Five days of brief, daily meditation using the integrative body-mind training method improved attention and reduced stress more than relaxation training alone. In a randomized experiment with 40 undergraduate Chinese students, those who practiced 20 minutes of integrative meditation for five days showed greater improvement on the Attention Network Test, lower anxiety, depression, anger, and fatigue, higher vigor, reduced cortisol, and increased immunoreactivity compared to a relaxation control group. The findings suggest that even short-term meditation can produce measurable cognitive and physiological benefits, offering a practical way to study meditation using controlled experimental designs.
Five days of integrative body-mind training (IBMT, 30 minutes per day) significantly increased cerebral blood flow in the subgenual/ventral anterior cingulate cortex, medial prefrontal cortex, and insula. Both IBMT and relaxation training increased left-lateralized cerebral blood flow, but only IBMT improved blood flow in the left anterior cingulate cortex and insula, brain regions important for self-regulation. These changes are associated with improved positive mood and frontal asymmetry.
Training in a form of mindfulness meditation called integrative body-mind training (IBMT) improved white matter efficiency in brain areas near the anterior cingulate cortex after four weeks, more than relaxation training. The improvement was shown by increased fractional anisotropy (FA) and decreases in both radial diffusivity (RD) and axial diffusivity (AD), suggesting changes in myelin and other axonal properties. After two weeks of IBMT, only AD decreased, with no change in RD or FA, though mood improved. These results demonstrate a time-course for white matter neuroplasticity from short-term meditation, which could inform interventions for mental disorders.