Mindfulness Meditation can impact Mood and Working Memory

Very inter­est­ing and rel­e­vant recentIKF_CD_4 010 study on the impact of mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion (noticed thanks to heads up by Sharp­Brains read­er John):

Build­ing Fit Minds Under Stress (Sci­ence Daily)

  • high-stress U.S. mil­i­tary group prepar­ing for deploy­ment to Iraq has demon­strat­ed a pos­i­tive link between mind­ful­ness train­ing, or MT, and improve­ments in mood and work­ing memory”
  • The study also sug­gests that suf­fi­cient mind­ful­ness train­ing (MT) prac­tice may pro­tect against func­tion­al impair­ments asso­ci­at­ed with high-stress chal­lenges that require a tremen­dous amount of cog­ni­tive con­trol, self-aware­ness, sit­u­a­tion­al aware­ness and emo­tion­al regulation

Please note that this was­n’t a prop­er­ly ran­dom­ized study, so in fact much/ most of the effect may be due to the place­bo effect, but still the find­ings seem to be con­sis­tent with a grow­ing body of evi­dence on the brain-based effects of struc­tured men­tal train­ing in the form of med­i­ta­tion (usu­al­ly mind­ful­ness meditation).

Full study Here (opens PDF).

Relat­ed articles:

3 Comments

  1. Steven | The Emotion Machine on February 17, 2010 at 9:34

    Of course this is a study that I find very inter­est­ing, but also not ter­ri­bly sur­pris­ing. Mind­ful­ness med­i­ta­tion can aid in almost any kind of stress relief, whether it is mil­i­tary per­son­nel expe­ri­enc­ing the stress­es and anx­i­eties of war or an aver­age cit­i­zen com­ing home from a 9–5.

    Good arti­cle!



  2. John Schaldach on February 17, 2010 at 5:54

    In the inter­est of dis­clo­sure I am affil­i­at­ed with the Mind Fit­ness Train­ing Insti­tute, the non-prof­it that sup­ports the deliv­ery of the inter­ven­tion that was used in this study. 

    To be sure, this was a pilot study with many lim­i­ta­tions to the find­ings. Indeed, the lack of ran­dom­iza­tion being a big one. The effect could have been a result of a place­bo effect. But that in itself would be quite an inter­est­ing finding–that an exec­u­tive con­trol func­tion like work­ing mem­o­ry could be strength­ened by the place­bo effect despite the rig­ors of pre-deploy­ment training.

    In any case, well-sup­port­ed con­clu­sions about the effects of Mind­ful­ness-based Mind Fit­ness Train­ing will await bet­ter designed studies–one of which will begin in 2010.



    • Alvaro Fernandez on February 23, 2010 at 9:30

      John, thank you for your note. The study was a very thought­ful one — I sim­ply want­ed to point out a rel­e­vant fact. Please do keep us updat­ed on future studies!



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SHARPBRAINS is an independent think-tank and consulting firm providing services at the frontier of applied neuroscience, health, leadership and innovation.
SHARPBRAINS es un think-tank y consultoría independiente proporcionando servicios para la neurociencia aplicada, salud, liderazgo e innovación.

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