Meditation acutely improves psychomotor vigilance, and may decrease sleep need.
Level 3 - non-randomized controlled study
Non-randomized within-subject crossover experiment paired with a small matched cross-sectional observational study
PubMed 20670413 · doi:10.1186/1744-9081-6-47
What was done
The authors conducted two studies: a primary within-subject crossover study in 10 novice meditators (university students) evaluating psychomotor vigilance task (PVT) reaction times before, 10 minutes after, and 1 hour after 40-minute sessions of meditation, nap, or control activity (two days per condition across six days), plus after one night of total sleep deprivation followed by meditation; and a second study comparing sleep duration (actigraphy and sleep journals) and PVT scores between 7 long-term experienced meditators and 23 age- and sex-matched non-meditating controls in Delhi, India.
What was found
All 10 novice meditators improved PVT reaction times immediately after meditation, while 9 of 10 worsened immediately after naps. Sleep deprivation slowed baseline reaction times, but reaction times still improved significantly after meditation. Long-term meditators had shorter sleep duration than matched controls and population norms with no apparent decrements in PVT scores. The abstract provides no specific numerical values, effect sizes, or p-values.
Why it matters
This paper provides preliminary evidence that meditation acutely enhances psychomotor vigilance even in novices and that long-term practitioners may sustain performance despite lower total sleep duration.
Limits
Sample sizes were very small across both experiments (n = 10 novices, n = 7 experienced meditators, n = 23 controls). The abstract does not mention randomization of crossover condition order, and the experienced-meditator cohort comparison is cross-sectional and vulnerable to confounding. No exact quantitative results or variance estimates are reported in the abstract.
Cited by
- partial Practicing meditation for 40 to 60 minutes per day can reduce total nightly sleep requirement from 8 hours to 6 hours.