Open-eyed meditation suppresses functional connectivity in EEG across a broad frequency range
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) May 18, 2026 Vinod Jiani, Ankan Biswas, Supratim Ray
Meditation produces a broad-frequency (15–200 Hz) state-dependent decrease in functional connectivity (phase consistency) between brain regions, while simultaneously enhancing power spectral density (PSD) across the same range. Visual gratings, which boost narrow-band gamma power, reduced gamma FC in both meditators and controls. Aging and gender affected FC only in narrow alpha (8–12 Hz) and high-beta (20–36 Hz) bands. Average referencing severely distorted FC estimates, yielding uninterpretable results. These findings indicate distinct neural mechanisms for meditation, healthy aging, and vision, and caution against using average referencing in phase-based connectivity studies.