The ability to focus one’s attention underlies success in many everyday tasks, but voluntary attention cannot be sustained for extended periods of time. In the laboratory, sustained-attention failure is manifest as a decline in perceptual sensitivity with increasing time on task, known as the vigilance decrement. We investigated improvements in sustained attention with training (~5 hr/day for 3 months), which consisted of meditation practice that involved sustained selective attention on a chosen stimulus (e.g., the participant’s breath). Participants were randomly assigned either to receive training first (n = 30) or to serve as waiting-list controls and receive training second (n = 30). Training produced improvements in visual discrimination that were linked to increases in perceptual sensitivity and improved vigilance during sustained visual attention. Consistent with the resource model of vigilance, these results suggest that perceptual improvements can reduce the resource demand imposed by target discrimination and thus make it easier to sustain voluntary attention.

has focused primarily on the diagnosis and treatment of mental disease, and only recently has scientific attention turned to understanding and cultivating positive mental health (Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). The Buddhist tradition, on the other hand, has concerned itself over the past 2,500 years with cultivating exceptional states of mental well-being as well as identifying and treating problems of the mind (Smith, 1991). Toward a DialogueAlthough the records of the Buddha's discourses and later commentarial literature within the Buddhist tradition do not elaborate on the theme of "mental health" as such, they do discuss the nature and causes of mental imbalances and techniques for achieving mental well-being. This article draws on centuries of Buddhist experiential and theoretical inquiry to show how a dialogue with Western psychology can be mutually enriching and particularly relevant to current psychological interest in exploring the nature of positive mental health.This article specifically focuses on Buddhism, because it is widely considered the most psychological of all spiritual traditions (Smith, 1991). Buddhism is fundamentally concerned with identifying the inner causes of human suffering, the possibility of freedom from suffering, and the means to realize such freedom. Unlike many religions, it does not begin with arousing faith in a supernatural being but rather with investigating the nature of human experience (Wallace, 1999(Wallace, , 2003. Buddhism presents a worldview that is thoroughly integrated with a discipline of experiential inquiry into the nature of the mind and related phenomena, and it includes empirical, analytical, and religious elements (Segall, 2003). Thus, it can be relevant to philosophical and psychological theory and practice because of its intensive exploration of the mind and its psychological methods to cultivate sustained well-being.To help open up collaborative dialogue between Buddhism and Western psychology, this article introduces a fourfold model of well-being, drawing from Buddhist teachings as well as Western psychology and research. We begin by introducing a definition of well-being, derived from core insights of the Buddha as well as current Western psychological theory and research. We then describe an innovative model of how to cultivate mental well-being, focusing on four types of mental balance: conative, attentional, cognitive, and affective. The model draws on traditional Buddhist theory as well as relevant Western psychological research to demonstrate how dialogue and empirical study can enrich both traditions. Nature and Types of BuddhismAlthough the Buddhist tradition stems from the teachings attributed to the historical Buddha, over the past 2,500 years it has become assimilated with a wide range of cultures throughout Asia, resulting in an equally wide range of sacred writings, theories, and practices. Broadly speaking, Buddhism is commonly classified in terms of Southeast Asian Theravada Buddhism, East Asian Mahayana Buddhism, and Indo-Tibetan Ma...

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The amygdala has been repeatedly implicated in emotional processing of both positive and negative-valence stimuli. Previous studies suggest that the amygdala response to emotional stimuli is lower when the subject is in a meditative state of mindful-attention, both in beginner meditators after an 8-week meditation intervention and in expert meditators. However, the longitudinal effects of meditation training on amygdala responses have not been reported when participants are in an ordinary, non-meditative state. In this study, we investigated how 8 weeks of training in meditation affects amygdala responses to emotional stimuli in subjects when in a non-meditative state. Healthy adults with no prior meditation experience took part in 8 weeks of either Mindful Attention Training (MAT), Cognitively-Based Compassion Training (CBCT; a program based on Tibetan Buddhist compassion meditation practices), or an active control intervention. Before and after the intervention, participants underwent an fMRI experiment during which they were presented images with positive, negative, and neutral emotional valences from the IAPS database while remaining in an ordinary, non-meditative state. Using a region-of-interest analysis, we found a longitudinal decrease in right amygdala activation in the Mindful Attention group in response to positive images, and in response to images of all valences overall. In the CBCT group, we found a trend increase in right amygdala response to negative images, which was significantly correlated with a decrease in depression score. No effects or trends were observed in the control group. This finding suggests that the effects of meditation training on emotional processing might transfer to non-meditative states. This is consistent with the hypothesis that meditation training may induce learning that is not stimulus- or task-specific, but process-specific, and thereby may result in enduring changes in mental function.

Contemplative practices are believed to alleviate psychological problems, cultivate prosocial behavior and promote self-awareness. In addition, psychological science has developed tools and models for understanding the mind and promoting well-being. Additional effort is needed to combine frameworks and techniques from these traditions to improve emotional experience and socioemotional behavior. An 8-week intensive (42 hr) meditation/emotion regulation training intervention was designed by experts in contemplative traditions and emotion science to reduce "destructive enactment of emotions" and enhance prosocial responses. Participants were 82 healthy female schoolteachers who were randomly assigned to a training group or a wait-list control group, and assessed preassessment, postassessment, and 5 months after training completion. Assessments included self-reports and experimental tasks to capture changes in emotional behavior. The training group reported reduced trait negative affect, rumination, depression, and anxiety, and increased trait positive affect and mindfulness compared to the control group. On a series of behavioral tasks, the training increased recognition of emotions in others (Micro-Expression Training Tool), protected trainees from some of the psychophysiological effects of an experimental threat to self (Trier Social Stress Test; TSST), appeared to activate cognitive networks associated with compassion (lexical decision procedure), and affected hostile behavior in the Marital Interaction Task. Most effects at postassessment that were examined at follow-up were maintained (excluding positive affect, TSST rumination, and respiratory sinus arrhythmia recovery). Findings suggest that increased awareness of mental processes can influence emotional behavior, and they support the benefit of integrating contemplative theories/practices with psychological models and methods of emotion regulation.