Decoding Depth of Meditation: Electroencephalography Insights From Expert Vipassana Practitioners.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Meditation practices have demonstrated numerous psychological and physiological benefits, but capturing the neural correlates of varying meditative depths remains challenging. In this study, we aimed to decode self-reported time-varying meditative depth in expert practitioners using electroencephalography (EEG).

Methods

Expert Vipassana meditators (n = 34) participated in 2 separate sessions. Participants reported their meditative depth on a personally defined 1 to 5 scale using both traditional probing and a novel spontaneous emergence method. EEG activity and effective connectivity in theta, alpha, and gamma bands were used to predict meditative depth using machine/deep learning, including a novel method that fused source activity and connectivity informa

SUBMITTER: Reggente N 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11629179 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jan

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature