Lecture 5 - Meditation and Memory

cognition

the mental process of acquiring and understanding info through thought, experience and senses, very general definition, most things fall under it, memory is its own thing but under the umbrella of cognition, includes processes like attention, and memory but also perception, decision making and problem solving, it can be tested many ways and studied by the larger field of cognitive psych

memory

process whereby information is encoded, consolidated and retrieved, includes short term, long term and each has different properties (duration/capacity)

multiple memory store model

most common model, there isn’t just one store but there are multiple forms and each one has its own processes, some might be influence by meditation or harder to study and some might not, short term and working memory are the easiest to study cause its quick lasting around 20 seconds while long term is much harder to study but more informative because it goes over a longer period of time but attrition rate is higher

short term memory/STM

mental sketchpad where information is kept briefly, capacity is limited as it sonly 20 seconds and information here is lost unless it is emotionally salient and/or mentally rehearsed

STM capacity

can be tested using the digit span task, digit span is the longest string of digits you can remember without error, usually + or - 7 digits is the max length , people with higher intelligence have higher digit span and memory capacity

limitations of STM

multitasking is hard to explain, if we had a single store, we would expect poor performance when two tasks are performed together, a single store is divided up into two ways which means less resources and more interference, however we can perform certain tasks simultaneously without problems like reasoning and holding digits, these issues lead to the proposal of working memory which incorporates several stores

working memory

several processes working together, includes the visuospatial sketchpad, phonological loop ad central executive, this type of memory involves manipulating information

digit symbol task (WM test)

pairing of numbers and symbols, one goes with the bidirectional horizontal arrow and the other with the vertical one, given a series of number and give the associated symbols you learned in the training phase (not always accuracy were looking at, differences will be in completion time)

N back (WM test)

 main memory tests being used, given a series of characters and told to respond under certain conditions, have to remember what was shown before to respond correctly (can be one character before, 2 characters before, etc), the more characters you have to remember the harder it gets

operation span (WM test)

given math equations to verify as true or false, then given a letter and another equation to verify, etc (doing equations while trying to remember letters at the same time, form of multi tasking), count the number of unrelated words that can be remembered (temporary storage) while simultaneously carrying out a math task (active processing)

operation span scores aging

reaction time is one of the first things to go with age, completion time gets slower with age, see it in sports and video games, usually much younger ppl cause it requires speed in processing time, reaction time is a predictor of things like cognitive abilities and risk of dementia

long term memory

stores of info you would have for minutes, hours, days, weeks, etc, it loses detail over time and can be reinforced by repetition

types of long term memory

declarative memory (episodic and semantic) and nondeclarative memory (procedural)

declarative memory

correlated with performance measures (includes episodic and semantic), when you’re being tested on an exam in uni, you’re recalling material you learned days (ideally weeks) before, exams are considered tests of declarative LTM, better LTM would likely mean better academic performance if the tests are memory dependent, interestingly school performance has been correlated with trait mindfulness

episodic LTM

memories from your perspective where you’re the agent

semantic memory

general info that everyone knows

nondeclarative memory

procedural, things you should know that you can show by doing (independent of the HPC, includes priming and conditioning)

role of the HPC

centrally involved in memory consolidation, spatially guided behavior and emotion, it is termed the gateway to declarative memory, different roles of the hippocampus in memory have been proposed over time, patient HM study correlated with this

patient HM

has seizures that he could not control, removed the HPC and caused him to have anterograde amnesia for declarative memory but seizures stopped, this means his episodic and semantic memory was impaired

what pressures is memory subject to?

motivation for the task, attention, stress level, affect (anxiety, depression), traumatic brain injury, schizophrenia, neurodegenerative disease and aging

meditation, memory and cognition

found that LTM mindfulness meditation is associated with more trait mindfulness, lower state anxiety and increased memory vividness and specificity (doesn’t generalize necessarily but its an interesting result), even short meditation programs can improve WMM in healthy ppl, verbal fluency and digit symbol modality task, meditation improves stroop performance and recognition memory, bizarre effects cause controls actually get worse overtime in comparison to meditation groups that go up overtime, changes in sleep and mood (particularly depression) occur

meditation effect on GRE scores

GRE is the graduate record examination and found that practicing mediation was associated with higher verbal BRE scores, included an active control condition where such differences are observed

TUTs

intrusive, task unrelated thoughts that may affect our ability to perform, they tend to increase during negative affective states and may impair memory and attention, meditation may allow for better filtering of these irrelevant thoughts, thereby reducing interference and improving performance, meditation has been found to reduce TUTs

what about other groups?

results shown so far come from studies of uni students and older adults, this is because adults are easier to study but kids holds more challenges in learning or those with neurodivergent disorders that complicates learning + testing in schools, it is important to consider whether other age groups are also affected, pre lim data suggests that short meditation programs enhance WM slightly in adolescents, effects on memory do appear to generalize to other age groups even though they’re modest

motor memory

acquired when we learn motor skills, it is a form of non declarative STM, initial studies on transcendental meditation and motor learning were negative but recent studies with mindfulness meditation have shown mild benefits,

meditation and job performance

hard to study, few studies have measured effects of meditation on objective work performance, in a large survey, meditation was positively related to work engagement, work satisfaction and self reported work performance (subjective measures)

meta analysis

allows us to have a broader understanding of the literature not just selecting/pin pointing what we want to hear/confirmation bias, they have found mixed results and small effects are typical, largest and most consistent effect appears to be on subjective cognitive functioning

yerkes dodson relationship

not an empirically supported truth, look at arousal and stress/anxiety on the X axis, on the Y axis you have performance, when arousal is moderate, performance is best for difficult tasks, when arousal is extremely high, performance is low because you are super anxious

meditation affect on stress

extreme stress causes excessive glucocorticoids which causes memory impairment, meditation would cause glucocorticoids to be more moderate lowering them so you get normal memory, the active control group who receives no meditation performance when down overtime due to stress or other cumulative effects while the mindfulness meditation group it went up overtime, this was pretty stable so not really an enhancement effect but more so stable progression

meditation, stress and the military

meditation may increase stress resiliency, potentially preserving psychological functions like memory while under stress, such an effect may be particularly important especially certain groups such as the military

meditation and the military (study)

there was a control group, low meditation practice group and a high practice group, they looked at controls and low groups showing a decline, in the high group, practice time was correlated with operation span

PANAS

positive affect negative affect schedule, this was a test for affect used in the meditation and the military study, lower negative affect was correlated with a higher operation span score

SART

task for measuring attention

WMDA

task for measuring working memory

CFQ

task for self reporting cognitive failures

surgical residents study

report showed that modified MBSR enhanced well being, executive function and working memory capacity in surgical residents, this study was well designed as they had an active control group

mechanisms of meditation in improving memory

improved mood by reducing anxiety and depression, reduced stress induced impairments, improved attention and reduced mind wandering (task-unrelated thoughts) and improved sleep, all of these are associated with changes in the brain

dorsolateral prefrontal cortex

activity in this brain region is associated with memory, contains cells that fire during memory tasks, direct stimulation may improve memory performance and altered structure is associated with impaired WM, this is activated by meditation and possibly changed by it

hippocampus and meditation

meditations is associated with increased HPC size and reduced age dependent degeneration of the HPC’ changes in it may contribute to meditation’s effects on memory, anxiety and psychological well being

limitations of meditation + memory studies

awareness of treatment may affect your response to it, meditation benefits may also not be additive with other lifestyle approaches like exercise, cognitive training may be just as good, many studies report no effects or even perceived impairments which has possible effects to meditation

false memories

recollection of an event that did not happen, concern that meditation is associated with creating them, they can be implanted in a person via suggestions (intentional or not, therapy/interviews), meditation may increase false memory susceptibility

deese-roediger-mcdermott (DRM) test

in this assay a subject is first exposed to a word list (termed study list), later the subject is present with a second list (test list) and asked to identify words seen before, some items on the test list are similar but not present on the study list (lure words)

lure words (DRM test)

placed there to trick you, a good memory would be able to distinguish the lures from the study list, many studies have suggested false memories might increase in meditation

mindfulness and implicit learning

trait mindfulness has been associated with reduced learning (non-declarative memory), this concept is concerning as it suggests meditation could have negative effects but unfortunately received little attention