TIME Article: Can ‘Mindfulness’ Help You Focus?

On March 27th 2013, TIME magazine online posted an article by Annie Murphy Paul titled: Can ‘Mindfulness’ Help You Focus?, in the IDEAS>Health & Science>Psychology section.

Here are some key quotes:

"If there’s any time when we should be paying close attention to what we’re doing, it’s when we’re under pressure to perform — whether taking a test like the SAT or on a deadline at work. But too often, our minds wander even in these crucial moments — distracted by a ticking clock or consumed with worries about how well we’re doing or how much time we have left.

Jonathan Schooler, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, wondered if instruction in mindfulness — the capacity to focus on the here and now — could help. In a forthcoming issue of the journal Psychological Science, he and his co-authors describe an experiment in which 48 undergraduates were randomly assigned to either a mindfulness class or a nutrition class.

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Schooler notes that findings of his study are in line with other research showing that mindfulness training leads to reduced activation of the “default network,” a collection of regions in the brain that tend to become more active when our minds are at rest than when we’re focused on a mentally challenging task.

[...]

It may be the case, Schooler theorizes, that mindfulness training reduces mind wandering by “dampening” the activation of the default network, preventing our thoughts from straying.

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“The present demonstration that mindfulness training improves cognitive function and minimizes mind wandering suggests that enhanced attentional focus may be key to unlocking skills that were, until recently, viewed as immutable.” Something to think about — or, actually, not think about — the next time you’re under pressure."