Meditation may help the brain reduce distractions and focus

April 22, 2011 by Editor

Researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), the Osher Research Center at Harvard Medical Schooland the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have found that positive effects of mindfulness meditation on pain and working memory may result from an improved ability to regulate alpha rhythms to deal with an often-overstimulating world.

Previous studies have suggested that attention can be used to regulate alpha rhythms and, in turn, sensory perception. When an individual anticipates a touch, sight or sound, the focusing of attention toward the expected stimulus induces a lower alpha wave height in cortical cells that would handle the expected sensation, which actually “turns up the volume” of those cells. At the same time the height of the alpha wave in cells that would handle irrelevant or distracting information increases, turning the volume in those regions down./.../