Mental Training as a Tool in the Neuroscientific Study of Brain and Cognitive Plasticity
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Study at a glance
- Area
- Other research
- Study type
- Review & meta-analysis
- Authors
- Slagter HA, Davidson RJ, Lutz A
- Journal
- Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
- Year
- 2011
- Protocol
- perspective review of meditation and brain plasticity research
Key findings
- Learning from training is usually specific to the trained stimuli and task
- Meditation practices are designed to strengthen well-defined core cognitive processes
- Proposed drivers of transfer include varied input, metacognitive focus, task difficulty, optimal arousal and training duration
- Controlling the many factors behind meditation effects remains a key research challenge
A perspective article on whether meditation training can produce learning that carries over beyond the specific task practiced. The authors note that most training improves only the trained task, and argue that meditation, by targeting core mental processes such as attention and awareness, may foster broader process-specific learning. They review neuroimaging findings on meditation, describe features of training regimes that may drive such learning, and discuss the methodological challenges of studying meditation effects.