| Cognitive function is the ability of the brain to process,store and extract information,which plays an extremely important role in young students’ learning and scientific research.Young students in higher education environment may be faced with various kinds of pressure or anxiety.Long-term stress will have a negative impact on cognitive function,and even lead to a variety of psychological diseases.How to maintain the cognitive level of young students and prevent the decline of the cognitive level is of great significance.Yoga meditation,as a way to relax the body and improve the mind,is easy to learn and accept,which is suitable for young students.Previous studies have shown that yoga meditation practice can effectively improve individual cognitive function.However,the neural mechanism of promoting young students’cognitive function is still unclear.This study explored the effect of short-term yoga meditation practice on young students’ cognitive function through experiments,and studied the brain activation of young students in the process of the cognitive task through functional near-infrared spectroscopy(fNIRS),so as to reveal the related brain mechanism.50 young students aged 20-30 participated in the study according to the screening criteria.Participants were randomly divided into yoga meditation groups(n=25)and control groups(n=25).The yoga meditation group completed 5 days of yoga meditation intervention,and the control task was rest with eyes closed.The behavior performance of cognitive function was measured using the Montreal Cognitive Assessment and "Flanker" task before and after a five-day intervention.Functional near-infrared spectroscopy(fNIRS)was used to record the oxygenated hemoglobin response in the brain while performing the task.The effects of yoga meditation on cognitive behavior and brain activation of young students were investigated by comparing the accuracy of MOCA score,Flanking task and neural activation of left prefrontal cortex before and after intervention with repeated measurement analysis of variance(ANOVA).The results of cognitive scale showed that compared with the control group,the scores of cognitive scale in yoga meditation group increased significantly(27.800±1.732 vs.26.625 ± 1.765,p<0.05).Both the improvement of the accuracy of the "Flanker" task(Consistent task:99.67±0.54 vs.99.04±1.01%,;p<0.05;Inconsistent tasks:96.21 ± 2.78 vs.89.80±10.29%,p<0.05)and the increase of the neural activation in the left prefrontal cortex during the task(Consistent task:0.33 ± 0.61 vs.-0.04 ± 0.68 umol/L,p<0.05;Inconsistent tasks:0.33±0.59 vs.-0.04 ± 0.71 umol/L,p<0.05)were positively related to yoga meditation practice.The conclusions are as follows:(1)Yoga meditation practice has an effect on the improvement of the level of basic cognitive function of young students.(2)Yoga meditation practice can improve the accuracy of the processing of higher-order cognitive conflicts of young students,which is speculated to be related to the trait of maintaining sustained attention in the process of yoga meditation practice.This trait enhances their ability to inhibit attention shift.(3)Yoga meditation practice induced neural activation in left prefrontal cortex of yoga meditation group participants.(4)Yoga meditation practice stimulated the neural activity of the prefrontal cortex to maintain the appropriate excitatory state and enhance the neural activity,thus enhancing the neural activation of the left prefrontal cortex related to attentional control in the process of cognitive tasks. |
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