Abstract
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.
References
Wagner U, Gais S, Haider H, et al. Sleep inspires insight. Nature, 2004, 427: 352–355
Tang Y Y, Lu Q, Geng X, et al. Short-term meditation induces white matter changes in the anterior cingulate. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA, 2010, 107: 15649–15652
Tang Y Y, Ma Y, Fan Y, et al. Central and autonomic nervous system interaction is altered by short-term meditation. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA, 2009, 106: 8865–8870
Tang Y Y, Ma Y, Wang J, et al. Short-term meditation training improves attention and self-regulation. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA, 2007, 104: 17152–17156
Slagter H A, Lutz A, Greischar L L, et al. Mental training affects distribution of limited brain resources. PLoS Biol, 2007, 5: e138
Lutz A, Slagter H A, Rawlings N B, et al. Mental training enhances attentional stability: neural and behavioral evidence. J Neurosci, 2009, 29: 13418–13427
Lutz A, Slagter H A, Dunne J D, et al. Attention regulation and monitoring in meditation. Trends Cogn Sci, 2008, 12: 163–169
Weisberg R W. Prolegomena to theories of insight in problem solving: A taxonomy of problems. In: Sternberg R J, Davidson J E, eds. The Psychology of Problem Solving. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995. 157–196
Luo F, Luo J, Wu Y B, et al. Psychosomatic recovery by relaxing and rebuilding the brain: Possible application in post traumatic psychological recovery (in Chinese). Adv Psychol Sci, 2009, 17: 594–601
Takahashi T, Murata T, Hamada T, et al. Changes in EEG and autonomic nervous activity during meditation and their association with personality traits. Int J Psychophysiol, 2005, 55: 199–207
Murata T, Takahashi T, Hamada T, et al. Individual trait anxiety levels characterizing the properties of Zen meditation. Neuropsychobiology, 2004, 50: 189–194
Kubota Y, Sato W, Toichi M, et al. Frontal midline theta rhythm is correlated with cardiac autonomic activities during the performance of an attention demanding meditation procedure. Brain Res Cogn Brain Res, 2001, 11: 281–287
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding authors
Additional information
This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com
Rights and permissions
Open Access This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0), which permits any noncommercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and source are credited.
About this article
Cite this article
Ren, J., Huang, Z., Luo, J. et al. Meditation promotes insightful problem-solving by keeping people in a mindful and alert conscious state. Sci. China Life Sci. 54, 961–965 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11427-011-4233-3
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11427-011-4233-3
Keywords
- meditation
- insight
- problem solving