Efficacy of Yoga for sustained attention in university students

Sustained attention (SA) is a vital function mediated by the right frontal - parietal cortex. The digit vigilance test (DVT) measures SA. Assessment of SA in students for their academic excellence is considered to be an essential part of a neuropsychological evaluation. The objective of this study is to determine SA in students undergoing training of integrated Yoga module (IYM). A total of 66 university students aged between 18-37 years participated in this study with a single group pre-post design. The DVT data was collected before and after the IYM. Statistical Package for Social Sciences version 19 was used for data analysis. The Kolmogorov-Smirnov test showed that the data were not normally distributed. The Wilcoxon's signed ranks test was used to compare means of data. The data analysis showed 11.66% decrease (P < 0.001) in total time taken for DVT and 31.90% decrease (P < 0.001) in error scores for DVT. The present study suggests that IYM can result in improvement of SA among students, thus paving the way for their academic excellence. Additional well-designed studies are needed before a strong recommendation can be made.