The influence of focused-attention meditation states on the cognitive control of sequence learning

Art, meditation and cognitive science: a framework for museum-based community meditation programme during the COVID-19 pandemic in Singapore

In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic caused mandatory lockdowns worldwide, exacerbating mental health issues created by social isolation. Aimed to improve mental health and maintain engagement, the Singapore Art Museum (SAM) rapidly deployed an online programme called Unwind with SAM to engage the public with the museum's contemporary art collection coupled with meditation. The programme focused on the positive effect of arts on mental health, combined with the cognitive benefits of meditation by 'slow-looking' at artworks. This practice-based report reflects on the processes and explores the potential between art, contemplation and cognitive sciences. The first section outlines the current landscape of art and wellness approaches in museums. The second section explains the philosophical framework that guides the programme, alongside a breakdown of components and design rationale. The final part provides a critical reflection and concludes with recommendations for practitioners, managers and scientists to utilise the framework for designing future programmes.

Augmenting complex and dynamic performance through mindfulness-based cognitive training: An evaluation of training adherence, trait mindfulness, personality and resting-state EEG

Human performance applications of mindfulness-based training have demonstrated its utility in enhancing cognitive functioning. Previous studies have illustrated how these interventions can improve performance on traditional cognitive tests, however, little investigation has explored the extent to which mindfulness-based training can optimise performance in more dynamic and complex contexts. Further, from a neuroscientific perspective, the underlying mechanisms responsible for performance enhancements remain largely undescribed. With this in mind, the following study aimed to investigate how a short-term mindfulness intervention (one week) augments performance on a dynamic and complex task (target motion analyst task; TMA) in young, healthy adults (n = 40, age range = 18-38). Linear mixed effect modelling revealed that increased adherence to the web-based mindfulness-based training regime (ranging from 0-21 sessions) was associated with improved performance in the second testing session of the TMA task, controlling for baseline performance. Analyses of resting-state electroencephalographic (EEG) metrics demonstrated no change across testing sessions. Investigations of additional individual factors demonstrated that enhancements associated with training adherence remained relatively consistent across varying levels of participants' resting-state EEG metrics, personality measures (i.e., trait mindfulness, neuroticism, conscientiousness), self-reported enjoyment and timing of intervention adherence. Our results thus indicate that mindfulness-based cognitive training leads to performance enhancements in distantly related tasks, irrespective of several individual differences. We also revealed nuances in the magnitude of cognitive enhancements contingent on the timing of adherence, regardless of total volume of training. Overall, our findings suggest that mindfulness-based training could be used in a myriad of settings to elicit transferable performance enhancements.

Training-related changes in neural beta oscillations associated with implicit and explicit motor sequence learning

Many motor actions we perform have a sequential nature while learning a motor sequence involves both implicit and explicit processes. In this work, we developed a task design where participants concurrently learn an implicit and an explicit motor sequence across five training sessions, with EEG recordings at sessions 1 and 5. This intra-subject approach allowed us to study training-induced behavioral and neural changes specific to the explicit and implicit components. Based on previous reports of beta power modulations in sensorimotor networks related to sequence learning, we focused our analysis on beta oscillations at motor-cortical sites. On a behavioral level, substantial performance gains were evident early in learning in the explicit condition, plus slower performance gains across training sessions in both explicit and implicit sequence learning. Consistent with the behavioral trends, we observed a training-related increase in beta power in both sequence learning conditions, while the explicit condition displayed stronger beta power suppression during early learning. The initially stronger beta suppression and subsequent increase in beta power specific to the explicit component, correlated with enhanced behavioral performance, possibly reflecting higher cortical excitability. Our study suggests an involvement of motor-cortical beta oscillations in the explicit component of motor sequence learning.

Electrophysiological effects of smartphone notifications on cognitive control following a brief mindfulness induction

Smartphone use is nearly ubiquitous, with 93% of adults among economically developed countries, including the United States, Canada, Israel, and South Korea owning a smartphone (Taylor & Silver, 2019). Multiple studies have demonstrated the distracting effects of smartphone notifications on behavioral measures of cognition. Fewer studies have examined the effects of notifications on neural activity underlying higher-level cognitive processes or behavioral inductions to reduce smartphone-related distraction. Using EEG spectral frequency power densities, we assessed the effects of smartphone notifications (vs. control trials) on engagement of attentional shifting processes involved in cognitive control during a Navon Letter visual oddball task. Participants were randomly assigned to a brief mindfulness induction (N = 44) or a neutral narration control condition (N = 43). Overall, participants had lower theta-band power, but higher alpha- and beta-band power densities on target letter trials preceded by smartphone notifications. Additionally, participants in the mindfulness (vs. control) condition had a larger attention shifting oddball assessed via theta power density and theta/beta ratio (TBR) values-reflecting increased engagement of cognitive control-particularly on smartphone notification (vs. control) trials. Altogether, these results provide evidence supporting the idea that smartphone notifications can decrease activity of neural correlates of cognitive control, and offer the promise of a brief mindfulness induction to buffer against the effects of smartphone notifications on cognitive control. The findings indicate a need for further research on mindfulness inductiosn as a means to reduce potential distraction caused by smartphones.

The Influence of Focused Attention and Open Monitoring Mindfulness Meditation States on True and False Memory

Previous investigations into the effect of mindfulness meditation on false memory have reported mixed findings. One potential issue is that mindfulness meditation involves different styles that establish distinct cognitive control states. The present work aimed to address this issue by comparing the effects of single-session focused attention (FAM) and open monitoring (OMM) mindfulness meditation styles on true and false memory recall. Strengthened cognitive control states associated with FAM were predicted to increase true memory recall and decrease false memory recall. Conversely, weakened cognitive control established by OMM was predicted to increase false memory recall. Thirty-four meditation-naïve participants (23 females, mean age = 23.4 years, range = 18-33) first completed pre-meditation learning and recall phases of the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) task. Participants then completed a single session of FAM or OMM prior to a second, post-meditation, round of DRM task learning and recall phases with a novel word list. Finally, participants completed a recognition test with true and false memory, and distractor words. Both FAM and OMM groups demonstrated significant increase in false memory recall between pre- and post-meditation recall tests but these groups did not differ with respect to true and false memory recall and recognition. The present findings are consistent with previous reports of increased false memory arising from mindfulness meditation. Distinct cognitive control states associated with FAM and OMM states do not result in distinct true and false memory formation, at least in meditation-naïve adults.

Instantaneous effects of mindfulness meditation on tennis return performance in elite junior athletes completing an implicitly sequenced serve return task

Single-session meditation augmentation of sport-specific skill performance was tested with elite junior tennis athletes. Athletes completed one of two styles of mindfulness meditation (focused-attention or open-monitoring) or a control listening condition prior to performing an implicitly sequenced tennis serve return task involving the goal of hitting a target area placed on the service court. Unbeknownst to athletes, six distinct serves followed a repeating second-order conditional sequence for two task blocks before the sequence was altered in a third transfer block. Task performance was operationalized as serve return outcome and analyzed using beta regression modeling. Models analyzed group by block differences in the proportion of returned serves (i.e., non-aces), returns placed in the service court, and target hits. Contrary to previous laboratory findings, results did not support meditation-related augmentation of performance and/or sequence learning. In fact, compared to control, meditation may have impaired performance improvements and acquisition of serve sequence information. It is possible that the effects of single-session meditation seen in laboratory research may not extend to more complex motor tasks, at least in highly-trained adolescents completing a well-learned skill. Further research is required to elucidate the participant, task, and meditation-related characteristics that might promote single-session meditation performance enhancement.

Focused-Attention Meditation Improves Flow, Communication Skills, and Safety Attitudes of Surgeons

OBJECTIVE

Patient safety is a worldwide problem and a focus of academic research. Human factors and ergonomics (HFE) is an approach to improving healthcare work systems and processes. From the perspective of the cognitive ergonomics of HFE, the aim of this study is to improve the flow level, communication skills, and safety attitudes of surgeons through focused-attention meditation (FAM) training, thus helping to reduce adverse clinical events.

METHODS

In total, 140 surgeons were recruited from three hospitals in China and randomly divided into two groups (FAM group and control group). The FAM group received 8 weeks of FAM training, while the control group was on the waiting list and did not receive any interventions. Three scales (WOLF, LCSAS, and SAQ-C) were used to measure the data of three variables (flow, communication skills, and safety attitude), respectively, at two times, before and after the intervention (pre-test and post-test). The incidence of adverse events during the intervention was also collected for both groups.

RESULTS

The ANOVA results showed that all three variables had a significant main effect of time and significant interactions between time and group. The independent-sample T-test results showed that the incidence of adverse events during the intervention was significantly lower in the FAM group than in the control group.

CONCLUSIONS

The intervention of FAM could significantly improve surgeons' flow levels, communication skills, and safety attitudes, potentially helping to reduce adverse clinical events.

A Single Session of Mindfulness Meditation Expedites Immediate Motor Memory Consolidation to Improve Wakeful Offline Learning

Posttraining meditation has been shown to promote wakeful memory stabilization of explicit motor sequence information in learners who are experienced meditators. We investigated the effect of single-session mindfulness meditation on wakeful and sleep-dependent forms of implicit motor memory consolidation in meditation naïve adults. Immediately after training with a target implicit motor sequence, participants (N = 20, eight females, 23.9 ± 3.3 years) completed either a 10-min mindfulness meditation (N = 10) or a control listening task before exposure to task interference induced by training with a novel implicit sequence. Target sequence performance was tested following 5-hr wakeful and 15-hr postsleep periods. Bayesian inference was applied to group comparisons of mean reaction time (RT) changes across training, interference, wakeful, and postsleep timepoints. Relative to control conditions, posttraining meditation reduced RT slowing between target sequence training and interference sequence introduction (BF10 [Bayes factors] = 6.61) and supported RT performance gains over the wakeful period (BF10 = 8.34). No group differences in postsleep RT performance were evident (BF10 = 0.38). These findings illustrate that posttraining mindfulness meditation expedites wakeful, but not sleep-dependent, offline learning with implicit motor sequences. Previous meditation experience is not required to obtain wakeful consolidation gains from posttraining mindfulness meditation.

Individual Differences in the Change of Attentional Functions With Brief One-Time Focused Attention and Open Monitoring Meditations

Mindfulness meditation is increasingly used for clinical treatment and to improve well-being. One of the most fundamental benefits of mindfulness meditation is now considered as enhanced attentional control. Mindfulness meditation is a complex technique but most of its variants consist of a combination of two types of basic meditation practice: focused attention meditation (FAM) and open monitoring meditation (OMM). Although many studies have examined the effect of relatively long-term meditation on attention, some recent studies have focused on the effect of a brief one-time meditation on cognitive processing, including attentional functions. Furthermore, it is necessary to discuss the relationship between the effect of mindfulness meditation on attentional functions and personality traits (especially traits related to mindfulness). This study investigated whether attentional control is improved by a single 30-min FAM or OMM and whether the degree of improvement in attentional functions - alerting, orienting, and conflict monitoring - induced by the meditation varies according to the participant's trait scores related to mindfulness measured by the Five Facets Mindfulness Questionnaire. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups, i.e., FAM, OMM, and no-meditation (noM) groups, and given an Attentional Network Test before and after each 30-min meditation session. Compared with the noM group, there was no overall improvement in attentional functions with either type of meditation. However, there were associations between the change of the alerting function's score and the personality traits: in the FAM group, alerting scores were negatively associated with the nonreactivity facet of the FFMQ, and in the OMM group, alerting scores were positively associated with describing facet scores of the FFMQ. The results indicate that the effects of meditation methods on attentional functions could depend on the individual's traits related to mindfulness and that mindfulness meditation could sometimes appear to have no impact on attentional functions.

Prefrontal Cortex Activation During Motor Sequence Learning Under Interleaved and Repetitive Practice: A Two-Channel Near-Infrared Spectroscopy Study

Training under high interference conditions through interleaved practice (IP) results in performance suppression during training but enhances long-term performance relative to repetitive practice (RP) involving low interference. Previous neuroimaging work addressing this contextual interference effect of motor learning has relied heavily on the blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) response using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) methodology resulting in mixed reports of prefrontal cortex (PFC) recruitment under IP and RP conditions. We sought to clarify these equivocal findings by imaging bilateral PFC recruitment using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) while discrete key pressing sequences were trained under IP and RP schedules and subsequently tested following a 24-h delay. An advantage of fNIRS over the fMRI BOLD response is that the former measures oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin changes independently allowing for assessment of cortical hemodynamics even when there is neurovascular decoupling. Despite slower sequence performance durations under IP, bilateral PFC oxygenated and deoxygenated hemoglobin values did not differ between practice conditions. During test, however, slower performance from those previously trained under RP coincided with hemispheric asymmetry in PFC recruitment. Specifically, following RP, test deoxygenated hemoglobin values were significantly lower in the right PFC. The present findings contrast with previous behavioral demonstrations of increased cognitive demand under IP to illustrate a more complex involvement of the PFC in the contextual interference effect. IP and RP incur similar levels of bilateral PFC recruitment, but the processes underlying the recruitment are dissimilar. PFC recruitment during IP supports action reconstruction and memory elaboration while RP relies on PFC recruitment to maintain task variation information in working memory from trial to trial. While PFC recruitment under RP serves to enhance immediate performance, it does not support long-term performance.

Efecto de la respiración consciente en la tarea de atención en adultos

El presente ensayo pretende revisar las publicaciones asociadas a la tarea de atención en adultos en virtud del impacto de la respiración consiente. Las técnicas de respiración en los diferentes estilos de meditación han cobrado relevancia a la hora de evaluar el proceso de enseñanza aprendizaje en niños, principalmente en algunas funciones superiores cognitivas como lo es el control inhibitorio. En adultos, hay información difusa no sistematizada de cómo podrían impactar estas prácticas en el proceso de enseñanza aprendizaje, considerando que los adultos presentan supresión de la neurogénesis y la neuroprotección, lo que conduce a alteraciones patológicas en el estado de ánimo, la atención, memoria y aprendizaje, según lo descrito por Innes y Selfe (2014). La evidencia determina que es factible generar una intervención para la mejora del ambiente de aprendizaje, basado en el impacto que produce en los procesos atencionales. Este impacto podría determinar la adecuación de políticas públicas o intervenciones de instituciones públicas o privadas, con el fin de potenciar el aprendizaje en adultos y limitar el deterioro cognitivo de estos, a través del estímulo de sus funciones cognitivas que produce la respiración consiente.

Understanding mind–body disciplines: A pilot study of paced breathing and dynamic muscle contraction on autonomic nervous system reactivity

Mind-body disciplines such as yoga, Tai Chi, and Qigong have been demonstrated to activate the parasympathetic nervous system, but it remains unclear how these practices achieve these results, whether by breathing, movement, or some combination. This pilot study establishes a model to examine the individual and combined effects of paced breathing and rhythmic skeletal muscle contraction on the activation of the parasympathetic system during a cognitive stressor. Male participants were randomly assigned to one of four preconditioning groups: (a) paced breathing alone, (b) alternating upper extremity muscle contractions, (c) paced breathing synchronized with alternating contractions, or (d) a neutral control task. Autonomic response was assessed by heart rate variability during a standardized cognitive stressor. The alternating contraction group had 71.7% higher activation of parasympathetic signal over respiration alone (p < .001). Alternating contractions synchronized with breathing demonstrated 150% higher parasympathetic activation than control (p < .0001). Comparing the contraction alone and synchronized groups, the synchronized group demonstrated 45.9% higher parasympathetic response during a cognitive stressor (p < .001). In conclusion, paced breathing synchronized with rhythmic muscle contraction leads to more resilient activation of the parasympathetic response than either alternating contractions or breathing alone, which may help explain the stress reducing benefits of mind-body disciplines.

Concentrative (Sahaj Samadhi) meditation training and visual awareness: An fMRI study on color afterimages

All of us consciously experience the world around us through our sensory modalities. Empirical studies on the relationship between attention and awareness have shown that attention does influence perceptual experience or appearance in addition to better performance in perceptual tasks. The practice of meditation also changes perceptual experience in addition to better perceptual performance. For example, a study with Sahaj Samadhi meditators utilizing negative color afterimages had shown that concentrative meditation influences visual experience. However the brain regions that are modified by meditation practice leading to such changes in visual experience or awareness are still not known. Here using negative color afterimages in a functional MRI study, we investigated the brain mechanisms underlying the changes in visual awareness as a function of attentional enhancement achieved through long-term concentrative meditation practice. We found increased activity in right lateralized inferior occipital and inferior frontal cortex, which suggests the importance of attentional control in modulating visual awareness. The results of this study indicate that the link between attention and conscious experience is possibly changed by meditation practices.

States of focused attention and sequential action: A comparison of single session meditation and computerised attention task influences on top-down control during sequence learning

Motor sequence learning is considered the result of the outflow of information following cognitive control processes that are shared by other goal-directed behaviours. Emerging evidence suggests that focused-attention meditation (FAM) establishes states of enhanced cognitive control, that then exert top-down control biases in subsequent unrelated tasks. With respect to sequence learning, a single-session of FAM has been shown to entrain stimulus-dependent forms of sequential behaviour in meditation naïve individuals. In the present experiment, we compared single-session effects of FAM and a computerised attention task (CAT) to test if FAM-induced enhanced top-down control is generally comparable to cognitive tasks that require focused attention. We also investigated if effort, arousal or pleasure associated with FAM, or CAT explained the influence of these tasks on sequence learning. Relative to a rest-only control condition, both FAM and CAT resulted in shorter reaction time (RT) in a serial reaction time task (SRTT), and this enhanced RT performance was associated with higher reliance on stimulus-based planning as opposed to sequence representation formation. However, following FAM, a greater rate of improvement in RT performance was observed in comparison to both CAT and control conditions. Neither effort, arousal nor pleasure associated with FAM or CAT explained SRTT performance. These findings were interpreted to suggest that the effect of FAM states on increased top-down control during sequence learning is based on the focused attention control feature of this meditation. FAM states might be associated with enhanced cognitive control to promote the development of more efficient stimulus-response processing in comparison to states induced by other attentional tasks.

Consistent Shifts of Stimulus Modality Induce Chunking in Sequence Learning

The ability to learn event sequences is crucial to human behavior because it enables us to interact adaptively with our environment. The sensory environment is essential in guiding the acquisition of these sequences, so the role of the stimulus modality in sequence learning is of high relevance. The present study examined structured stimulus modality shifts in sequence learning using the serial reaction time task (SRT). Participants had to respond to numbers that were presented either in the visual or in the auditory modality. Importantly, the numbers, as well as the stimulus modality, followed a fixed pattern. We found better performance in sequenced than in random blocks, indicating sequence learning. Moreover, the performance was better when the stimulus modality remained the same than when the modality changed between successive trials (the modality shift effect, MSE). However, sequence learning facilitated performance primarily in modality repetitions, so that the MSE became progressively larger in the sequenced blocks, while it was small in the random blocks, and this pattern was particularly pronounced for the participants who showed a high recall level for the response sequence. To account for this effect, we assume that consistent modality shifts induce parsing of the sequence into chunks. Because chunk retrieval at chunk boundaries incurs RT costs, the acquired sequence knowledge is more efficiently expressed in modality repetitions (i.e., within chunks). Together, the data suggest that the formation of explicit knowledge enhances chunking in sequence learning.

Review of the Neural Oscillations Underlying Meditation

Objective: Meditation is one type of mental training that has been shown to produce many cognitive benefits. Meditation practice is associated with improvement in concentration and reduction of stress, depression, and anxiety symptoms. Furthermore, different forms of meditation training are now being used as interventions for a variety of psychological and somatic illnesses. These benefits are thought to occur as a result of neurophysiologic changes. The most commonly studied specific meditation practices are focused attention (FA), open-monitoring (OM), as well as transcendental meditation (TM), and loving-kindness (LK) meditation. In this review, we compare the neural oscillatory patterns during these forms of meditation.

Method: We performed a systematic review of neural oscillations during FA, OM, TM, and LK meditation practices, comparing meditators to meditation-naïve adults.

Results: FA, OM, TM, and LK meditation are associated with global increases in oscillatory activity in meditators compared to meditation-naïve adults, with larger changes occurring as the length of meditation training increases. While FA and OM are related to increases in anterior theta activity, only FA is associated with changes in posterior theta oscillations. Alpha activity increases in posterior brain regions during both FA and OM. In anterior regions, FA shows a bilateral increase in alpha power, while OM shows a decrease only in left-sided power. Gamma activity in these meditation practices is similar in frontal regions, but increases are variable in parietal and occipital regions.

Conclusions: The current literature suggests distinct differences in neural oscillatory activity among FA, OM, TM, and LK meditation practices. Further characterizing these oscillatory changes may better elucidate the cognitive and therapeutic effects of specific meditation practices, and potentially lead to the development of novel neuromodulation targets to take advantage of their benefits.