Meditation and Focus

One of the often mentioned benefits of a regular meditation practice .. is a improvement in our ability to focus and concentrate. This is often something we realise ourselves quite quickly once we start a meditate practice .. it's like going to the gym and lifting weights; in meditation we are flexing, relaxing, strengthening and building our ‘concentration muscle’ (the brain).

There is a mountain of research going right back to the 1970s when research was focused on Buddhist monks who had regularly meditated for years; and were found to perform better than most on concentration tests. Over the past five years, further studies have gone on to show that meditation can also yields substantial gains in concentration for laypeople who take up the practice.

A recent paper in the journal Psychological Science reported on a study which showed intensive meditation can help people focus their attention and sustain it – even during the most boring of tasks. And another recent study even suggested that meditation doesn't have to be intensive to have an effect.

Scientists at the University of North Carolina found that students were able to improve their performance on cognitive skill tests after just four days of meditation training (20 min. a day). On one particularly challenging computer test of sustained attention, students who meditated did 10 times better than a control group; and also performed better on timed information-processing tasks designed to induce deadline stress.

Findings reported in the Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging journal found that meditating for about 30 minutes a day for eight weeks produced measurable changes in gray-matter density in the hippocampus, an area important for learning and memory; and reduction of gray matter in the amygdale the region connect with anxiety and stress.

Always great when science catches up with these ancient practices (after all .. why would people practice and continue to share, for thousands of years, these amazing life tools? .. because they work!).

Recent articles where you can read more:

New York Times : How meditation may Change the Brain

Time Magazine Online : Losing Focus? Studies Say Meditation May Help

Research : Meditation seems to aid concentration

From the Washington Post, Science News

by Leslie Tamura, Tuesday 3 August, 2010

Meditation seems to aid concentration

For people who have difficulty staying on task, intensive meditation may help.

So say researchers from several campuses of the University of California, who had 30 participants attend a three-month retreat during which they practiced meditation for about five hours a day. Researchers then periodically tested the participants' ability to stay focused when confronted with a boring visual task.

That chore was spending 30 minutes merely identifying long and short lines that flashed on a computer screen. Participants were given this test at the beginning, middle and end of the retreat and again five months later. The study also used a control group of 30 people who were familiar with meditation but came to the retreat only for the visual testing.

Participants who lived at the retreat center went without television, phones, the Internet and books. They had instructor-led meditation in the morning and evening, and they spent most of their free time in solitary meditation, said the lead researcher, Katherine MacLean.

Before the retreat began, the experimental and control groups scored similarly in keeping track of long and short lines. As the retreat continued, those in the meditation group performed better. Those in the control group showed some improvement after the first test, but their changes weren't as great.

Participants who continued to practice meditation daily after the retreat maintained their increased ability to concentrate, whereas those who stopped had a drop-off, the researchers reported.

"The changes that occur [during the meditation retreat] are still with you once you go back to daily life and help you function better," MacLean said. "Purely mental training can improve your ability . . . to perceive things more clearly, and that can make it easier to pay attention." The study findings were published in the June issue of Psychological Science.