The ability to focus one’s attention underlies success in many everyday tasks, but voluntary attention cannot be sustained for
extended periods of time. In the laboratory, sustained-attention failure is manifest as a decline in perceptual sensitivity with
increasing time on task, known as the vigilance decrement. We investigated improvements in sustained attention with training
(~5 hr/day for 3 months), which consisted of meditation practice that involved sustained selective attention on a chosen
stimulus (e.g., the participant’s breath).