This was especially true for older participants
who practiced a lot of meditation over the
seven years. Compared to those who practiced
less, they maintained cognitive gains and did
not show typical patterns of age-related
decline in sustained attention.
decline in sustained attention.
He says the current findings also
Volume 3 | Issue 3 | July-September 2018
19
He is aware that participants’ lifestyle
or personality might have contributed
to the observations. Zanesco
therefore calls for further research
into meditation as an intervention
to improve brain functioning among
older people.
provide a sobering appraisal of
whether short-term or non-intensive
mindfulness interventions are helpful
to improve sustained attention
in a lasting manner. Participants
practiced far more meditation than
is feasible for shorter-term programs
that might aim to help with cognitive
aging, and despite practicing that
much meditation, participants did
not generally improve over years;
these benefits instead plateaued.
Zanesco believes this has broad
implications for meditation and
mindfulness-based
approaches
to cognitive training and raises
important
questions
regarding
how much meditation can, in fact,
influence human cognition and the
workings of the brain.
“This study is the first to offer
evidence that intensive and continued
meditation practice is associated with
enduring improvements in sustained
attention and response inhibition,
with the potential to alter longitudinal
trajectories of cognitive change across
a person’s life,” says Zanesco.
The participants again completed
assessments designed to measure
their reaction time and ability to
pay attention to a task. Although
these did not improve, the cognitive
gains accrued after the 2011
training and assessment were
partially maintained many years
later. This was especially true for
older participants who practiced
a lot of meditation over the seven
years. Compared to those who
practiced less, they maintained
cognitive gains and did not show
typical patterns of age-related
seven years after completion of the
retreats. During the last appraisal,
participants were asked to estimate
how much time over the course
of seven years they had spent
meditating outside of formal retreat
settings, such as through daily or
non-intensive practice. The forty
participants who had remained in
the study all reported some form of
continued meditation practice: 85%
attended atleast one meditation
retreat, and they practiced amounts
on average that were comparable to
an hour a day for seven years.