Meditation promotes insightful problem-solving by keeping people in amindful and alert conscious state  

作　　者：REN Jun HUANG ZhiHui LUO Jing WEI GaoXia YING XiaoPing DING ZhiGuang WU YiBin LUO Fei 

机构地区：[1]College of Education, Zhejiang Normal University, Jinhua 321004, China [2]Key Laboratory of Mental Health, Ch-inese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100101, China [3]Institute of Sociology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing i00026, China [4]Department of Social Sciences, Hebei Medical University, Shijiazhuang 050015, China [5]Beijing Easy Monitor Technology Co., Ltd., Beijing 100101, China

出　　处：《Science China(Life Sciences)》2011年第10期961-965,共5页中国科学（生命科学英文版）

基　　金：supported by the Education Program of the National Social Science Foundation of China (Grant No.BBA100016);the National Basic Research Program of China (Grant No.2010CB833904);the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos.30970890 and 30770708);the National High Technology Research and Development Program of China (Grant No.2008AA022604)

摘　　要：Although previous studies have shown that sleep can inspire insight,it is still unclear whether meditation can promote insight.Meditation differs from other types of passive rest such as relaxation and sleep because it requires full consciousness andmindfulness of targets such as one's breathing.Forty-eight university students without meditation experience were recruited to learn a simple meditation technique.They were given a list of 10 insight problems to solve (the pre-test session).In this study,we focused on the unsolved problems and examined if they could be successfully solved after a 20min rest interval with or without meditation.Results showed that relative to the control group that listened to Chinese or English words and made a language judgment,the groups who learned meditation successfully solved significantly more failed problems from the pre-test session,providing direct evidence for the role of meditation in promoting insight.Further analysis showed that maintaining amindful and alert state during meditation (raising a hand to report every 10 deep breaths compared to every 100 deep breaths) resulted in more insight regarding the failed items from the pre-test session.This implies that it was watchfulness in meditation,rather than relaxation,that actually contributed to insight.Consistently,in the meditation session or control task,the percentage of alpha waves—a brain index of mental relaxation—was negatively correlated with insight.These results suggest a meditation-based insight-promoting mechanism different from that involved in passive rest such as relaxation and sleep.Although previous studies have shown that sleep can inspire insight, it is still unclear whether meditation can promote insight. Meditation differs from other types of passive rest such as relaxation and sleep because it requires full consciousness and mindfulness of targets such as one＇s breathing. Forty-eight university students without meditation experience were recruited to learn a simple meditation technique. They were given a list of 10 insight problems to solve （the pre-test session）. In this study, we focused on the unsolved problems and examined if they could be successfully solved after a 20 min rest interval with or without meditation. Results showed that relative to the control group that listened to Chinese or English words and made a language judgment, the groups who learned meditation successfully solved significantly more failed problems from the pre-test session, providing direct evidence for the role of meditation in promoting insight. Further analysis showed that maintaining a mindful and alert state during meditation （raising a hand to report every 10 deep breaths compared to every 100 deep breaths） resulted in more insight regarding the failed items from the pre-test session. This implies that it was watchfulness in meditation, rather than relaxation, that actually contributed to insight. Consistently, in the meditation session or control task, the percentage of alpha waves-a brain index of mental relaxation--was negatively correlated with insight. These results suggest a meditation-based insight-promoting mechanism different from that involved in passive rest such as relaxation and sleep.

关 键 词：MEDITATION INSIGHT problem solving 

分 类 号：TS974.1[轻工技术与工程] P315.5[天文地球—地震学]