Memory
Memory is defined as a series of processes that encode sensory information, store it, and retrieve it. There are several types of memory, but the most common types discussed include working memory, procedural memory, semantic memory, and episodic memory.
Effects of Meditation on Memory
Meditation was found to decrease mind wandering, which resulted in the improvement of working memory capacity and overall cognitive performance (Mrazek, Franklin, Phillips, Baird, & Schooler, 2013). Cerebral blood flow, verbal fluency, and logic memory improved in patients with memory loss after 8 weeks of meditation training (Newberg, Wintering, Khalsa, Roggenkamp, & Waldman, 2010). Because of the increases of cerebral blood flow and work memory performance associated with meditation, it is considered that meditation should be used to treat people with disorders that are associated with impaired working memory, such as posttraumatic stress disorder or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (Newberg, Serruya, et al., 2014).
Even with as little as 4 days of meditation, working memory, executive functioning, and visuo-spatial processing improvements were noted (Zeidan, Johnson, Diamond, David, & Goolkasian, 2010). As little as a few hours of practice was associated with increased myelin and improved connectivity (Posner, Tang, & Lynch, 2014).
In forensic psychology, it is known that witness memories are unreliable, but they are still admissible as evidence in court. The use of focused breathing meditation was found to improve recall and decrease false positive memories in contrast to traditional forensic hypnosis techniques (Wagstaff, Brunas‐Wagstaff, Cole, & Wheatcroft, 2004).
It is believed that meditation affects memory because it is correlated with the activity in the hippocampus, which is associated with storage and consolidation of memories (Engström, Pihlsgård, Lundberg, & Söderfeldt, 2010). It is also suggested that meditation improves information quality by reducing encoding noise, which improved memory retention and recall (van Vugt & Jha, 2011).
General Effects of Meditation
Although several interventions can be used to improve memory, meditation was also the only intervention associated with reduced fatigue, anxiety, improved mood, and several positive changes in addition to memory improvement (Zeidan et al., 2010). All of those changes were correlated with improved cerebral blood flow, which has been associated with meditation (Moss et al., 2012). Positive effects of meditation on the autonomous nervous system and the immune system were also recorded (Luders et al., 2013).
References
Engström, M., Pihlsgård, J., Lundberg, P., & Söderfeldt, B. (2010). Functional magnetic resonance imaging of hippocampal activation during silent mantra meditation. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 16(12), 1253-1258.
Luders, E., Thompson, P. M., Kurth, F., Hong, J. Y., Phillips, O. R., Wang, Y., & Toga, A. W. (2013). Global and regional alterations of hippocampal anatomy in long‐term meditation practitioners. Human Brain Mapping, 34(12), 3369-3375.
Moss, A. S., Wintering, N., Roggenkamp, H., Khalsa, D. S., Waldman, M. R., Monti, D., & Newberg, A. B. (2012). Effects of an 8-week meditation program on mood and anxiety in patients with memory loss. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 18(1), 48-53.
Newberg, A. B., Serruya, M., Wintering, N., Moss, A. S., Reibel, D., & Monti, D. A. (2014). Meditation and neurodegenerative diseases. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1307(1), 112-123.
Newberg, A. B., Wintering, N., Khalsa, D. S., Roggenkamp, H., & Waldman, M. R. (2010). Meditation effects on cognitive function and cerebral blood flow in subjects with memory loss: A preliminary study. Journal of Alzheimer's Disease, 20(2), 517-526.
Posner, M., Tang, Y., & Lynch, G. (2014). Mechanisms of white matter change induced by meditation training. Name: Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 1220. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01220
van Vugt, M. K., & Jha, A. P. (2011). Investigating the impact of mindfulness meditation training on working memory: A mathematical modeling approach. Cognitive, Affective, & Behavioral Neuroscience, 11(3), 344-353.
Wagstaff, G., Brunas‐Wagstaff, J., Cole, J., & Wheatcroft, J. (2004). New directions in forensic hypnosis: Facilitating memory with a focused meditation technique. Contemporary Hypnosis, 21(1), 14-27.
Zeidan, F., Johnson, S. K., Diamond, B. J., David, Z., & Goolkasian, P. (2010). Mindfulness meditation improves cognition: Evidence of brief mental training. Consciousness and Cognition, 19(2), 597-605.
