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‘Mindfulness’, the process of learning to become more aware of our ongoing experiences, increases well-being in adolescent boys, a new study reports. Researchers from the University of Cambridge analyzed 155 boys from two independent UK schools, Tonbridge and Hampton, before and after a four-week crash course in mindfulness.
Clinical trials using patients’ own immune cells to target tumors have yielded promising results. However, this approach usually works only if the patients also receive large doses of drugs designed to help immune cells multiply rapidly, and those drugs have life-threatening side effects. Now a team of MIT engineers has devised a way to deliver the necessary drugs by smuggling them on the backs of the cells sent in to fight the tumor.
Just 11 hours of learning a meditation technique induces positive structural changes in brain connectivity by boosting efficiency in a part of the brain that helps a person regulate behavior in accordance with their goals, researchers report. The technique – integrative body-mind training (IBMT) – has been the focus of intense scrutiny by a team of Chinese researchers led by Yi-Yuan Tang of Dalian University of Technology in collaboration with University of Oregon psychologist Michael I. Posner.
A number of benefits from meditation have been claimed by those who practice various traditions, but few have been well tested in scientifically controlled studies. Among these claims are improved performance and decreased sleep need. Therefore, in these studies we assess whether meditation leads to an immediate performance improvement on a well validated psychomotor vigilance task (PVT), and second, whether longer bouts of meditation may alter sleep need. Check the end of this report for a link to download this open access study.
Scientists believe that your brain has a built-in “negativity bias.” In other words, as we evolved over millions of years, dodging sticks and chasing carrots, it was a lot more important to notice, react to, and remember sticks than it was for carrots. That’s because – in the tough environments in which our ancestors lived – if they missed out on a carrot, they usually had a shot at another one later on. But if they failed to avoid a stick – a predator, a natural hazard, or aggression from others of their species – WHAM, no more chances to pass on their genes.
As doctors increasingly prescribe meditation to patients for stress-related disorders, scientists are gaining a better understanding of how different techniques from Buddhist, Chinese, and Vedic traditions produce different results. A new paper published in Consciousness and Cognition discusses three categories to organize and better understand meditation.
It is nearly impossible to pay attention to one thing for a long time. A new study looks at whether Buddhist meditation can improve a person’s ability to be attentive and finds that meditation training helps people do better at focusing for a long time on a task that requires them to distinguish small differences between things they see. Participants took part in several experiments; results from one are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science.
How much change in the brain makes a difference in the mind?
That is the issue raised by a very interesting comment regarding my previous post, The Brain in a Bucket. So I have taken the liberty of posting the comment here (hoping that’s OK in blog etiquette; still learning as I go), and then responding.
People who meditate regularly find pain less unpleasant because their brains anticipate the pain less, a new study has found. Scientists from The University of Manchester recruited individuals into the study who had a diverse range of experience with meditation, spanning anything from months to decades. It was only the more advanced meditators whose anticipation [...]
Researchers from Case Western Reserve University School of Nursing used a one-group, repeated measures design to investigate the efficacy of guided imagery with theta music on 53 advanced cancer patients suffering from dyspnea (difficulty breathing). The intervention consisted of four periods: (a) pretest; (b) intervention with peaceful non-theta music; (c) intervention with 10 min of [...]
Living with pain is stressful, but a surprisingly short investment of time in mental training can help you cope. A new study examining the perception of pain and the effects of various mental training techniques has found that relatively short and simple mindfulness meditation training can have a significant positive effect on pain management. Though pain research during the past decade has shown that extensive meditation training can have a positive effect in reducing a person’s awareness and sensitivity to pain, the effort, time commitment, and financial obligations required has made the treatment not practical for many patients.
Some of us need regular amounts of coffee or other chemical enhancers to make us cognitively sharper. A newly published study suggests perhaps a brief bit of meditation would prepare us just as well. While past research using neuroimaging technology has shown that meditation techniques can promote significant changes in brain areas associated with concentration, [...]
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