Into the Water to Improve Stress Resistance
In recent months, the Aquamore pool at the Bocconi Sport Center has been the scene of an experimental research project, aimed at evaluateing the effectiveness of two neurocognitive enhancement protocols in managers subjected to repeated stress conditions.
The project involved the collaboration of SDA Bocconi School of Management, the International research center for Cognitive Applied Neuroscience (IrcCAN) of Catholic University Milan, and the Associazione Facilitatori Risorse Umane (AFRU). The study, on the one hand, confirmed the effectiveness of a neuro-empowerment protocol designed and already validated by IrcCAN, which combines mindfulness practices and a wearable neurofeedback tool. Thissmart band is connected to an app that detects and monitorsbrain responses during exercises of meditation, offering the practitioners real-time sound feedback on their levels of concentration or distraction. On the other hand, the study has for the first time scientifically tested the effectiveness of a protocol (Mind~theDeep) based on exercises of breathing modulation, both in waterand out, comparing them with the results obtained from the Mindfulness protocol.
Two groups of managers participating in the SDA Bocconi Executive MBA, perfectly comparable for every relevant variable, for a total of 18 people, were assigned to the two empowerment interventions. The Mindfulness-Neurofeedback group, accompanied by the staff of IrcCAN, underwent short daily mindfulness sessions with the support of the wearable neurofeedback system, conducted independently and of increasing duration (from 5 to 20 minutes) for 4 weeks. The Mind~theDeep group, under the guidance of the AFRU team, participated at the Aquamore pool of the Bocconi Sport Center in 6 sessions of breathing modulation in water lasting 90 minutes (one every two weeks), with additional breathing exercises to be performed independently .
All participants took part in assessment before and after the intervention in order to measure the effect of the protocols: in an IrcCAN lab, they underwent psychometric tests, neurocognitive tasks and the measurement of the efficiency of cognitive and physiological functions.
Improvements in stress management, self-awareness and emotional regulation were recorded in both cases. The Mind~theDeep group showed, in particular, a greater ability to perceive affective reactions and bodily changes associated with stress states, showing a significant increase in self-awareness, attentional regulation, and self-regulation under stress. The Mindfulness-Neurofeedback group also showed specific increases in neurocognitive efficiency and executive functions, a group of mental abilities that includes attentional regulation, executive control, cognitive flexibility, problem solving, working memory, strategic planning and logical reasoning.
"The Mind~theDeep protocol derives from a methodology (Deep Inside – State of Mind) successfully applied on top-level athletes from different disciplines by Alessandro Vergendo, a sports mental coach and trainer, who managed with the AFRU team this part of the experiment. While the positive feedback of the Mindfulness-Neurofeedback protocol was expected, due to previous IrcCAN validations, the effects of the Mind~theDeep protocol on a population other than athletes were found to be for some objectives, such as stress control and self-awareness, well above expectations and highly significant," says Carlo Altomonte, head of the initiative for SDA Bocconi.
"One of the explanations we can hypothesize," says Alessandro Vergendo of AFRU, "is that diving activates a part of the ancestral brain that we no longer use since we became terrestrial animals, but that is still capable of mobilizing useful resources when we find ourselves operating in the aquatic environment."
"Although these are still preliminary results, reached by working on a small sample," Professor Altomonte continues, "the findings are so encouraging that, with my colleague Massimo Magni, coordinator of executive leadership programs at SDA Bocconi, we are thinking about a research program to develop them in a more structured way."