Calm and smart? A selective review of meditation effects on decision making

Over the past two decades, there has been a growing interest in the use of meditation to improve cognitive performance, emotional balance, and well-being. As a consequence, research into the psychological effects and neural mechanisms of meditation has been accumulating. Whether and how meditation a...

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Main Authors:	Sun, Sai, Yao, Ziqing, Wei, Jaixin, Yu, Rongjun
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Frontiers Media S.A. 2015
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4513203/

id	pubmed-4513203
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-45132032015-08-07 Calm and smart? A selective review of meditation effects on decision making Sun, Sai Yao, Ziqing Wei, Jaixin Yu, Rongjun Psychology Over the past two decades, there has been a growing interest in the use of meditation to improve cognitive performance, emotional balance, and well-being. As a consequence, research into the psychological effects and neural mechanisms of meditation has been accumulating. Whether and how meditation affects decision making is not yet clear. Here, we review evidence from behavioral and neuroimaging studies and summarize the effects of meditation on social and non-social economic decision making. Research suggests that meditation modulates brain activities associated with cognitive control, emotion regulation and empathy, and leads to improved non-social and social decision making. Accordingly, we propose an integrative model in which cognitive control, emotional regulation, and empathic concern mediate the effects of meditation on decision making. This model provides insights into the mechanisms by which meditation affects the decision making process. More evidence is needed to test our explanatory model and to explore the function of specific brain areas and their interactive effects on decision making during meditation training. Frontiers Media S.A. 2015-07-24 /pmc/articles/PMC4513203/ /pubmed/26257700 http://dx.doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01059 Text en Copyright © 2015 Sun, Yao, Wei and Yu. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Sun, Sai Yao, Ziqing Wei, Jaixin Yu, Rongjun
spellingShingle	Sun, Sai Yao, Ziqing Wei, Jaixin Yu, Rongjun Calm and smart? A selective review of meditation effects on decision making
author_facet	Sun, Sai Yao, Ziqing Wei, Jaixin Yu, Rongjun
author_sort	Sun, Sai
title	Calm and smart? A selective review of meditation effects on decision making
title_short	Calm and smart? A selective review of meditation effects on decision making
title_full	Calm and smart? A selective review of meditation effects on decision making
title_fullStr	Calm and smart? A selective review of meditation effects on decision making
title_full_unstemmed	Calm and smart? A selective review of meditation effects on decision making
title_sort	calm and smart? a selective review of meditation effects on decision making
description	Over the past two decades, there has been a growing interest in the use of meditation to improve cognitive performance, emotional balance, and well-being. As a consequence, research into the psychological effects and neural mechanisms of meditation has been accumulating. Whether and how meditation affects decision making is not yet clear. Here, we review evidence from behavioral and neuroimaging studies and summarize the effects of meditation on social and non-social economic decision making. Research suggests that meditation modulates brain activities associated with cognitive control, emotion regulation and empathy, and leads to improved non-social and social decision making. Accordingly, we propose an integrative model in which cognitive control, emotional regulation, and empathic concern mediate the effects of meditation on decision making. This model provides insights into the mechanisms by which meditation affects the decision making process. More evidence is needed to test our explanatory model and to explore the function of specific brain areas and their interactive effects on decision making during meditation training.
publisher	Frontiers Media S.A.
publishDate	2015
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4513203/
_version_	1613251537446895616

Calm and smart? A selective review of meditation effects on decision making

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