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A Critical Analysis on Characterizing the Meditation Experience Through the Electroencephalogram.

ABSTRACT: Meditation practices, originated from ancient traditions, have increasingly received attention due to their potential benefits to mental and physical health. The scientific community invests efforts into scrutinizing and quantifying the effects of these practices, especially on the brain. There are methodological challenges in describing the neural correlates of the subjective experience of meditation. We noticed, however, that technical considerations on signal processing also don't follow standardized approaches, which may hinder generalizations. Therefore, in this article, we discuss the usage of the electroencephalogram (EEG) as a tool to study meditation experiences in healthy individuals. We describe the main EEG signal processing techniques and how they have been translated to the meditation field until April 2020. Moreover, we examine in detail the limitations/assumptions of these techniques and highlight some good practices, further discussing how technical specifications may impact the interpretation of the outcomes. By shedding light on technical features, this article contributes to more rigorous approaches to evaluate the construct of meditation.

SUBMITTER: Deolindo CS

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7427581 | biostudies-literature | 2020

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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A Critical Analysis on Characterizing the Meditation Experience Through the Electroencephalogram.

Deolindo Camila Sardeto CS Ribeiro Mauricio Watanabe MW Aratanha Maria Adelia MA Afonso Rui Ferreira RF Irrmischer Mona M Kozasa Elisa Harumi EH

Frontiers in systems neuroscience 20200807

Meditation practices, originated from ancient traditions, have increasingly received attention due to their potential benefits to mental and physical health. The scientific community invests efforts into scrutinizing and quantifying the effects of these practices, especially on the brain. There are methodological challenges in describing the neural correlates of the subjective experience of meditation. We noticed, however, that technical considerations on signal processing also don't follow stan ...[more]

PMID: 32848645

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Project description:Mindfulness has emerged as a potential motivator for sustainable lifestyles, yet few studies provide insight into the relationship between mindfulness practice levels and individual engagement in pro-environmental behaviors. We also lack information about the significance of meditators' behavioral differences in terms of their measurable environmental impact and the motivational processes underlying these differences in pro-environmental performance. We classified 300 individuals in three groups with varying meditation experience and compared their pro-environmental motivations and levels of animal protein consumption. Exceeding prior attempts to compare high-impact behaviors of mindfulness practitioners and non-practitioners, we created the most detailed classification of practice engagement by assessing frequency, experience and type of meditation practice. This nuanced view on mindfulness practice reveals that advanced meditators, who reported high levels of connectedness with nature (CWN), subjective happiness and dispositional mindfulness showed significantly more concern for the environment. They also demonstrated the lowest levels of greenhouse gas emissions, land occupation and water use related to their animal-protein consumption. This study is the first to follow a self-determination theory perspective to deepen our understanding of the motivational differences between meditator groups. We revealed that advanced meditators reported significantly more integrated motivation toward the environment than non-meditators. We also provided preliminary evidence for a new theoretical framework suggesting that experiential strategies such as mindfulness practices could strengthen the relational pathway of pro-environmental behaviors. Using sequential mediation analysis, we confirmed that the negative effect of mindful compassion practice on greenhouse gas emissions from animal-protein consumption is partially mediated by CWN and integrated motivation toward the environment. While our study does not support assumptions of causality, it shows that much can be learned by studying the motivations of advanced meditators for maintaining high levels of pro-environmental behavior.

Project description:Meditation is increasingly showing beneficial effects for psychiatric disorders. However, learning to meditate is not straightforward as there are no easily discernible outward signs of performance and thus no direct feedback is possible. As meditation has been found to correlate with posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) activity, we tested whether source-space EEG neurofeedback from the PCC followed the subjective experience of effortless awareness (a major component of meditation), and whether participants could volitionally control the signal.Sixteen novice meditators and sixteen experienced meditators participated in the study. Novice meditators were briefly trained to perform a basic meditation practice to induce the subjective experience of effortless awareness in a progressively more challenging neurofeedback test-battery. Experienced meditators performed a self-selected meditation practice to induce this state in the same test-battery. Neurofeedback was provided based on gamma-band (40-57Hz) PCC activity extracted using a beamformer algorithm. Associations between PCC activity and the subjective experience of effortless awareness were assessed by verbal probes.Both groups reported that decreased PCC activity corresponded with effortless awareness (P<0.0025 for each group), with high median confidence ratings (novices: 8 on a 0-10 Likert scale; experienced: 9). Both groups showed high moment-to-moment median correspondence ratings between PCC activity and subjective experience of effortless awareness (novices: 8, experienced: 9). Both groups were able to volitionally control the PCC signal in the direction associated with effortless awareness by practicing effortless awareness meditation (novices: median % of time=77.97, P=0.001; experienced: 89.83, P<0.0005).These findings support the feasibility of using EEG neurofeedback to link an objective measure of brain activity with the subjective experience of effortless awareness, and suggest potential utility of this paradigm as a tool for meditation training.

Dataset Information

A Critical Analysis on Characterizing the Meditation Experience Through the Electroencephalogram.

Publications

A Critical Analysis on Characterizing the Meditation Experience Through the Electroencephalogram.

Similar Datasets

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