Long-term meditators (practicing preksha meditation for more than five years, at least five days a week) and short-term meditators (after a 10-day yoga-based lifestyle intervention) show distinct patterns of alpha and theta brainwave activity during meditation compared to their own baseline, and also differ from each other and from non-meditating controls at baseline. The study recorded 40 minutes of EEG on day 0 and day 10 in 34 male, right-handed participants. These differences may help define EEG features that distinguish meditators based on practice duration and meditation depth.
A 12-week Transcendental Meditation intervention (20 minutes/day, 5 days/week) in 34 healthy adults aged 25–50 reduced systolic and diastolic blood pressure and pulse rate with a small effect size. EEG analysis showed increased functional connectivity across fronto-central and occipital regions. Visual and auditory reaction times improved significantly, with the largest effect in auditory reaction time. The findings suggest TM enhances cardiovascular regulation, brain connectivity, and cognitive processing speed, reflecting improved neural efficiency and autonomic balance, and may serve as a simple, non-pharmacological approach for improving cognitive performance and well-being.
The right hemisphere counterpart of Broca's area, typically associated with language in the left hemisphere, may play a role in attention-focused meditation. In twelve healthy, right-handed male long-term meditators, positron emission tomography showed significantly greater activity in the right Broca's area during meditation compared to baseline, while left Broca's area activity increased only slightly. The authors propose that this right-hemisphere region could be important for attention and may have implications for understanding and treating attention deficits and language or speech disorders.
Long-term meditation activates specific regions of the right hemisphere, including the right homolog of Broca's area and the right lentiform nucleus, as measured by changes in regional cerebral glucose metabolism. Using a novel approach with 18FDG PET/CT scans, 12 healthy, male, right-handed long-term meditators (practicing Preksha meditation for over 5 years) showed significantly activated fronto-parieto-temporal regions in the right versus left hemisphere during meditation. These findings suggest that long-term meditation may enhance explicit functions of the right hemisphere through neuroplastic changes.