Results Of Body-Mind Meditation Study

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Results Of Body-Mind Meditation Study

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/84998.php

A team of researchers from China and the University of Oregon have

developed an approach for neuroscientists to study how meditation

might provide improvements in a person's attention and response to

stress.

The study, done in China, randomly assigned college undergraduate

students to 40-person experimental or control groups. The

experimental group received five days of meditation training using a

technique called the integrative body-mind training (IBMT). The

control group got five days of relaxation training. Before and after

training both groups took tests involving attention and reaction to

mental stress. The findings appear online this week ahead of

publication in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The experimental group showed greater improvement than the control

in an attention test designed to measure the subjects' abilities to

resolve conflict among stimuli. Stress was induced by mental

arithmetic. Both groups initially showed elevated release of the

stress hormone cortisol following the math task, but after training

the experimental group showed less cortisol release, indicating a

greater improvement stress regulation. The experimental group also

showed lower levels of anxiety, depression, anger and fatigue than

was the case in the control group.

" This study improves the prospect for examining brain mechanisms

involved in the changes in attention and self-regulation that occur

following meditation training, " said co-author I. Posner,

professor emeritus of psychology at the University of Oregon. " The

study took only five days, so it was possible to randomly assign the

subjects and do a thorough before-and-after analysis of the training

effects. "

The IBMT approach was developed in the 1990s. Its effects have been

studied in China since 1995. The technique avoids struggles to

control thought, relying instead on a state of restful alertness,

allowing for a high degree of body-mind awareness while receiving

instructions from a coach, who provides breath-adjustment guidance

and mental imagery while soothing music plays in the background.

Thought control is achieved gradually through posture, relaxation,

body-mind harmony and balanced breathing. The authors noted in the

study that IBMT may be effective during short-term application

because of its integrative use of these components.

IBMT has been found to improve emotional and cognitive performance,

as well as social behavior, in people, said lead author Yi-Yuan

Tang, a professor in the Institute of Neuroinformatics and

Laboratory for Body and Mind at Dalian University of Technology in

Dalian, China. Tang currently is a visiting scholar at the

University of Oregon, where he is working with Posner on a new and

larger study to be conducted in the United States.

The current study did not include direct measures of brain changes,

although previous studies have suggested alterations have occurred

in brain networks. Posner said the planned studies in the United

States will include functional magnetic resonance imaging to examine

any brain network changes induced by training.

In summary, the 11-member team wrote: " IBMT is an easy, effective

way for improvement in self-regulation in cognition, emotion and

social behavior. Our study is consistent with the idea that

attention, affective processes and the quality of moment-to-moment

awareness are flexible skills that can be trained. "

At this point, the findings suggest a measurable benefit that people

could achieve through body-mind meditation, especially involving an

effective training regimen, but larger studies are needed to fully

test the findings of this small, short-term study, Posner said.

The project was supported by the grants from the National Natural

Science Foundation of China, Ministry of Education of China and the

UO's Brain, Biology and Machine Initiative.

Co-authors with Tang and Posner were: Yinghua Ma, Junhong Wang,

Yaxin Fan, Shigang Feng, Qilin Lu, Qingbao Yu and Danni Sui, all of

the Institute of Neuroinformatics and Laboratory for Body and Mind

at Dalian University of Technology, Ming Fan of the Institute of

Basic Medical Sciences in Beijing, and K. Rothbart, professor

emerita of psychology at the University of Oregon. Tang also is

affiliated with the Key Laboratory for Mental Health and Center for

Social & Organizational Behavior, both located in the Chinese

Academy of Sciences in Beijing.