Study: Meditation Against ADHD

Travel back, in your mind's eye, to a time when you felt a healthy exhaustion after hiking, biking, playing sports.., and let you re-live that moment as vividly as you can.

Then, remember, re-experience, a loving exchange that really touched you. Pause. See your partner. See the moment. Smell it. Hear what happened around you.

Next, visualize the most caring gesture you have ever received, as full of details as possible. Who gave you that gift of caring. How you felt.

Now, travel to the most magnificent place you have seen. Enjoy the views. Pause. Listen. Smile. Appreciate.

Congratulations. You have trained your brain. As Newsweek's Sharon Begley explained recently:

But now neuroscientists have documented how "mere" thoughts can also sculpt the brain. Just thinking about playing a piano piece, over and over, can expand the region of motor cortex that controls those fingers; just thinking about depressive thoughts in new ways can dial down activity in one part of the brain that underlies depression and increase it in another, leading to clinical improvement.

We have talked about the value of meditation before. Only a few days ago, in predicting brain health trends for the next 5 years in our SharpBrains blog, I wrote that:

Noncomputer-based programs will also prove to be effective tools. Research increasingly is affirming the value of such methods as meditation to train attention and regulate emotions, using cognitive therapy to build self-motivation and other abilities, and keeping a gratitude journal to affirm positives in one's life and improve self-reported happiness.

A fascinating new study (Mindfulness meditation training in adults and adolescents with ADHD. Journal of Attention Disorders, 11, 737-746) suggests the benefits of mindfulness for adolescents and adults with attention deficits.

Let's see what Dr. David Rabiner, Director of Undergraduate Studies in the Department of Psychology and Neuroscience at Duke University, has to say about the topic:

Mindfulness meditation is described as involving 3 basic steps: 1) bringing attention to an "attentional anchor" such as breathing; 2) noting that distraction occurs and letting go of the distraction; and, 3) refocusing back to the "attentional anchor".

This sequence is repeated many times during the course of each meditative session. As the individual becomes better able to maintain focus on the attentional anchor, the notion of "paying attention to attention" is introduced and individuals are encouraged to bring their attention to the present moment frequently during the course of the day.

By directing one's attention to the process of paying attention, to noticing notice when one becomes distracted, and to refocusing attention when distraction occurs, mindfulness meditation training can be thought of as an "attention training" program. As such, examining the impact of such training on individuals with ADHD becomes a very interesting question to pursue.

The Results of the study?

Seventy-eight percent of participants (25 of 33) completed the study. On average, participants attended 7 of the 8 weekly training sessions. Adults reported an average of 90 minutes and 4.6 sessions per week of at-home meditation practice; adolescents averaged 43 minutes and 4 sessions of weekly at-home practice. Both adolescents and adults who completed the program reported high levels of satisfaction with it - average scores above 9 on a 1 to 10 satisfaction scale.

Seventy-eight percent of participants reported a reduction in total ADHD symptoms, with 30% reporting at least a 30% symptom reduction (a 30% reduction in symptoms is often used to identify clinically significant improvement in ADHD medication trials). Because the majority of participants were receiving medication treatment, for many these declines represent improvement above and beyond what benefits were already being provided by medication.

On neurocognitive test performance, significant improvements were found on the measure of attentional conflict and on several other neuropsychological tests (i.e., Stroop color-word test and Trails A and B) but not for measures of working memory.

For adults, significant reductions in depressive and anxiety symptoms were reported. Comparable reductions in these symptoms were not evident in adolescents

In short: in order to fight Attention Deficits...may it not make sense to develop the "mental muscles" to Pay Attention?

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Comments

[morenot]

I believe that add and adhd are invented pathologies created by public school administraters to place medical controls on children who are bored and uncooperative. I would prefer this as a treatment to experimental drugs that could cause any sort of disease as these children age. Unfortunately calling these centering exercizes "meditation" will raise the paranoia of religious people and keep them from being widely used.

[andvoodoo2]

So much of your comment is wrong, I don't know where to begin.

Just say "YES" to an education.

[andvoodoo2]

I have ADD. What I find interesting about this article is that it fails to address the key problem of ADD/ADHD, namely, the inability to REGULATE attention. I often hyperfocus on something and this is as great a problem as my distractability. If meditation helps, great. But, ADD/ADHD are problems with brain chemistry and can no more be meditated away than cancer or blindness can. Medications to correct brain chemistry are the greatest contribution science has made to those who struggle every day with these debilitating disorders.

[AlvaroF]

You mention a very important point: that working memory (the capacity to hold several units of information online in our mind) is one very important bottleneck for people with attention deficits. And the good news is that working memory CAN BE TRAINED, contributing to alleviate symptoms.

But you seem to assume ("ADD/ADHD are problems with brain chemistry and can no more be meditated away than cancer or blindness can") that "brain chemistry" is something that happens to us, something magical we have zero control over. Wrong way to see it. The whole concept of neuroplasticity (how the brain changes responding to experience) means the other way works too: our thoughts and actions do influence our brain chemistry.

Yes, medications are part of the solution. Also yes, there are non-medica­tion-based interventions that can help people build the brain activation patterns to better REGULATE attention. Research is still emerging, but there are already fascinating studies that deserve more attention.

[andvoodoo2]

I mentioned "working memory"? Where?
I did not say that brain chemistry is "something that happens to us, something magical we have zero control over." My education has taught me otherwise.
I readily acknowledge that ADD/ADHD can be helped by things other than medication. However, to think that true ADD/ADHD can be meditated away is to deny the very real physiological nature of the problem. Those of us with ADD/ADHD not only struggle with the disorder, we struggle with a widely-held public perception that these disorders are not real (as evidenced by comments on this blog).

[Jonahson]

How to dissipate negative energy. Can a soldier who fought in the Iraq war and carry disturbing memories back to US that will eventually wreck his life be thought to release those emotions? There is a way of course but he must task the first step to help himself.

[robmillernow]

With all due respect, if I could summon the attention and lack of hyperactivity required to meditate, then I probably wouldn't have ADHD to begin with. It's a bit of a contradiction. I can't sit still and focus on one thing for 5 minutes, let alone long enough to call it "meditation."

[manumoka]

With all due respect, transcendental meditation is very easy to learn and to practice and does not require concentration. It'sot a contradiction at all. Most of the studies in the last 40 years show psychological and physiological benefits of "meditation" were done on transcendental meditation.

[AlvaroF]

BueRaven: great point.

Yes, the few research-based mental training programs should be best seen as complements to medication, not substitutes. I am thinking about meditation, as seen above, and cognitive training approaches such as working memory training and cognitive therapy.

Now, the important difference is that, while medication does help deal with specific symptoms in the short term, those other approaches may be part of a long-term solution, in that they help build the fundamental skills needed to cope with the fundamental problem.

We are all for building the arsenal for brain health and performance!

[blueraven]

Speaking as someone with ADHD who was diagnosed as an adult, this makes sense, but only as an adjunct to therapeutic medications in many cases. I for one would have found such meditation therapy difficult to work with if I weren't on Strattera. Some might benefit without it, so I'm all in favor of adding to the arsenal of treatments for this annoying and costly disorder.