bioRxiv Preprint Server
August 29, 2024
Saketh Malipeddi, Arun Sasidharan, Rahul Venugopal et al.
4 citations
preprint
Advanced meditators from the Isha Yoga tradition show shorter intrinsic neural timescales (INTs) during breath-watching, indicating deidentification with mental contents, and no significant differences in INTs between tasks, indicating non-dual awareness. Shorter INTs correlate with self-reported equanimity. The brain's intrinsic neural timescales may serve as a neural marker of equanimity.
Communications Biology
June 12, 2026
Saketh Malipeddi, Arun Sasidharan, Bianca Ventura et al.
Advanced meditators from the Isha Yoga tradition report stronger non-dual experiences—where the boundary between self and environment dissolves—during breath-watching meditation compared to novices and meditation-naïve controls. Using EEG-based intrinsic neural timescales (INT), researchers found that across all participants, INTs are longer during internal attention (breath-watching) than during an external cognitive task. However, advanced meditators show similar INT durations between internal and external attention, and this reduced difference correlates with stronger reported non-dual experiences. The findings suggest that similar intrinsic neural timescale durations across internal and external attention may be a neural signature of non-duality.
Progress in Brain Research
January 1, 2019
Ratna Jyothi Kakumanu, Ajay Kumar Nair, Arun Sasidharan et al.
Long-term Vipassana meditation practice, both in duration and quality, is linked to graded differences in brain activity during a cognitive task. After an hour of meditation, three groups of practitioners—novices, seniors, and teachers—performed a gamified oddball task while EEG was recorded. All groups performed well and showed similar overall brain-wave patterns, but more experienced meditators exhibited reduced theta synchrony, enhanced alpha desynchronization, and lesser theta-alpha coherence. Teachers differed most from novices, with seniors forming an intermediate group. The findings suggest that both the quantity and quality of meditation influence EEG dynamics during cognitive processing, and that meditating before a task can amplify these state-trait effects.
Biological Psychology
May 1, 2018
Ratna Jyothi Kakumanu, Ajay Kumar Nair, Rahul Venugopal et al.
Vipassana meditation, as taught by S.N. Goenka, involves distinct EEG patterns that vary by technique and practitioner proficiency. Compared to Novices, Senior meditators and Teachers showed greater delta, theta-alpha, and low-gamma power at rest. During concentrative and mindfulness meditation, they exhibited increased low-alpha and low-gamma power; during loving-kindness meditation, increased theta-alpha and low-gamma power. Measures of permutation entropy and Higuchi fractal dimension revealed that only Teachers, not Seniors, displayed consistent increases in network complexity from rest and across meditation states, indicating that high proficiency, not just duration of experience, drives neural complexity changes.