How Does Brief Mindfulness Training Influence Neurophysiology During Working Memory in Musicians With Music Performance Anxiety?

Musicians rely on working memory to perform but this can be impacted by performance anxiety. This exploratory study examined whether a mindfulness training program would show beneficial effects on working memory in musicians with music performance anxiety (MPA). Twenty musicians underwent fMRI while performing a common working memory task, a letter n-back task (time 1). Ten of these musicians then participated in two weeks of mindfulness training, while the other ten did not. All participants then completed the same fMRI session two weeks later (time 2). The mindfulness group had significantly less neural activity than controls after the intervention in bilateral middle occipital gyri, bilateral lingual gyri, and in the right cuneus, suggesting improved attention regulation abilities. The mindfulness group also showed a significant reduction in activity following the mindfulness training in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and in the right supplementary motor area, suggesting enhanced attentional and cognitive efficiency. No differences were observed in the control group from pre-to post-training. These results suggest that the mindfulness group revealed more efficient working memory neural processing following mindfulness training. Results are preliminary and exploratory but do warrant replication and justify further investigation of mindfulness as a tool to help musicians with performance anxiety.