RESEARCH ARTICLE More Meditation, Less Habituation? The Effect of Mindfulness Practice on the Acoustic Startle Reflex

Background Mindfulness as a mode of sustained and receptive attention promotes openness to each in-coming stimulus, even if repetitive and/or aversive. Mindful attention has been shown to at-tenuate sensory habituation in expert meditators; however, others were not able to replicate this effect. The present study used acoustic startle reflex to investigate the effect of mindful-ness practice intensity on sensory habituation. Methods Auditory Startle Response (ASR) to 36 startling probes (12 trials x 3 block with 40ms inter-block intervals), was measured using electromyography (EMG) in three groups of partici-pants (N = 12/group): meditation-naïve, moderate practice, and intensive practice. Results Intensive practice group showed attenuated startle habituation as evidenced by significantly less habituation over the entire experiment relative to the meditation-naïve and moderate practice groups. Furthermore, there was a significant linear effect showing between-bloc