skills, which improved exogenous alerting-related process.
1J.N. Mattis, CG IMEF, K.J.Stalder, CG II MEF-R.C. Zilmer, CGIII MEF
"We must shift the current direction of 'combat/operational stress control efforts’ to a more holistic, nested, enabling strategy that provides a sound, unified approach. It should mirror our warrior culture, with its distinctive ethos emphasizing strength over weakness, wellness over illness, and prevention over treatment."
Overcoming resistance to change and to flexible intentional behaviour
Geoff Crinean, PhD., CPCC
Change in individuals difficult for a variety of reasons. Recent breakthroughs in the integration of psychology and neuroscience (David Rock & Jeffrey Schwartz “The Neuroscience of Leadership”, strategy+business (www.strategy+business.com) May, 2006) have demonstrated the mechanisms for resistance to change and the reasons commonly held approaches (usually Behaviourism or Humanism) do not work. Through this research, two key processes have been identified conducive to lasting change. One is the moment of insight – just prior to a moment of insight the brain oscillates at a high frequency and creates (new) links across many parts of the brain (Jonah Lehrer “The Eureka Hunt” The New Yorker, July 28, 2008). These connections have the potential to enhance our mental resources and overcome the brain’s resistance to change. Such an insight is self-generated – it usually comes after some mental effort followed by mental relaxation. Secondly, to ensure the insight is well incorporated into the learning (and behaviour) process, the insight requires increased “attention density” – we need to be reminded of it and to incorporate it into our daily life - to encourage lasting change. Like regular physical training/exercise is needed to keep the body fit and healthy, strong and flexible, there is a call for regular mental training, mindfulness disciplines that cultivate the needed mental focus and relaxation.
Taming Our Brain
Michael Ballard, Consultant
The brain is made up of many complex areas that are responsible for various aspects of our functioning. The amygdala’s, role is to sense threats and respond or trigger the ‘fight or flight’ response which is especially important given our stress driven society and work environments. When we feel threatened, the amygdala goes into overdrive and takes over. It’s what Daniel Goleman calls amygdala hijack and results in a lack of focus, panic and complete inability to be productive.
How do we calm down the amygdala to better manage our stress response? One way is to cultivate meta cognition. Meta cognition is basically our awareness of our cognitive/emotional processes or good old common self awareness. If we don't learn to calm and tame our response we risk being in Fight or Flight response far too often. This prematurely ages us, as well can lead to hyper vigilance. This impacts our mental and physical health.
One vital way to develop our Meta-Cognition or Self Awareness is through meditation. Meditation helps us quiet our thoughts, feelings and bodies and develop greater awareness of our thoughts and behaviours. In fact recent research by Yi-Yuan Tang it was found that even 5 days of mindfulness practice results in better attention and control of stress than just relaxation training.
Neuroscience and Mindfulness
Tenzin Gyatso the 14th Dalai Lama
Experiments have already been carried out that show some practitioners can achieve a state of inner peace, even when facing extremely disturbing circumstances. Dr. Paul Ekman of the University of California at San Francisco told me that jarring noises (one as loud as a gunshot) failed to startle the Buddhist monk he was testing. Dr. Ekman said he had never seen anyone stay so calm in the presence of such a disturbance. Another monk, the abbot of one of our monasteries in India, was tested by Dr. Davidson using electroencephalographs to measure brain waves. According to Dr. Davidson, the abbot had the highest amount of activity in the brain centers associated with positive emotions that had ever been measured by his laboratory.
Of course, the benefits of these practices are not just for monks who spend months at a time in meditation retreat. Dr. Davidson told me about his research with people working in highly stressful jobs. These people — non-Buddhists — were taught mindfulness, a state of alertness in which the mind does not get caught up in thoughts or sensations, but lets them come and go, much like watching a river flow by. After eight weeks, Dr. Davidson found that in these people, the parts of their brains that help to form positive emotions became increasingly active.
Mental training affects distribution of limited brain resources.
Slagter, H.A., Lutz, A.,, Greischar, L.L., Francis, A. Nieuwenhuis,, S., Davis, J.M., & Davidson, R.J. PLoS Biology, 5 (6), e138. Doi:10.1317/journal.pbio.005013 (2007).
Intensive retreat (Mindfulness) practitioners showed smaller attentional blink for T2 (2nd session, after retreat). This was associated with ERP evidence for reduction in brain-resource allocation to T1 Consistent with reduced distracter (T1) interference in meditation practitioners.
“Thinking about not-thinking”
Pagnoni, G., Cekic, M., & Guo, Y. (2008).
Neural correlates of conceptual processing during Zen meditation. PLoS ONE 3 (9): e3083. Doc10.1371/journal_pone.00-3083
Compared participants with 3+ yrs daily Zazen practice to meditation naïve persons. All did simple breath attention meditation while words & non-words were flashed. Zen meditators showed faster return to baseline in brain “default network” activity associated with conceptual thought & sense of self.
Long-term meditators self-induce high amplitude gamma synchrony during mental practice.
Lutz, A., Greischer, L.L., Rawlings, N.B., Ricard, M., & Davidson, R.J. (2004).
Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, 101, 16369-16373.
Brain Electrical Synchrony & Nonreferential Compassion Meditation
128-channel EEG recorded in 8 long-term Tibetan Buddhist practitioners & 10 student volunteers. Increased synchronous gamma activity over lateral fronto-parietal areas during non-referential compassion meditation. Suggests precise temporal synchronization of massive distributed neural assemblies.
Phenomenal Clarity & Gamma Oscillations during Meditation. High-amplitude gamma oscillations emerge over a time-course of several dozens of seconds and correlate with the “clarity” (phenomenal intensity and vividness) of meditative experience as verbally reported.
Awareness of subtle emotional feelings: A comparison of long-term meditators and non- meditators
Nielsen, L., & Kaszniak, A.W. (2006). Emotion, 6, 392-405.
Emotion in Long-Term Zen & Vipassana Meditators: Long-term Meditators (>10 years) Report higher emotional clarity. Those reporting higher clarity show lower physiological & experienced arousal, & greater subtle positive facial expression in response to masked emotional pictures, consistent with regulation of emotion early in the emotion process. Clarity-2-101234
Alterations in brain and immune function produced by mindfulness meditation
Davidson, R. et al. (2003). Psychosomatic Medicine, 65, 564-570.
Studied 25 work environment participants in 8-week MBSR training & 16 wait-list controls. Following training, meditators showed decreased trait anxiety, left anterior brain activation (associated with positive affect), & increases in antibody titers to influenza vaccine (correlated with left brain activation).
Contemplation, Thinking, and Learning
Tobin Hart, Associate professor of psychology at the State University of West Georgia
There are hundreds of studies on the effects of contemplative practice, particularly (mindfulness) meditation, offering varying degrees of methodological precision. Among the main state effects (immediate changes) of meditation are physiological relaxation and slowed metabolism, a heightened self-awareness, and feelings of calm. Among the main trait effects (changes that endure over time) are improved concentration, empathy, perceptual acuity, a drop in anxiety and stress symptoms, and more effective performance in a broad of domains from sports and academic test taking to creativity (for a summary see e.g., Murphy, Donovan, & Taylor,1997).
What has been best documented is that contemplation of this nature affects physiology. We also know that physiology affects emotional response, cognition, and learning. For example, whereas some degree of stress can focus attention, undue emotional stress can inhibit performance. Basic contemplative skill is extremely well documented to shift the immediate state and therefore potentially affect performance.
Coherence
One explanation for the mind-body changes that occur during contemplative practice is called physiological coherence. Correlates of physiological coherence include a regular heart rhythm, decreased sympathetic nervous system activation and increased parasympathetic activity, and increased heart-brain synchronization (the brain’s alpha rhythms become more synchronized to the heartbeat) (Schoner & Kelso, 1988; Tiller, McCraty, & Atkinson, 1996). These physiological changes appear to result in a highly efficient state in which the body, brain, and nervous system function with increased synchronization and harmony. Recent studies in school settings suggest that increasing physiological coherence improves cognitive performance. In these investigations, students’ performance on a cognitive task requiring focus and attention, discrimination, and a quick and accurate reaction was compared before and after they used a simple contemplative technique. Performance improved significantly as compared to a control group. (Arguelles, McCraty, & Rees, 2003).
Neurobiology offers another explanation for the value of contemplation. The rest principle implies that an actively used neurological connection will become stronger if it is allowed to rest briefly (Sinclair, 1981). One possibility is that contemplation may enable intentional resting and thereby engender a follow-up quickening or deepening of certain neurological processes. Whatever the precise physiological mechanisms at work, numerous studies suggest improvement on a broad range of performance areas as the result of contemplative practice. For example, a recent series of studies in Taiwan in which 362 students were randomly assigned to either a group practicing
mediation, or napping showed significant increase in seven standardized measures of functioning for the mediation group, increases in two scales for the traditional group, and none for those napping. The standardized measures included such areas as the ability to reason in novel situations, speed of information processing, creative thinking, and anxiety level (So & Orme-Johnson, 2001).
The distinction between the scores of those napping and those in the meditation groups reminds us that contemplative practice involves more than simply relaxation; it includes relaxation and an open or focused alertness.
Attention
Performance, behavior, and depth are tied to attention. Teachers quickly recognize that a student’s ability to direct and sustain his or her attention toward a task at hand has a direct impact on success. The cardinal aspect of contemplative practice is nourishing the quality of one’s attention. Contemplative practice has been shown to improve a variety of perceptual and cognitive abilities related to the quality of attention (e.g., Murphy et al., 1997).
Detachment
Contemplative practice is also commonly described as enabling a type of detachment from the contents of our consciousness, the thoughts, feelings, and reactions that flow though our minds. Several approaches instruct the practitioner to avoid reactive attachment by just being mindful of whatever thoughts or feelings emerge. This allows us to observe the contents of our consciousness rather than simply being absorbed by them. Such arms-length distance allows us to recognize and therefore potentially interrupt usual patterns of thinking and impulsivity, freeing the mind to notice unexpected insights. For example, instead of just seething with anger, the contemplative mind may allow a little more space between the anger and us. We might both have our anger and also notice it—“Look at me being angry, what’s that about?”—rather than simply being lost in the anger. To notice, accept, embrace, and thereby transform our anger may have significant impact on behaviour. For example, in a recent study involving the effects of a meditation practice on 45 inner-city African American adolescents, the meditating group was found to have significantly fewer rule infractions, a decrease in absenteeism, and fewer suspensions (Barnes, Bauza, & Treiber, 2003).
Being aware of the content of our consciousness is not only an important element in emotional maturity but also a marker of deepened cognitive functioning—a developmental step beyond basic abstraction. Self-observation and reflection help to expose and deconstruct positions of role, belief, culture, and so forth to see more deeply or from multiple perspectives. This allows students the conceptual flexibility to see beyond the information given and beyond their own presuppositions.
A List of Additional Research Papers
Burton, N. W., Pakenham, K. I., & Brown, W. J. (2010). Feasibility and effectiveness of psychosocial resilience training: A pilot study of the READY program. Psychology, Health & Medicine, 15(3), 266-277.
Herwig, U., Kaffenberger, T., Jäncke, L., & Brühl, A. B. (2010). Self-Related awareness and emotion regulation. Neuroimage, 50(2), 734-41.
Dane, E. (2010). Paying attention to mindfulness and its effects on task performance in the workplace. Journal of Management.
Khisty, C. J. (2010). The practice of mindfulness for managers in the marketplace. Systemic Practice and Action Research, 23(2), 115-125.
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