Meditation was the only intervention that immediately led to superior performance. As for the other pick-me-up strategies…. Caffeine helped a little.

Exercise was unpredictable. So, if your goal in napping was to recharge your batteries quickly and get back to work, you might feel that the cure is worse than the disease.

Meditation, on the other hand, leaves you instantly recharged and refreshed. Previous studies have reported that regular meditators seem to need less sleep, suggesting that, in terms of attention, meditation may serve the same function as sleep. But you may find that, in the short term, Sahaja meditation is more effective than sleep at boosting alertness and attention span.

Meditation Increases Alertness and Attention Span, Even for Boring Tasks. As for the other pick-me-up strategies… Caffeine helped a little.

The results were presented at a recent conference of the Society for Neuroscience in James, William. Psychology: Briefer Course. Harper Torchbooks, MacLean, K. Cognitive Bias Modification: Past Perspectives, Current Findings, and Future Applications. Investigation of the different attentional networks in schizophrenia and the modulation of their effects on each other are of crucial importance.

On the one hand, the interactions of attentional networks occur constantly in everyday life, suggesting that deficits would have a wide impact.

On the other hand, disentangling specific deficits in schizophrenia could provide the basis for new cognitive remediation techniques to enhance the attentional abilities of patients with schizophrenia.

Gooding et al. They showed that both patients with schizophrenia and controls were most efficient in resolving conflict when they were alerted and when their orientation was towards the attended spatial position.

Neither Gooding et al. In Gooding et al. Fan et al. The authors manipulated the length of the cue-target interval and cue validity with a no cue, spatial cue and temporal cue condition and found that orienting to the target location before the alerting stimulus enhanced target processing and reduced conflict.

Nevertheless, Gooding et al. This modified task could, thus, reduce the heterogeneity of the results found in schizophrenia using the original ANT paradigm and highlight the influence of the orienting network on executive control in patients with schizophrenia.

ANT and its modified version are supposed to explore attention interactions between alerting, orienting and executive control in a relatively independent way. This notion might be modulated, since it was found "that there was some lack of independence among the networks in both tests [ 36 ]".

Moreover, cued paradigms including mixed block design such as the ANT task not only induced processes of activation in generating an alerting effect for example but also proactive response inhibition processes [ 38 ].

The purpose of our study is to explore 1 whether orienting, alerting, or executive control are altered in patients with schizophrenia, 2 how the three networks interact in patients, Both groups of participants were strictly matched for age, sex and IQ level to minimize the differences that might exist in general aptitudes.

In line with the majority of studies, we expected executive control of attention to be impaired in patients, but due to our strict matching this difference could not be found, whereas impairment in alerting or orienting could be evidenced. Therefore, we administered for the first time the Callejas' version of ANT [ 32 ] to stable outpatients with schizophrenia and healthy controls.

Characteristics of the participants are summarized in table 1. Twenty-one outpatients with chronic schizophrenia SZ , and 21 healthy controls C 15 males in both SZ and C participated in the study. Study procedures were described before participants decided to take part in the study and signed their written informed consent.

SZ and C received 30 Euros for their participation. Study procedures were approved by the local Ethical Committee CCPPRB- Pitié-Salpétriére Hospital, Paris. Participants were not instructed to restrain their cigarette consumption before the assessment.

However, they were not allowed to smoke during the session test. For all subjects, exclusion criteria were: a patent neurological disease, a history of head trauma, substance abuse or dependence.

All participants were assessed with the Diagnostic interview for Genetic Studies, DIGS-III [ 39 ], the NSS neurological soft signs scale [ 40 ], and the WAIS-R [ 41 ].

SZ DSM-IV criteria [ 42 ] were recruited from the Ambulatory Center of the Parisian 15th arrondissement and the University Department of Psychiatry at Sainte-Anne Hospital, Paris, France. Mean duration of the disease was 9 ± 6 years. Clinical evaluations were conducted with the PANSS Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale, [ 43 ].

No other medication was allowed. C were recruited from our Clinical Research Center, excluding members of the department, subjects that had ever had a DSM-IV axis one disorder, and subjects with a family history of a psychiatric disorder up to the 2nd degree.

None of C had ever received any psychotropic medication. Sequence of events appearing on each trial in the modified version of ANT experiment. Part A shows the actual sequence of events during the ANT task in our study. Part B shows examples of the target display in the congruent and incongruent condition.

Stimuli: The stimulus used for the orienting signal was an asterisk presented at the same location as the target 2. For the alerting signal, a Hz and 50 ms sound was used. Lastly, the target display was made up by a target arrow that could point either to the left or to the right and four flankers that could be just plain black lines or arrows pointing either left or right.

The length of the arrows was 0. Description of the task: In half of the trials, 50 ms before the target an auditory alerting signal was presented fig1. After another 50 ms ISI the target and flankers were presented either at the same or the opposite location than the previous orienting signal for ms, or until the participant gave a response.

Then the fixation point that had been presented during the whole trial was kept for a variable duration dependent on the duration of the initial fixation point and on the reaction time of the subject so that every trial was same duration ms.

No screen was presented between trials. Consequently, participants did not know when a trial had finished and the next one was to begin providing uncertainty about the appearance of the signals and increasing their informative value.

Programming and presentation of stimuli was performed with an Intel-Pentium-4 computer with a 17" color screen monitor running E-Prime software. Participants were seated 53 cm in front of the computer screen and instructed to respond to the target stimulus direction of the central arrow , by pressing one of two possible keyboard keys using their right or left index finger, depending on the side of the answer.

Feedback regarding accuracy was given during practice trials but not during experimental trials. Altogether, there were 12 different conditions see Figure 1.

The practice block 24 trials proceeded the six experimental blocks of 48 trials each. The whole task included 24 trials per condition with a pseudo-random presentation within each block.

Overall, the duration of the experiment took nearly 20 minutes; patients had a pause between each block and decided to start the next block by pressing the space bar. Trials with RTs longer than ms were eliminated and the ratio for incorrect responses in each trial was reported.

Effect size was evaluated with eta 2 proportion of the total variance that attributed to an effect. Different indexes were established: an alerting effect RT difference between the alerting cue and no alerting cue conditions , an orienting effect RT difference between the valid and invalid conditions and a conflict effect RT difference between the congruent and incongruent conditions 33 ; In each group, one way ANOVAs were used for comparison regarding gender and smoking on these indexes.

Pearson correlation coefficients were used to explore associations between clinical, IQ, and index variables. In order to illustrate more precisely the link between symptoms, IQ and performance we examined very contrasted groups for clinical symptoms and IQ, subdividing the SZ group into two categories high vs.

low score for PANSS and IQ, cut-off: 3 rd quartile of the distribution , and we calculated the means of the effect in each category.

There were more men than women in SZ and C. However, there was no significant difference between SZ and C for sex ratio, age, years of study, or IQ see table 1.

RTs exceeding ms were very few 0. The main effects for the three attentional systems were significant. SZ were Partial ANOVAs were conducted to disentangle the four-way interaction.

comparison of reaction times between patients and controls in incongruent valid conditions in the absence or presence of an auditory alerting signal. Deviations are indicated by use of median absolute deviation. The orienting effect was higher in incongruent than in congruent conditions.

In other words, when participants are not spatially oriented, accuracy is worse for the incongruent trials. No group effects were found Figure 2.

In accordance with our assumption that the ANT version of Callejas et al. In line with studies using the ANT [ 27 — 29 , 31 ], SZ were slower than C. In our study, the reported effects were independent of this general slowing, and remained significant even when we used proportional RT as a dependent variable in a supplementary analysis median RT per condition divided by overall median RT, data not shown.

Chronic stabilized outpatients showed a greater alerting effect using this version of ANT than C. Previous studies with ANT have not reported this result and indeed have found unchanged [ 27 , 28 , 31 ] or reduced alerting efficiency [ 29 ]. This could be due to differences in the modality of the alerting stimulus.

In Callejas et al. In contrast, alerting and orienting cues are ipsimodal visual in prior ANT versions. SZ were slower than C in all no-tone conditions, suggesting that their reactivity was relatively decreased. The sound cue seemed to enhance alertness in patients but their overall RTs remained longer than those seen in C.

In healthy subjects, Frassinetti et al. Recently, Noesselt et al. They found that a crossmodal visuo-auditory cue significantly enhances detection ability, as if this enhancement increases the salience of the visual event.

Our results show that patients are sensitive to this increase in target salience, helping them to reduce their RTs. Ishigami and Klein [ 36 ] suggested that the auditory modality of the Callejas' ANT version [ 33 , 34 ] might generate alertness more automatically than the visual modality of the ANT could do.

The more automatic alert state induced in this task could help patients more efficiently, opening fruitful ways to enhance performance in schizophrenia that could be used in cognitive remediation techniques.

Our results clearly demonstrate a greater sensitivity in patients to auditory alerting stimuli compared to controls. However, although reaction times when alerted provided a substantial positive effect in patients, it was not enough for them to reach the performance of healthy subjects.

In other words, even if patients improved their alertness ability with the tone, they still showed lower reaction times in every condition with an auditory cue. Nestor et al. These results together with our findings may demonstrate a failure of alertness in schizophrenia.

Recently, in an experimental study concerning the induction of a psychotic-like state in healthy subjects, Daumann et al. Thiel and Fink, [ 47 ] provided evidence in healthy subjects for modality specific correlates of visual and auditory alertness in posterior parietal and frontal brain areas.

However, a supramodal region, the right superior temporal gyrus, was commonly involved in visual and auditory alertness. This brain region is involved in the behavioural relevance of warning cues [ 48 ], and "its activation is capable of breaking ongoing activity and optimizing responses to following target s " [ 47 ].

Abnormal superior temporal gyrus volumes have been found in schizophrenia [ 49 ]. Nevertheless, our attempt to superimpose analyses of the effect of valid or invalid trials, or congruent or incongruent trials provided comparable orienting or conflict effects in SZ and controls.

This result contradicts those studies that suggest an executive control deficit [ 27 , 28 , 30 , 31 ]. Chronicity, hospitalization, non-stabilization, IQ, and educational level could be confounding factors. In our study, patients and controls were strictly matched in years of education and IQ.

Neuropsychological studies comparing schizophrenic patients and controls most often reported less educational achievement in patients, reflecting the impact of the disease [ 27 ]. The strict comparison of attentional performance by equalizing the confounding IQ and education features is an original aspect of our study.

It provides a more stringent comparison of the three attentional networks, highlighting the power of the difference found in the alerting network.

It can also explain the absence of an executive control deficit found in our patients, by a possible underestimation of the neuropsychological differences between patients and controls. In our study educational level was negatively correlated with the conflict effect in controls.

Moreover, we found convergent arguments supporting the relationship between IQ and executive control: 1 In SZ the conflict effect in the no-tone condition was negatively correlated with WAIS-R performance. Lastly, we found an interaction between alerting and orienting in SZ, especially for the incongruent condition.

In incongruent trials, in the valid orientation condition, when there is no auditory alerting signal, SZ benefited less than controls from the valid orientation; this tendency being reversed with the presence of the auditory alerting cue.

In controls, in contrast, the absence or presence of a valid cue has an equivalent effect whatever the presence of an auditory alerting signal. One should ask whether the effect of a valid spatial cue was reduced in patients owing to the presence of invalid trials. The auditory alerting cue would then compensate for this decreased validity effect.

This last point brings confirmation to the facts that 1 the addition of invalid trials is a main change relative to previous studies 2 This study was aimed at clarifying interactions between the orienting and alerting network.

If we consider the accuracy analyses, it seems that in both groups invalid and incongruent conditions led to the worst performance. Thus, in patients, the adjunction of a correct orientation and a warning tone enhanced their ability especially in difficult conditions e.

g with incongruent stimuli. This finding is in line with the interaction between orienting and alerting in healthy subjects observed by Fuentes et al. Patients seem to extract more benefit than controls from this adjunction of cues. This observation could bring valuable tools to enhance attention in schizophrenia, with a putative application in cognitive remediation strategies.

Regarding cognitive remediation in schizophrenia, meta-analyses have shown no direct benefit of training techniques of attention [ 50 , 51 ]. Although not improving attentional measures, these techniques could positively influence executive dimensions and optimize working memory, response speed, or visual scanning.

Accordingly, improving the capacity to solve executive conflicts by reinforcing an alert state in patients or helping them to focus their attention could possibly improve efficiency.

The results found in this study with the Callejas et al. The combination of orienting and alerting strategies in attentional tasks assessing conflict resolution could be adopted routinely in integrative programs of cognitive remediation therapy.

The results found in this study address the question of the specificity of these alterations, to determine whether the attentional processing style observed here is likely to represent an illness feature, i.

a consequence of the expression of the illness, or a measure of some of the aetiological factors of schizophrenia, e. g a cognitive marker of the disease. If the latter, this abnormality could be studied as a putative endophenotype of schizophrenia. Of course, the present design did not allow us to address this question but it would be very useful to study the performance of relatives of patients with schizophrenia.

Also, an exploration of patients with prodromal symptoms or schizotype personalities might be useful to see if early alterations of the attentional networks could represent possible stage markers of the disease. Several limitations of this work can be found.

First, the restricted sample size could limit the power of our analysis. However, the strict inclusion criteria used to select the participants in our study tend to increase the homogeneity of the two groups. Further studies are warranted using this version of the ANT with a more extended group of subjects.

Second, the participants in the two groups have high general aptitudes and levels of education. Even if this selection is mainly due to being recruited through the university, if we consider that not all patients suffering from schizophrenia exhibit these aptitudes, this could constitute a bias in the selection of the sample.

Concerning the main paradigm ANT, Macleod et al. Nevertheless, we used here a modified version of ANT more reliable than the version elaborated by Fan et al. Another possible limitation of this work lies in the exploration of the "interaction" of attentional networks.

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Alertness - What You See is What You Get. Alertness: Being Aware of What is Taking Place Around Me.

An education which should improve this faculty would be the education par excellence. But it is easier to define this ideal than to give practical directions for bringing it about.

The education par excellence that James sought was decades away. And certainly meditation was not yet considered to be a strategy for improving attention. One study found that meditation may change the brain in ways that help increase attention span for banal tasks that require us to distinguish small differences between objects MacLean, Saron, Wallace, For 30 minutes, participants intently watched a series of continually flashing lines on a computer screen, responding when a shorter line popped up.

Meditation was found to significantly improve both attention span and their ability to accurately discriminate between long and short lines. This improvement lasted for about five months, especially for those who continued to meditate every day, which suggests that the very practice of regular meditation itself can automatically train attention and continue to provide benefits long after the meditation sessions are over.

Sahaja meditation techniques, in particular, add nimbleness to our attention and deftness to our ability to control it. This happens because you practice going into the higher state of consciousness, which allows you to disengage yourself from the mental plane of thoughts and feelings.

From this higher plane of consciousness, you can clearly see them, and can even avoid them when you want to. Rather than allowing your attention to wander or be consumed by interfering thoughts and distractions, you direct it. Obviously, this skill is easier said than done.

It takes quite a bit of practice. But the good news is that, with Sahaja meditation techniques, there is a logical, clear method for mastering your attention and organizing your thoughts. We all struggle to pay attention sometimes; after lunch, for example.

Search MIT. Search websites, locations, and people. Enter keywords to search for news articles: Submit. Browse By. Breadcrumb MIT News Picower researchers ID brain mechanisms underlying alertness and attentiveness. Picower researchers ID brain mechanisms underlying alertness and attentiveness.

First demonstration that a common neurotransmitter acts via a single neuron type to enable effective information-processing. The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory. Publication Date :.

Press Inquiries. Press Contact : Najat Kessler. Email: najatk mit. Phone: The Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at MIT. Caption :. In contrast to the Detection Task, there were no associations between the spatial performances in the Landmark Task and the objective and subjective assays of alertness see Table 2.

The lack of associations stands in contrast to the findings from a previous study The authors examined Landmark Task performance in shiftworkers and reported a leftward bias with high alertness and a rightward bias with low alertness.

The objective assays of alertness were only associated with the Detection task, but not the Landmark task. The reason for this observed dissociation is not clear. It cannot be ruled out that we were underpowered to detect subtle spatial shifts in the Landmark Task.

The effect sizes for the Landmark Task and PVT assays of behavioural alertness suggests that the effects, although non-statistically significant and very small, were in the expected direction. It is also possible that the lack of association in the Landmark Task is due to the fact that the two spatial tasks tap into different underlying mechanisms.

A principal component analysis identified the Landmark and Detection tasks as distinct factors contributing to observed variances in spatial tasks They also differ in their cognitive processing demands with one task being a simple detection task and the other task requiring a judgment on spatial properties.

However, the degree to which different tasks tap into different underlying spatial mechanisms is a matter of debate 45 and our study was not designed to disentangle these mechanisms. Also, a recent meta-analysis did not find evidence that effect sizes for associations between alertness and spatial attention differ between tasks requiring speeded responses to stimuli i.

The findings from the Detection Task revealed that there is a narrowing of attention to the centre from the periphery with slower responses and more omissions to stimuli in the periphery consistent with studies that generated alertness reductions through extended time-on-task and sleep restriction 15 , The current study suggests that even under conditions of relatively common amounts of sleep, attention narrowing may be observed across circadian fluctuations in alertness, particularly as assessed by behavioural assay.

The relationship between spatial attention and alertness measures was stronger for PVT than for subjective alertness. In particular, PVT responses corresponded more strongly to performance decrements to left-sided stimuli Table 2.

This was not the case for subjective alertness, suggesting that behaviourally-assessed alertness is a closer reflection of shifts in spatial attention than self-reports.

PVT responses, but not time of the day, were associated with spatial biases. Individual levels of alertness at specific times can vary considerably between participants Overall, our findings highlight potential safety risks for occupations requiring a high level of visuospatial ability.

While speculative at this stage, our results could have implications for shiftworkers who work unconventional hours. At times when behaviourally-assessed alertness is lower, individuals may be slightly biased towards the right-side of their environment and may be more likely to experience attentional narrowing, responding more slowly to, or missing, important information in their periphery.

Under conditions, where shiftworkers are required to drive for work e. Past research into shiftwork and cognitive performance has revealed the detrimental effects of lowered alertness. For example, lowered alertness resulting from shiftwork is linked with an increased risk for accident and injury Based on our findings, researchers examining alertness should consider the influence of side of space when assessing safety and fatigue management in the future.

Our young, healthy participants in the study underwent a shiftwork manipulation to disrupt circadian timing in a tightly controlled laboratory environment, where they were relatively well-rested following sleep.

In the field, shiftworkers tend to be chronically sleep deprived 3 , suggesting that narrowing of attention and a neglect of the left side could be worse in the real world where alertness levels are likely to fluctuate beyond those observed in our study, and may be influenced by many factors e.

The current study only examined six different time points within the simulated shiftwork protocol. This was a limitation of the study as investigating more time points might have given a clearer indicator of the relationship between spatial attention and alertness. Furthermore, testing both spatial tasks at the same timepoints, as opposed to 3am for the Landmark Task and 5am for the Detection Task, would have helped us assess the potential differential influence of the early morning hours on the spatial measures.

Another limitation is that the participant sample comprised of only right-handed participants. This is a limitation as right- and left-handers have been found to show the opposite spatial attention and alertness pattern 17 , To our knowledge, this study was the first to examine whether changes in alertness as a result of a simulated shiftwork protocol is associated with changes in spatial bias.

The current study found some evidence for a slight neglect of the left side and a narrowing of attention with lowered alertness. The findings were not definitive and depended on the measures used to assess spatial attention and alertness.

Given that our findings suggest the possibility that the ability to sufficiently react to information in the periphery and to the left side may be compromised with lowered alertness, this highlights the need for future research to better understand the relationship between spatial attention and alertness under shiftworking conditions.

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