Effects of long-term mindfulness meditation training on attentional capacity in professional male fencer athletes

Attention is a crucial cognitive ability for sports performance. The current research aimed to investigate whether long-term mindfulness meditation (MM) intervention enhances male athletes' attentional function and alters the activity of brain regions related to attention. In this experiment, we recruited 47 professional male fencer athletes completed two main trials-an MM trial and a control trial. In MM trial, the participants were provided with 3 sessions/wk (20 min/session) of mindfulness meditation training for 20 weeks. In control trial, the participants were instead assigned a mind-wandering related audio to listen to at that time. In each main trial, the five facets of mindfulness questionnaire (FFMQ), cognitive function (i.e. attention span, attention concentrativeness, attention stability, attentional network, distractibility and attentional blink), salivary cortisol, blood lactate and mental fatigue were measured at baseline (pretest) and after the intervention (posttest). The cerebral oxygenation status was recorded using functional near-infrared spectroscopy(fNIRS) during the cognitive function test. In cognition test, participants' attention span, attention concentrativeness, attention stability, attentional networks on task-relevant information (targets) were better in the MM group, supported by eliciting increased oxygenated haemoglobin (HbO) concentration in the prefrontal cortex of the brain. Conversely, there are no remarkable different of distractibility and attentional blink on task-irrelevant information in the MM group than in the Con group (p > 0.05). Moreover, a lower mental fatigue level and lower salivary cortisol concentration were observed in the MM group than in the Con group after the intervention at posttest. Overall, 20-week MM training interventions after physical training improve attentive capacity and cerebral oxygenation concentration, decrease salivary cortisol concentrations and mental fatigue. The findings suggest that long-term MM training interventions after physical training facilitates focus during competition and improves athletic performance.