Peak Mind

Attention is an issue of urgent concern. What we pay attention to is our life: Attention is our brain's boss, determining what we focus on, how we perceive the world, and ultimately, what we experience. And yet many of us are feeling distracted, scattered, and ineffective, and looking for real solutions - not sticking plasters. In a work culture that expects us to be available at all times, we struggle to both accomplish our career goals and remain present and engaged for the passing, priceless moments of our lives with our children, partners, families, and friends. In PEAK MIND Dr Jha unpacks her decades of research on the science of attention and its power to define our lives: what we experience, how we remember it, and what we can achieve. PEAK MIND will take us on a journey into the inner workings of our own brains, revealing how we can use the latest insights in neuroscience to realise our own potential. It will take readers behind the scenes into fascinating new studies and research, debunking common assumptions and offering stunning new insight into where presence, purpose, and mental fitness really come from. Through her work with those in high stress, high consequence professions (soldiers, firefighters, athletes, and more), she reveals her discovery that of all the cognitive training techniques and gadgets she's tested in her lab, only one results in improvements to attention and performance: mindfulness practice. Through multiple studies in the lab and in the field, Dr. Jha has scaled down her training program to reach the lower limit of training time, and a minimum required dose - 12 minutes daily - for people with limited time (i.e. almost all of us) who nevertheless want to protect and improve their attention and cognition.

Amishi Jha is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Miami, where she serves as the Director of Contemplative Neuroscience for the Mindfulness Research and Practice Initiative, which she co-founded in 2010. She received her PhD from the University of California-Davis, and received her postdoctoral training at the Brain Imaging and Analysis Center at Duke University in functional neuroimaging. The research in her laboratory, The Jha Lab, is dedicated to studying the neural bases of attention and the effects of mindfulness-based training programs on cognition, emotion and resilience. She has been systematically investigating the potential applications of mindfulness training in education, corporate, elite sports, and military contexts. In addition to her own published body of research, her work has been featured at TED.com, the World Economic Forum, NYTimes, NPR, Time, Newsweek, the Aspen Institute, the Pentagon, the Journal of Special Operations Medicine, and Joint Force Quarterly. Her pioneering work on mindfulness and attention is currently in use broadly, from organizations like the US military and New Zealand Defense Force, to professional sports teams, medical schools, and businesses.