Despite decades of research, effects of different types of meditation on electroencephalographic (EEG) activity are still being defined. We compared practitioners of three different meditation traditions (Vipassana, Himalayan Yoga and Isha Shoonya) with a control group during a meditative and instructed mind-wandering (IMW) block. All meditators showed higher parieto-occipital 60-110 Hz gamma a...

In this meta-analysis, we give a comprehensive overview of the effects of meditation on psychological variables that can be extracted from empirical studies, concentrating on the effects of meditation on nonclinical groups of adult meditators. Mostly because of methodological problems, almost ¾ of an initially identified 595 studies had to be excluded. Most studies appear to have been conducted...

Meditation involves attentional regulation and may lead to increased activity in brain regions associated with attention such as dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, we examined whether DLPFC and ACC were activated during meditation. Subjects who meditate were recruited and scanned on a 3.0 Tesla scanner. Subj...

This article discusses the ill effects of substance use disorders and efficacy of incorporating meditation into the treatment of addictions. Meditation helps to reduce stress, anxiety, depression and pain associated with substance use disorders. It enhances brain functions and promotes plasticity. According to the World Health Organization Substance Use Disorders represent a significant public ...

Meditation has lately received considerable interest from cognitive neuroscience. Studies suggest that daily meditation leads to long lasting attentional and neuronal plasticity. We present changes related to the attentional systems before and after a 3 month intensive meditation retreat. We used three behavioral psychophysical tests - a Stroop task, an attentional blink task, and a global-loca...

Meditation has been extensively practiced in many civilizations for thousands of years as a means of cultivating a state of well-being and for religious purposes. It has now started to be studied in terms of its influence on the brain and body and used in clinical settings. This chapter will first review meditation effects at the physiological, attentional, and affective levels and the scientif...

In Spain, meditation is generally considered to be one more relaxation method amongst many used in psychotherapy. Nevertheless, an extensive body of experimental findings affirms that meditation has cognitive, physiological and psychotherapeutic characteristics that clearly differentiate it from other relaxation methods insofar as its origin, generic and specific effects, forms and methods of a...

In this paper the main objective is to quantify and compare the instantaneous value of heart rate for normal breathing patterns during Meditation and Non Meditation conditions. This paper involves Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) technique for the analysis of the heart rate variability patterns during the meditative and non meditative states. The analysis is divided into three stages i.e. data acqu...

BACKGROUND A number of benefits have been described for the long-term practice of meditation, yet little is known regarding the immediate neurological and cardiovascular responses to meditation. Wireless sensor technology allows, for the first time, multi-parameter and quantitative monitoring of an individual's responses during meditation. The present study examined inter-individual variations ...

Zen-Buddhist meditation originated more than 2,500 years ago, and had been proved to benefit the health while on the way toward the ultimate Buddhahood state. Meditation process reflects a brain state completely differing from the normal consciousness or the sleep states. Different meditating techniques have been studied for several decades [1][12]. They are mostly the TM (transcendental medita...