- Four weeks of mindfulness training and 12 minutes of binaural beats were found to increase attentional capacities after being mentally fatigued.
- This research from the University of Southern Denmark provides important interventions during a stressful time.
- Mental fatigue leads to higher incidences of workplace and traffic accidents as well as an inability to retain information.
Mental fatigue is always a problem in our distraction-heavy world, but it's particularly troublesome as we constantly check for the latest updates on the state of our societal health. Specifically, mental fatigue occurs after extended periods of cognitive demand. This results in an inability to focus on tasks and can often lead to accidents and an inability to retain information.
Since the advent of the smartphone plenty of research has focused on helping us combat mental fatigue. In his bestselling book, Matthew B. Crawford suggests craftsmanship—he left a D.C. think tank to become a motorcycle mechanic—is as intellectually stimulating as it is physically demanding, improving attentional skills. For others, such as computer science professor Cal Newport, it means getting off of social media and only checking email once a day.
Fixing antique motorcycles or eschewing social media is not in everyone's cards, however. Thus, practices like meditation have entered the national conversation. Though some question its validity as a performance enhancement technique—they believe it should only be a tool for spiritual development and self-introspection—there's solid evidence that a regular practice offsets attentional deficits.
All it takes is 10 mindful minutes | Andy Puddicombe
Then there's an intriguing new study from the University of Southern Denmark Faculty of Health Sciences. The team of Johanne L. Axelsen, Ulrich Kirk, and Walter Staiano (from the University of Valencia) discovered that the combination of mindfulness meditation and binaural beats helps combat mental fatigue and regain attentional abilities.
Binaural beats are two tones, one played in each ear at slightly different frequencies. An auditory illusion occurs when your brain produces a beat at the junction of those two frequencies. Thus far, research has been spotty on their efficacy. Most positive reviews have been anecdotal. For some people they seem to have no effect. For others (such as myself) they make a great accompaniment to a meditation practice. Beyond focus, binaural beats are said to help reduce anxiety, increase relaxation, and assist in creating positive moods.
Four groups were invited to partake in this research: a novice mindfulness group, an experienced mindfulness group, a binaural beats group, and a control group. For this study, the team conducted five phases:
- Volunteers' moods were assessed using the Brunel Mood Scale (BRUMS), after which they completed a sustained attention task (SART)
- They were given a 90-minute mental fatigue treatment using a AX-CPT task
- Their mood was again assessed, followed by immediate interventions
- One group listened to a 12-minute mindfulness meditation provided by Headspace; another group listened to 12 minutes of binaural beats; a third group was told to relax for 12 minutes
- Finally, each volunteer was again given a sustained attention task
Spring Point Ledge Light looms in the background while Ezra Silk of Portland practices mindfulness and loving kindness mediation on East End Beach Monday morning.
Staff photo by Ben McCanna/Portland Press Herald via Getty Images
The SART was designed to fatigue the groups. As the team writes,
"The results showed that the music group and the experienced mindfulness group were least affected by mental fatigue and its effect on the SART %NoGo success rate, whereas performance of the control group and the novice mindfulness group was reduced by mental fatigue."
Those with a longstanding mindfulness practice and a history of using binaural beats seem to maintain sustained attention even after being fatigued. Less experienced meditators are more easily tired, while those told "just relax" without a framework also fared poorly. The team found that four weeks of mindfulness training was enough to help combat cognitive exhaustion.
Such information is always useful, but especially so at this moment. Times of uncertainty are cognitively brutal. This is the first time in history that the entire world is experiencing an epidemic while being connected to social media. In some ways, it can be calming, but the opposite is also occurring, with conspiracy theories and misinformation rampant.
Unplugging, as Newport suggests, is great for your mental health, but let's face it: many of us will keep our eyes glued to the screen. Taking some time out, even 12 minutes, appears to help. Right now, we'll take progress in inches.
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Stay in touch with Derek on Twitter and Facebook. His next book is "Hero's Dose: The Case For Psychedelics in Ritual and Therapy."
- How Mindfulness Meditation Works - Big Think ›
- Mental health management is an under-appreciated life skill - Big ... ›
- Why we find information overload so exhausting - Big Think ›
- A remote area visited by tourists and cruises, and home to fishing villages, is about to be visited by a devastating tsunami.
- A wall of rock exposed by a receding glacier is about crash into the waters below.
- Glaciers hold such areas together — and when they're gone, bad stuff can be left behind.
The Barry Glacier gives its name to Alaska's Barry Arm Fjord, and a new open letter forecasts trouble ahead.
Thanks to global warming, the glacier has been retreating, so far removing two-thirds of its support for a steep mile-long slope, or scarp, containing perhaps 500 million cubic meters of material. (Think the Hoover Dam times several hundred.) The slope has been moving slowly since 1957, but scientists say it's become an avalanche waiting to happen, maybe within the next year, and likely within 20. When it does come crashing down into the fjord, it could set in motion a frightening tsunami overwhelming the fjord's normally peaceful waters .
"It could happen anytime, but the risk just goes way up as this glacier recedes," says hydrologist Anna Liljedahl of Woods Hole, one of the signatories to the letter.
The Barry Arm Fjord
Camping on the fjord's Black Sand Beach
Image source: Matt Zimmerman
The Barry Arm Fjord is a stretch of water between the Harriman Fjord and the Port Wills Fjord, located at the northwest corner of the well-known Prince William Sound. It's a beautiful area, home to a few hundred people supporting the local fishing industry, and it's also a popular destination for tourists — its Black Sand Beach is one of Alaska's most scenic — and cruise ships.
Not Alaska’s first watery rodeo, but likely the biggest
Image source: whrc.org
There have been at least two similar events in the state's recent history, though not on such a massive scale. On July 9, 1958, an earthquake nearby caused 40 million cubic yards of rock to suddenly slide 2,000 feet down into Lituya Bay, producing a tsunami whose peak waves reportedly reached 1,720 feet in height. By the time the wall of water reached the mouth of the bay, it was still 75 feet high. At Taan Fjord in 2015, a landslide caused a tsunami that crested at 600 feet. Both of these events thankfully occurred in sparsely populated areas, so few fatalities occurred.
The Barry Arm event will be larger than either of these by far.
"This is an enormous slope — the mass that could fail weighs over a billion tonnes," said geologist Dave Petley, speaking to Earther. "The internal structure of that rock mass, which will determine whether it collapses, is very complex. At the moment we don't know enough about it to be able to forecast its future behavior."
Outside of Alaska, on the west coast of Greenland, a landslide-produced tsunami towered 300 feet high, obliterating a fishing village in its path.
What the letter predicts for Barry Arm Fjord
Moving slowly at first...
Image source: whrc.org
"The effects would be especially severe near where the landslide enters the water at the head of Barry Arm. Additionally, areas of shallow water, or low-lying land near the shore, would be in danger even further from the source. A minor failure may not produce significant impacts beyond the inner parts of the fiord, while a complete failure could be destructive throughout Barry Arm, Harriman Fiord, and parts of Port Wells. Our initial results show complex impacts further from the landslide than Barry Arm, with over 30 foot waves in some distant bays, including Whittier."
The discovery of the impeding landslide began with an observation by the sister of geologist Hig Higman of Ground Truth, an organization in Seldovia, Alaska. Artist Valisa Higman was vacationing in the area and sent her brother some photos of worrying fractures she noticed in the slope, taken while she was on a boat cruising the fjord.
Higman confirmed his sister's hunch via available satellite imagery and, digging deeper, found that between 2009 and 2015 the slope had moved 600 feet downhill, leaving a prominent scar.
Ohio State's Chunli Dai unearthed a connection between the movement and the receding of the Barry Glacier. Comparison of the Barry Arm slope with other similar areas, combined with computer modeling of the possible resulting tsunamis, led to the publication of the group's letter.
While the full group of signatories from 14 organizations and institutions has only been working on the situation for a month, the implications were immediately clear. The signers include experts from Ohio State University, the University of Southern California, and the Anchorage and Fairbanks campuses of the University of Alaska.
Once informed of the open letter's contents, the Alaska's Department of Natural Resources immediately released a warning that "an increasingly likely landslide could generate a wave with devastating effects on fishermen and recreationalists."
How do you prepare for something like this?
Image source: whrc.org
The obvious question is what can be done to prepare for the landslide and tsunami? For one thing, there's more to understand about the upcoming event, and the researchers lay out their plan in the letter:
"To inform and refine hazard mitigation efforts, we would like to pursue several lines of investigation: Detect changes in the slope that might forewarn of a landslide, better understand what could trigger a landslide, and refine tsunami model projections. By mapping the landslide and nearby terrain, both above and below sea level, we can more accurately determine the basic physical dimensions of the landslide. This can be paired with GPS and seismic measurements made over time to see how the slope responds to changes in the glacier and to events like rainstorms and earthquakes. Field and satellite data can support near-real time hazard monitoring, while computer models of landslide and tsunami scenarios can help identify specific places that are most at risk."
In the letter, the authors reached out to those living in and visiting the area, asking, "What specific questions are most important to you?" and "What could be done to reduce the danger to people who want to visit or work in Barry Arm?" They also invited locals to let them know about any changes, including even small rock-falls and landslides.
