Mindfulness Training

• Concentrative
• Open meditation

• focus attention on 1 thing (mantra, breath)
• simplest form is to sit quietly and focus attention on the breath
• zooming lens of attention

• opening attention to become aware of continuously passing sensations and feelings, images, thought, sounds, smells, without becoming involved in thinking about them
• simpley witness whatever goes through the mind, not reacting or becoming involved with memories, worries, or images
• return attention to the breath
• widening the lens of attention

• Improves CONTROL PROCESSES
• Effortful and volunatry mental activity to ensure that present moment beahvior and thoughts are in line with one's current goals

Attention

Emotion Regulation

• Orienting
• Executive Control
• Alerting

• engage
• disengage
• move

• Engage selective processing at cued location
• Intraparietal Sulcus (IPS)

• Disengage from irrelevant location
• Temporal-parietal Junction (TPJ)

• Move attention to the relevant location
• Superior Parietal Lobule (SPL)

• Engage attention on the breath
• Disengage attention from irrelevant task (non-breath focus)
• Move attention back to the breath

Mindfulness Training group is faster at orienting to relevant location

• Flutter of numbers and letters and you have to remember the first and second number.
• When shorter interval time between 1st and 2nd number, people miss the second number, but this effect is reduced (mental stickiness reduced) in practitioners of MT

Allows preferential processing of relevant info while ignoring irrelevant or distracting info

allows internal representations of relevant information to be maintained and manipulated over short intervals without getting distracted by irrelevant info

• S1 (Encode)
• Time (Maintain)
• S2 (Retrieve/Respond)

• Task 1- remember face over 3 seconds
• Task 2- remember 2 faces over 3 seconds
• Distraction item- shoe or face

Overall- performance is reduced with greater WM demands (most accuracy with shoe distraction and 1 face. least accuracy with face distraction and 2 faces) (low load- discongruent distractors)

However- Working Memory improves with MT, had better accuracy in all conditions for medical students

depletion of working memory capacity

• Remember letters
• arithmetic correct?
• remember letters
• arithmetic correct?

military do worse on task from T1-T2 than civilians, shoes reduced WM capacity

• Mindfulness-based Mind Fitness Training
• predeployment military context
• 30 mins of HW
• logged practice time

• Changes in WM as shown by OSpan task.
• civilian controls- no change
• military controls (pre-deployment)- no change, poor WM
• military (pre-deployment) low practice- bad WM
• military (pre-deployment) high practice- improved WM

MT improves WM for military personnel pre-deployment, may be protective