14 DAY TRIAL // Canadian researchers from the University of Toronto Scarborough, led by PhD candidate Rimma Teper, determined that people who display increased mindfulness are less likely to exhibit strong neural responses to positive feedback from external sources.
For the purposes of this study, mindfulness was defined as awareness of one's thoughts and emotions. Like many other human traits, mindfulness can be trained and extended. When this happens, practitioners are less likely to be affected by the promise of immediate rewards than before.
An interesting consequence of this is that mindful individuals tend to be less impulsive, and therefore better able to lead a balanced life. Teper measured the brain activity of test subjects using an electroencephalography (EEG) machine, EurekAlert reports.
“Individuals who are problem gamblers for instance show more brain reactivity to immediate rewards, because they are typically more impulsive,” Teper says. Details of the study were published in this week's issue of the scientific journal Emotion.