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10 minutes a day: How much mindfulness meditation do we need? (#51)

Peter Malinowski

Background

Mindfulness-based programmes are common, popular, and often effective. When people start engaging with mindfulness meditation, they frequently ask how much meditation will be required. Similarly, mindfulness practitioners would benefit from knowing the minimum or right dosage of meditation. Until now, a paucity of empirical evidence did not allow answering this question. This situation is beginning to change with first attempts at addressing the question into the ‘right’ dosage of meditation. 

So far, these studies are heterogeneous, ranging from assessing single session mindfulness inductions to analysing the effects of complex mindfulness-based programmes with different levels of intensity. The picture is further complicated by the broad range of meaningful outcome measures, for example reductions in symptoms of mental health issues, improvement in positive mental health such as subjective wellbeing or life satisfaction, but also enhancement of cognitive functions. In addition, a plethora of psychophysiological and neural markers are utilised to demonstrate the effects of mindfulness meditation.

Aims

We aimed to shed light on the question whether the daily 10-minute practice of one particular type of meditation, namely mindful breath-awareness training (M-BAT), can improve meta-cognitive processes.

Method

In a series of five randomised controlled studies, we investigated whether practicing M-BAT for ten minutes a day for three to sixteen weeks influences cognitive functions and/or associated neural mechanisms, using well-established meta-cognitive tests (e.g. Stroop, Go/No-Go, Continuous Performance Task, Multiple Object Tracking Task) and measuring key event-related potential (ERP) components of the EEG. 

Results

We found significant meditation-specific improvements in meta-cognitive functions in the meditation groups but not in the control groups. These changes were also reflected in ERP components (such as N2, P3, error-related negativity).

Conclusion

Meta-cognitive functions can improve after a low dosage of 10 minutes M-BAT per day. While these results are promising and contribute to answering the dosage question, they only offer a glimpse of the complex picture, and many other angles and details still await empirical scrutiny.

  1. Pozuelos, J. P., Mead, B., R., Rueda, M. R., & Malinowski, P. (2019). Short-term mindful breath awareness training improves inhibitory control and response monitoring. Progress in Brain Research, 244, 137-163. https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.pbr.2018.10.019
  2. Schöne, B., Gruber, T., Graetz, S., Bernhof, M., & Malinowski, P. (2018). Mindful breath awareness meditation facilitates efficiency gains in brain networks: A steady-state visually evoked potentials study. Scientific Reports, 8(1), 13687. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-018-32046-5
  3. Malinowski, P., Moore, A. W., Mead, B. R. & Gruber, T. (2017). Mindful Aging: The effects of regular brief mindfulness practice on electrophysiological markers of cognitive and affective processing in older adults. Mindfulness, 8(1), 78-94. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-015-0482-8
  4. Moore, A.W., Gruber T., Derose, J. & Malinowski, P. (2012). Regular, brief mindfulness meditation practice improves electrophysiological markers of attentional control. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 6, 18. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2012.00018
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