Fred Rios

William Green

Human Biology 1090

April 5, 2018

News Analysis 2: Cognitive gains from Meditation

1.) Science Daily, “Seven year follow up shows lasting cognitive gains from meditation”,

April 5, 2018, “​Anthony P. Zanesco, Brandon G. King, Katherine A. MacLean, Clifford D.

Saron.”

2.) The study that was conducted in this article is known as the Shamatha Project and is well

known by many scientists and researchers across the country. This study examined 60 people who

meditated on a regular basis to see their results after a 7 year period. After the first follow up study

researchers claimed that the examinees saw improvement in their attention, focus, and ability to

cope with stress. After 18 months people who continued to practice some form of meditation

everyday for around an hour still maintained that same kind of cognitive function over that period of

time. The most recent follow up after seven years shows that most of the patients had maintained

about the same level of cognitive behavior even compared to those patients who meditated for

longer more profound sessions.

3.) This information can show that taking just a little bit of time out of your day to clear your mind can

have some positive benefits to your cognitive health.

4.) there was no personnel mentioned that was against the study or the process. Some names like

the Dalai Lama were named supportive and in favor of this study.

5.) for this study the meditation techniques were all taught by Buddhist scholar, author, and teacher

B. Alan Wallace of the Santa Barbara Institute of Consciousness Studies. Group meditation sessions

were held here and individual ones as well for further practice as well. This project was also

endorsed by the Dalai Lama who has been very involved in this kind of work. This action may have

caused some alterations to some of the information in this study.

6.) This article didn’t really change my mind about this topic of meditation much. I like the idea of

meditation and relaxing the mind but it's just something that I don’t really see myself engaging in

much. I’ve done some readings on meditation and seen some videos on it and it is claimed that it

has many benefits in many areas of the mind and body.

7.) I honestly think this article could have been written a lot better. I feel like there was a lot of

background information that was not given and that much of the article tended to jump around to

different periods of the whole study a little drastically. I would have liked to see further and more in

depth descriptions of how and what kinds of meditation techniques were being used and more

descriptive signs of improvement in the patients and how other patients compared to each other.
 Works Cited

University of California - Davis. "Seven-year follow-up shows lasting cognitive gains from

meditation." ScienceDaily. ScienceDaily, 5 April 2018.

<www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/04/180405093257.htm>.