Mindful breath awareness meditation facilitates efficiency gains in brain networks: A steady-state visually evoked potentials study

Benjamin Schöne,Peter Malinowski,Sebastian Graetz,Thomas Gruber,Martin Bernhof

doi:10.1038/s41598-018-32046-5

Benjamin Schöne, Peter Malinowski + Show 3 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-32046-5

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Abstract

The beneficial effects of mindfulness-based therapeutic interventions have stimulated a rapidly growing body of scientific research into underlying psychological processes. Resulting evidence indicates that engaging with mindfulness meditation is associated with increased performance on a range of cognitive tasks. However, the mechanisms promoting these improvements require further investigation. We studied changes in behavioural performance of 34 participants during a multiple object tracking (MOT) task that taps core cognitive processes, namely sustained selective visual attention and spatial working memory. Concurrently, we recorded the steady-state visually evoked potential (SSVEP), an EEG signal elicited by the continuously flickering moving objects, and indicator of attentional engagement. Participants were tested before and after practicing eight weeks of mindful breath awareness meditation or progressive muscle relaxation as active control condition. The meditation group improved their MOT-performance and exhibited a reduction of SSVEP amplitudes, whereas no such changes were observed in the relaxation group. Neither group changed in self-reported positive affect and mindfulness, while a marginal increase in negative affect was observed in the mindfulness group. This novel way of combining MOT and SSVEP provides the important insight that mindful breath awareness meditation may lead to refinements of attention networks, enabling more efficient use of attentional resources.

Highlights

Over the last decades, research investigating the effects of mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) has grown exponentially[1,2,3,4,5,6,7]
The present study examined the effects of 8 weeks regular brief mindful breath awareness meditation on neural processes involved in a sustained visual attention and short-term memory task
In the meditation group we found training-related improvements in multiple object tracking (MOT) performance combined with a reduction of the state visually evoked potential (SSVEP), whereas no such changes were observed in the progressive muscle relaxation group

Summary

Introduction

Research investigating the effects of mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) has grown exponentially[1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. It is impossible to gain certainty if, and to what extent, observed effects of www.nature.com/scientificreports/ These MBIs can be attributed to meditation in general, or to a specific meditation exercise in particular[15,20,21]. It is intriguing that a mental exercise that “merely” entails the voluntary focus on a simple object, such as the sensation of one’s own breath, combined with a non-reactive and accepting awareness of concurrently arising mental phenomena, can have far-reaching effects on cognitive functions Such improvements have been explained in terms of brain network training, which is thought to enhance the functioning of interacting brain networks of attention[21,25,28]. Each sequence of detecting that the mind got entangled in distractions such as mind wandering would engage the salience, executive control and orienting networks[25,28] and over time lead to efficiency gains of these networks

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