Unveiling Brainwave Signatures of Devotional Practices Using OBiGSEN: An EEG-Based Study on Hare Krishna Mahamantra Meditation and Kirtan Kriya
September 11, 2025 Rakesh Kumar, Dushyant Kumar Singh
A new EEG-based emotion recognition framework achieved 98.18% classification accuracy in distinguishing neural activity during Hare Krishna mantra meditation, Kirtan (musical rendition), and a resting control condition. The study used a 32-channel headset and applied Enhanced Synthetic Minority Oversampling Technique, Savitzky-Golay filtering, and Independent Component Analysis for signal processing. A Hybrid Burg-Hilbert Transform extracted spectral-temporal features, classified by an Optimized Bidirectional Gated Squeeze-Excited Network. Statistical tests confirmed significant differences in alpha and theta brain activity across conditions. Right-hemisphere coherence characterized meditation, while left-frontal engagement marked Kirtan. The findings suggest distinct neural profiles for devotional practices, with potential therapeutic applications for stress, anxiety, and depression.