Does Mindfulness Meditation improve your Intelligence and Happiness? (Psychology, Brain, Science)

In the hustle and bustle of everyday life our mind is rarely at rest. In almost 50% of the time our thoughts are wandering. We are living through either past experiences or simulate future events.
Rarely this stream of thought is broken by a moment of clarity in the here and now.
There's growing evidence that a wandering mind is an unhappy mind (Killingsworth and Gilbert, 2010).
But is our mental performance suffering as well?
In fact Mrazek et al. (2012) observed a solid negative correlation (r = -.70) between mind wandering and general aptitude.
In addition, Mrazek et al. (2013) were able to show in a new study that a reduction of mind wandering results in better mental performance:
After just two weeks of mindfulness meditation participants not only reported less mind wandering, but they also showed significantly better performance in a working memory task (OSPAN) and the Graduate Record Examination.

Keywords:
Meditation - mindfulness meditation - research - Mind Wandering - daydreaming - anxiety - worries - Michael Mrazek - Working memory - Ospan (Operation Span) - Intelligence - SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) - Mrazek et al. (2013): nutrition group vs meditation group - 48 students - 4 x 45min. (2 weeks) - reading comprehension - Killingsworth and Gilbert (2010) - 2250 subjects - a wandering mind is an unhappy mind - Default Mode Network - Smallwood (2013) - depression - rumination - creative problem solving - memory consolidation - memory traces - here and now - stress - brain - yoga - Science - Positive Psychology

Author: Eskil Burck