The Effect Of Focused Attention Meditation On Attention Network Of Individuals With High And Low Trait Anxiety

Meditation refers to a kind of training form in which the individual maintains a neutral and non judgmental attitude and adjusts the body and mind to improve the individual's psychological ability.It includes two categories: focused attention mediation and open monitoring mediation.At present,many researches have confirmed that meditation can improve the ability of attention.However,previous researches often regard the attention system as a whole,and some researchers have explored the influence of meditation on three attention networks: orientation,alertness and executive control.However,due to the differences in the type and the duration of meditation,as well as the characteristics of individual,the research results are not completely consistent.In view of this,this study consists of three parts.The first part explores the differences and electrophysiological mechanisms of the attention networks of individuals with high and low trait anxiety.The second part studies the effects of single focused attention meditation on the attention networks of individuals with high and low trait anxiety.The third part,based on the second part,studies the effects of different periods of focused attention meditation on the attention networks of individuals with trait anxiety.The purpose of this study is to explore the effect of the duration of focused attention meditation.The first study explored the neurophysiological mechanism of high and low trait anxiety individuals on attention network.In this study,60 subjects were recruited,including 28 high trait anxiety individuals(those whose trait anxiety score is higher than 44 points),32 low trait anxiety individuals(those whose trait anxiety score is lower than 34 points).Taking the pictures of Chinese emotional faces as emotional materials and the attention network task based on emotional cues as experimental task,the differences of alertness ability,orientation ability and executive control function of individuals with high and low trait anxiety and their electrophysiological mechanism were investigated.During the experiment,we collected 10 minutes of open eye resting EEG,then complete the attention network function test of emotional cues,and collected ERP data in the process of task.The behavioral results showed that in the low trait anxiety group,the response time of sad face was significantly shorter than that of other emotional faces in the three flank types,while in the high trait anxiety group,there was no significant difference among the emotional valence conditions in the different flank types.The reaction time of anger valence was significantly longer than that of the other three valence.As far as attention network efficiency is concerned,only executive control network efficiency shows the main effect in emotional valence condition,while executive control network efficiency in angry emotion condition is significantly lower than other three emotional valence.ERP results show that high trait anxiety individuals induce larger N1 component when facing angry faces,while low trait anxiety individuals induce larger P3 component when facing angry faces,which indicates that in the early stage,high trait anxiety individuals occupy more attention resources from bottom to top,and then produce attention bias to high threat stimuli Individuals with low trait anxiety can inhibit the response to unrelated stimuli and have stronger executive control function.The second study explored the difference of the effect of single focused attention meditation on the attention network of individuals with high and low trait anxiety.The subjects in this study are the same as that in Study 1.After completing the task of study 1,the subjects received 25 minutes breathing meditation training,and then complete the attention network task based on emotional cues.The results showed that the response time of subjects decreased and the accuracy increased.In terms of attention network efficiency,the two groups showed significant time main effect.The orientation,alertness and executive control network efficiency of the two groups were significantly improved after focus attention meditation.The results of ERP showed that the average amplitude of P3 a component in low trait anxiety group was significantly smaller than that of baseline after meditation training,which indicated that low trait anxiety individuals could reduce the influence of bottom-up stimulation driving system and avoid the distraction caused by irrelevant stimulation,while we did not find this effect in high trait anxiety group;in the late stage of attention,we found the main effect of intervention time.The amplitude of P3 b component in trait anxiety group increased significantly,which indicated that the individual's executive control ability from top to bottom increased significantly after focused meditation intervention.In the third study,we investigated the effect of different duration of focused attention meditation on the attention networks of trait anxiety individuals.In this study,52 subjects with high trait anxiety were randomly divided into two groups: one group was given 6-day focused meditation training,the other group was given 6-day sit-down training.The behavioral results showed that the main effect of time was significant,and the response time decreased gradually with the length of intervention increasing,and the interaction between time and flank type was significant.With the increase of intervention times,the response time decreased significantly under each flank type.As far as attention network is concerned,single intervention can improve the efficiency of individual directed network,and there is no significant difference between the efficiency of directed network of single and multiple meditations,and there is no significant difference between alert network and executive control network.ERP results showed that in the early stage of attention,there were interaction between groups,time and electrode points in N2 composition.In the experimental group,there was no significant difference in N2 composition at three time points,but the trend of N2 in three time points was gradually increasing.In the control group,N2 increased significantly in the middle time point,and then decreased significantly in the last time piont.P3 b also showed the same trend.Among them,the relationship between N2 and P3 b is synergistic,which shows that with the increase of intervention time,the ability of individual executive control and resource allocation gradually increases.