Meditation-Improved Mental Focus and Attention Span | Akhand Gyan | Eternal Wisdom

Meditation-Improved Mental Focus and Attention Span

People are well aware of the benefits of toning the physical body. But for some reasons, biased or unbiased, the prospects of working out at the mental gym to sharpen our minds is still greeted with great skepticism. An increasing number of research studies are now working to find definite evidence in this respect, and many have been instrumental in dispelling such doubts existing in the minds of people.

… “Meditators have stable brains and stable thoughts.” The study published in the Journal of Neuroscience suggestibly concludes that “the brain functions of people regularly practicing meditation are altered, which leads to the improvement of their mental focus and attention span.”

… The study discovered that meditation not only enables one to change patterns in the brain, but also leads to improved cognitive performance, conferring an advantage in focusing a task mentally. The meditator group was compared to a control group who never meditated, but was of the same age and similar educational background to eliminate any bias in the study.

… Meditators did the task better than non meditators by spotting more target sequences and with fewer false alarms. Interestingly, results of the study suggested that the benefits of meditation extended far beyond the practice.

…It has been demonstrated that meditation leads to an increase in a number of brain signaling connections, along with expansion of myelin, the protective fatty insulation surrounding nerve fibres. Such effect has been observed in the anterior cingulated cortex region of the brain, which is believed to help regulate behavior, and improve mental focus by increased nerve activity.

To know more benefits of meditation and their supporting evidences read the complete article in March 2013 edition of English Akhand Gyan monthly magazine.

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