Short-term meditation training improves attention and self-regulation
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences October 11, 2007 Yi-Yuan Tang, Yinghua Ma, Junhong Wang et al. 1,585 citations
Five days of brief, daily meditation using the integrative body-mind training method improved attention and reduced stress more than relaxation training alone. In a randomized experiment with 40 undergraduate Chinese students, those who practiced 20 minutes of integrative meditation for five days showed greater improvement on the Attention Network Test, lower anxiety, depression, anger, and fatigue, higher vigor, reduced cortisol, and increased immunoreactivity compared to a relaxation control group. The findings suggest that even short-term meditation can produce measurable cognitive and physiological benefits, offering a practical way to study meditation using controlled experimental designs.