Bruce O’Hara and colleagues at the University of Kentucky found that 40 minutes of meditation brings about an instant improvement in performance of a standard “psychomotor vigilance task” – even though none of his study subjects were experienced meditators.
In a separate study, Sara Lazar of Massachusetts General Hospital used MRI scans to discover that regular meditators had increased neural connectons and a thicker cerebral cortex in areas involved in attention and sensory processing, compared with non-meditators.
More details on the excellent New Scientist site here.
Meditation improves performance and changes brain structure!