10 to 12 hours a day

Davidson and his colleagues studied Vipassana—a 2,500-year-old art form, the oldest of Buddhist meditation practices, which aims to reduce mental distraction and enhance sensory alertness. Davidson has been practicing Vipassana and other forms of Buddhist meditation for over 30 years.

“This is not the only form of meditation we are interested in, but it is widely practiced and can be used in different countries,” Davidson emphasizes.

Researchers studied 17 volunteers before and after three months of intensive Vipassana training. They meditated for 10 to 12 hours a day. In comparison, 23 novices attended an hour-long meditation class and then practiced for 20 minutes a day for a week.

Participants were asked to identify numbers displayed on a monitor screen among random strings of letters. Their brain activity was recorded using electrodes placed on their heads.

Davidson and his team found that the brains of volunteers who underwent intensive training took significantly less time to notice details than before. Meditation also helped them notice the second image in the experiment described earlier. Novices showed no similar improvement. The study results were published online May 8 in the journal PLoS Biology.