Focus! Study Finds Meditation Practices Enhance Ability to Control Attention

Working from home or having online classes at home can be a double-edged sword. One is you get to be comfortable while working and doing your schoolwork, and second is you can't finish anything at all. The second reason is that there might be many distractions at home that can take you away from your scheduled activities. 

Maintaining focus and attention can sometimes be challenging, especially when our phones are taken into account. Some people find it amusing to scroll on their phones and forget that time passes by as they do it. But apart from clearing distractions, did you know that there is another way to improve your attention to focus on your tasks eagerly?

ALSO READ: 5 Reasons Why Meditation is Good for You

Psypost reports that a new longitudinal waitlist-controlled study demonstrates that an intensive medication retreat enhanced controlled attention on those who attended five weeks. They also added that the study discovered evidence that higher inflammatory activity was related to worse attention control. In an interview with Psypost, University of Arkansas assistant professor and study author Grant Shields, Ph.D., said that meditation is often suggested as something that enhances the executive functions, which is why he wanted to test that precisely using a computation model.

A 2018 study published in frontiers states that scientific interest in meditation significantly grown in the previous years. However, this topic has neglected the idea that different meditation types may promote specific cognitive control states. A study published in the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI) added that attention and concentration are among the most important topics in the experiments about meditation. They further that inhibition of emotions and discursive thoughts are equally important in understanding what is at stake during mental processes. 

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Methods and results of the study

According to Psypost, the study includes 60 randomly assigned participants to either immediately attend a three-month meditation retreat or serve as waiting list controls. Following the three months after the retreat ended, psypost furthered that the control group completed their three-month meditation retreat. The researchers also mentioned in the article that the participants did shamatha meditation six hours per day. 

To determine the participants' ability or level in attaining or maintaining focus, they further that the researchers utilized computer-based flanker task five weeks after the start of the first retreat. To measure the inflammatory biomarkers, Psypost added that the researchers collected blood samples at the beginning, middle, and end of the retreats. 

Findings of the study demonstrating that meditation retreats focused on controlled meditative practices enhance Dr. Shields explained the ability to control attention in an interview with Psypost. He added that immune system activity has something to do with the said cognitive ability necessitating the interventions that diminish inflammatory immune system activity may enhance attention control. This only means that inflammation is one of the factors why attention usually slips away from our grasps. 

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