Memory & Relaxation Enhancement using Meditation as an Intervention: A Psychological and Physiological study

Abstract

Meditation is a practice of inner awareness. It is widely practiced around the world for mental and spiritual well-being. In the past, a lot of research has been done to observe the effect of meditation on the cognitive abilities of human beings. Through our research we are validating the fact that meditation has a positive effect on the working memory of a person. In this research, fourteen participants have been selected and are made to perform memory related psychological tasks. EEG has been recorded for the participants for their physiological assessment. These participants are then divided into 2 groups: 1) Meditators’ group, which has undergone guided meditation for 15 days and 2) Control group, which has undergone no intervention during the duration of fifteen days. Both the groups have been made to undergo the same tasks after 15 days of intervention. It has been observed that post-meditation memory task performance for meditators improved whereas it decreased for the control group. The mean memory span of DSPAN task in meditators’ group improved from 7 to 8.1428 whereas it remained same for the control group. In case of mean memory span of task CORSI in improved from 0.351 to 0.44 whereas in control group the mean memory span reduces from 0.195 to 0.11. It was observed from physiological assessment that EEG alpha band power .Also the meditators are found to be more relaxed post-meditation while performing the task. This leads to the conclusion that taking meditation as an intervention improves performance as well as relaxation.