A 2-week mindfulness-training course reduced distracting thoughts and improved performance on cognitive tasks. In a randomized controlled investigation, participants who completed mindfulness training showed higher GRE reading-comprehension scores and greater working memory capacity compared to controls, while also reporting fewer distracting thoughts during these tasks. The improvements were driven by reduced mind wandering, particularly among those initially prone to distraction. The findings indicate that cultivating mindfulness can enhance cognitive function broadly.
During tasks requiring continuous engagement, the mind alternates between focused attention and mind-wandering. Using a dynamic functional connectivity approach with a sliding window, distinct brain states involving the executive control, salience, and default networks were identified during a sustained attention task focused on breathing sensations. The frequency of these states correlated oppositely with dispositional mindfulness, suggesting they correspond to focused attention and mind-wandering. A mindfulness intervention increased the frequency of the state associated with focused attention, especially in those who improved most in dispositional mindfulness. These findings support that mind-wandering involves corecruitment of executive and default network regions.
Mindfulness training in middle-school children reduces stress and alters brain function. Forty children were randomly assigned to eight weeks of mindfulness or coding training. Before training, higher stress was linked to greater right amygdala activity when viewing fearful faces. After training, children who learned mindfulness reported lower stress and showed reduced right amygdala response to fearful faces, along with stronger connectivity between the amygdala and the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. These brain changes occurred outside of meditation, suggesting the benefits generalize. The findings indicate that mindfulness can be integrated into school curricula and that its stress-reducing effects involve dampening amygdala reactions to negative stimuli.
A two-week meditation-training program improved people's ability to accurately judge their own memory performance, but not their perceptual accuracy. Participants who completed the meditation program showed significantly enhanced introspective accuracy on a trial-by-trial basis for memory tasks, compared to an active control group that showed no change. These findings suggest that the capacity to introspect can be improved through mental training, at least in some cognitive domains.