Behavioral Sciences
September 5, 2025
Kin Cheung George Lee, Hin Hung Sik, Hang Kin Leung et al.
Intuitive inquiry meditation (Can-Hua-Tou) is a unique mental practice which differs from relaxation-based practices by continuously demanding intuitive inquiry. It emphasizes the doubt-driven self-interrogation, also referred to as Chan/Zen meditation. Nonetheless, its electrophysiological signature remains poorly characterized. We recorded 128-channel EEG from 20 male Buddhist monks (5-28...
Frontiers in Neuroscience
2025
Junling Gao, Hang Kin Leung, Kin Cheung George Lee et al.
6 citations
Social interaction is a vital source of human development, yet neuroscientific research delineating its neural correlates in large groups is scarce. Music as a rhythmic signal, and meditation, have been shown to induce group synchronization and pro-social behavior. However, their impact on adolescents may vary, and the related brain functions remain underexplored. This study investigates the...
Brain Sciences
January 17, 2024
Kin Cheung George Lee, Junling Gao, Hang Kin Leung et al.
Aging often leads to awareness decline and psychological stress. Meditation, a method of modulating consciousness, may help individuals improve overall awareness and increase emotional resilience toward stress. This study explored the potential influence of the Awareness Training Program (ATP), a form of consciousness modulation, on age-related brain wave changes and psychological stress in...
Heliyon
September 1, 2023
Junling Gao, Hang Kin Leung, B. W. Wu et al.
Objective Intuitive inquiry meditation is a unique form of Buddhist Zen/Chan practice in which individuals actively and intuitively utilize the cognitive functions to cultivate doubt and explore the concept of the self. This event-related potential (ERP) study aimed to investigate the neural correlates by which long-term practice of intuitive inquiry meditation induces flexibility in...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
June 19, 2023
Junling Gao, R. Sun, Hang Kin Leung et al.
Background Brain oscillations facilitate interaction within the brain network and between the brain and heart activities, and the alpha wave, as a prominent brain oscillation, plays a major role in these coherent activities. We hypothesize that mindfully breathing can make the brain and heart activities more coherent in terms of increased connectivity between the electroencephalogram (EEG) and...
Frontiers in Psychology
July 22, 2022
Junling Gao, Hang Kin Leung, Jicong Fan et al.
9 citations
Emotion regulation is essential for healthy living. Previous studies have found that mental training such as compassion meditation could help with emotion regulation. However, the underlying neural mechanism and possible intervention strategies of group-based Mahayana Buddhist intervention involved in emotion regulation are still unclear. This event-related potential (ERP) study investigated...
Scientific Reports
March 12, 2019
Junling Gao, Hang Kin Leung, Bonnie Wai Yan Wu et al.
Despite extensive research on various types of meditation, research on the neural correlates of religious chanting is in a nascent stage. Using multi-modal electrophysiological and neuroimaging methods, we illustrate that during religious chanting, the posterior cingulate cortex shows the largest decrease in eigenvector centrality, potentially due to regional endogenous generation of delta...
Journal of Visualized Experiments
May 10, 2017
Hin Hung Sik, Junling Gao, Jicong Fan et al.
In both the East and West, traditional teachings say that the mind and heart are somehow closely correlated, especially during spiritual practice. One difficulty in proving this objectively is that the natures of brain and heart activities are quite different. In this paper, we propose a methodology that uses wavelet entropy to measure the chaotic levels of both electroencephalogram (EEG) and...