Meditation Enhances Attention Span

By Religare

Friday, July 16, 2010, 10:17

Meditation is an internal state of relaxed awareness. Recent study said that daily meditation not only give a peaceful life, but also boosts attention spans.

Katherine MacLean at the University of California Davis and her co-advisor, Clifford Saron conducted a test where participants went to a Buddhist meditation retreat with B. Alan Wallace,a researcher and Buddhist scholar.

Then participants were tested on a computer to measure how well they could differentiate visual distinctions and sustain visual attention.

As the training went on participants were better of at differentiating short lines as well as attention span was improved through meditation.

"Because this task is so boring and yet is also very neutral, it"s kind of a perfect index of meditation training," says MacLean.

“You realize how challenging it is to just sit and observe something without being distracted," she added.