International Journal of Neuroscience
January 1, 2006
Frederick Travis, Alarik Arenander
111 citations
Frontal brain coherence, but not lateral asymmetry, increases with long-term Transcendental Meditation practice. In two studies, frontal coherence was higher in 13 TM practitioners than in 12 controls, and in a one-year longitudinal study of 14 participants, coherence increased linearly during computer tasks and eyes-closed rest, and rose to a high level after 2 months of TM practice. Lateral asymmetry did not change in any condition. Coherence was more sensitive than lateral asymmetry to the effects of TM practice on brain functioning.
Explore (New York, N.Y.)
January 1, 2018
Helané Wahbeh, Amira Sagher, Wallis Back et al.
103 citations
Transcendent states achieved through meditative practices have been reported across cultures and history, yet few studies have systematically examined them. This systematic review of 25 studies with 672 participants found that transcendent states during meditation are most consistently associated with slowed breathing, respiratory suspension, reduced muscle activity, increased EEG alpha power and coherence, and functional neural connectivity. Participants described the state as relaxed wakefulness in a phenomenologically different space-time. The review included various traditions: Buddhist, Christian, Mixed, and Vedic (Transcendental Meditation and Yoga). Heterogeneity between studies precluded meta-analysis, so conclusions are qualitative and preliminary.
Psychological Trauma Theory Research Practice and Policy
July 8, 2019
Frederick Travis
20 citations
Decisions about the temporal and spatial characteristics of EEG during recording and analysis of meditation practices are critically important. A recent meta-analysis averaged EEG in the alpha1 and alpha2 bands to characterize mindfulness practices, ignoring known differences in cognitive processing associated with these two bands, thus confounding conclusions about brain patterns during mindfulness. Another paper averaged EEG from central and frontal electrodes to characterize Transcendental Meditation, averaging signals from motor and frontal cortices that respond to different behaviors, also confounding conclusions. Both papers reported power-derived measures, missing connectivity information captured in coherence analysis. Meditation researchers should investigate narrow frequency bands, average EEG over theoretically known spatial areas, and employ both power and coherence analysis.
Biomolecules
February 20, 2025
Supaya Wenuganen, Kenneth G Walton, Frederick Travis et al.
2 citations
Long-term Transcendental Meditation practice is associated with reduced biomarkers of chronic stress and biological aging. In a comparison of older long-term meditators (average 40 years of practice) with age-matched non-meditators, 7 of 13 genes that were more highly expressed in older controls showed lower expression in the older meditators. Older meditators also scored higher on a brain integration scale and had shorter event-related potential latencies—indicating faster cognitive processing—than age-matched controls, with latencies no longer than those of young non-meditators. Hair cortisol levels were lower in meditators than in matched controls, suggesting lower cumulative stress exposure.
International Journal of Psychological Studies
November 1, 2022
Frederick Travis
Psychedelic experiences and transcendental experiences during meditation are fundamentally different across five dimensions: EEG patterns (gamma vs alpha), brain blood-flow (decreased vs higher frontal), content of experience (intense mental/emotional vs content-free self-awareness), mechanism of action (influenced by set and setting vs transcending them), and therapeutic application. Therefore, equating the two or using findings from one to justify the other is inaccurate. Both areas merit careful research, but their results should not be superficially combined.
The International journal of clinical and experimental hypnosis
July 6, 2026
Moniek Vidia Pramestri, Kwartarini Wahyu Yuniarti, Frederick Travis et al.
Unregulated negative emotion raises burnout risk by 67%, impairing performance and causing physical symptoms. Hypnotic guided imagery (HGI), a deep relaxation intervention, aims to shift negative to positive emotion, but its physiological basis is unclear. This feasibility study tested HGI's effects on emotional valence and arousal in employees with burnout, using electroencephalography (EEG). Valence was measured by frontal alpha asymmetry; arousal by the frontal beta/alpha ratio. Participants were randomly assigned to HGI (n=19) or control (n=13). EEG analyses showed no significant changes, while self-report indicated increased positive and reduced negative affect in the HGI group. Discrepancies may stem from small samples and variability, highlighting the need for methodological rigor in EEG-based intervention studies.
Journal of American college health : J of ACH
December 1, 2023
Marie Loiselle, Frederick Travis
College students who studied at a Consciousness-Based Education institution showed significant improvements in physical, mental, and general health, self-esteem, and perceived health from freshman year to graduation, alongside significant reductions in anxiety, depression, and combined anxiety-depression. No significant changes were found for pain, disability, or social health. The authors argue that Consciousness-Based Education may buffer the effects of stress on mental and physical health, offering educators a tool to help students cope with college life.
Medicina
December 18, 2020
Frederick Travis
Three strategies for studying meditation practices are compared. Combining all practices into one analysis mixes different procedures (concentration, mindfulness, effortless awareness) and produces unrepresentative brain patterns. Studying each practice individually yields rich detail but makes reliable comparisons difficult. Grouping practices into meaningful categories—by described procedures or by associated EEG frequencies—produces clearer neural patterns and allows categories to shift as experience changes. Grouping by origin (Indian or Buddhist) mixes procedures and confounds results. The most reliable approach is to explore meditations within theoretically meaningful categories.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2020
Frederick Travis, Jonathan Nash, Niyazi Parim et al.
The fMRI procedure itself—lying in a noisy, confined tube—alters both subjective experience and brain activity during Transcendental Meditation (TM), potentially confounding results from fMRI studies of meditation. Twenty-three TM practitioners (11 short-term, averaging 2.2 years; 12 long-term, averaging 34.8 years) underwent eyes-closed rest and TM practice in three conditions: sitting upright, lying supine, and lying inside a simulated fMRI tube with 110 dB recordings. During the simulated fMRI condition, participants reported shallower meditation and greater agitation. Skin conductance decreased least in that condition. Frontal and parietal EEG power decreased from sitting to simulated fMRI in alpha2 through gamma bands. The default mode network was more active during TM when sitting compared to the simulated fMRI condition.
International Journal of Yoga
January 1, 2018
Sonja Gobec, Frederick Travis
A 4-week course of Maharishi Yoga Asanas, a specific set of postures, led to significant increases in happiness and improvements in sense of personal self, transpersonal qualities, and transpersonal self during Transcendental Meditation practice. The study matched 13 college students taking the yoga course with 13 students taking other courses, measuring mood states, happiness, and meditation depth before and after the course. Results suggest these yoga postures influence deeper levels of subjectivity beyond just body and mind.
Cognitive processing
August 1, 2017
Pascal L Faber, Frederick Travis, Patricia Milz et al.
During Transcendental Meditation, two distinct phases—transcending and undirected mentation—show different patterns of brain electrical activity compared to ordinary rest. EEG microstate analysis of 20 TM practitioners revealed that resting and transcending both showed less prominence of Class A microstates and more prominence of Class D microstates than undirected mentation. Transcending also showed less prominence of Class C microstates than undirected mentation. These patterns suggest that during resting and transcending, there is increased reference to reality and decreased visualization, while transcending involves less saliency of internally generated thoughts, reflecting more detached and less evaluative processing. The cycling between these phases during TM may train flexible modulation of microstate parameters relevant to psychiatric disorders.
Consciousness and Cognition
March 1, 2017
Frederick Travis, Niyazi Parim, Amrita Shrivastava
Listening to live Vedic recitation produces deeper inner experiences and distinct brain patterns compared to Transcendental Meditation (TM) practice. Thirty-seven subjects reported that Vedic recitation felt deeper, more internal, and characterized by lively silence. EEG recordings showed significantly higher theta2 and alpha1 coherence in frontal, parietal, and frontal-parietal regions during Vedic recitation than during TM. Theta2 coherence, associated with attending to internal mental processes, supports subjects' descriptions of the recitations as internal vibrations rather than external sounds. Higher alpha1 coherence, seen during pure consciousness experiences in TM, supports reports of greater depth during recitation.
Brain and Cognition
February 1, 2017
Frederick Travis, Niyazi Parim
Transcendental Meditation (TM) does not involve focused attention or voluntary control of mental content, even in beginners. Eighty-seven TM practitioners with one month to five years of experience reported similar levels of transcendental experiences regardless of practice duration, with a flat regression (r=.07). Brain activity measured by eLORETA showed theta and alpha activation in the default mode network during both eyes-closed rest and TM, and beta2 and beta3 activation in the central executive network during a task. TM uniquely showed higher theta orbitofrontal activation compared to rest. These findings indicate TM should not be categorized with Focused Attention meditations, which involve gamma EEG and default mode network deactivation.
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
June 1, 2016
Frederick Travis
The paper proposes that age-appropriate experiences drive brain and cognitive development across the lifespan, extending beyond Piaget's formal operational stage. A nurturing caregiver is identified as the driver in the first two years, language learning from ages 3 to 10, and problem solving in the teenage years. To develop beyond adult rational thinking, the authors suggest that transcending thought serves as the driver, which can result from practicing meditations in the automatic self-transcending category, such as Transcendental Meditation. This hypothesis draws from three bodies of research to support the idea that specific experiences foster development at each age.
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
January 1, 2014
Frederick Travis
Transcendental experiences during meditation are characterized by the absence of time, space, and body sense. Physiologically, they are marked by slow inhalation, autonomic orientation at the onset of breath changes, and heightened α1 (8–10 Hz) frontal coherence. When these experiences integrate with waking, dreaming, and sleeping, the resulting state—called Cosmic Consciousness in the Vedic tradition—shows inner self-awareness coexisting with all three states. Physiologically, Cosmic Consciousness features α1 EEG coexisting with delta EEG during deep sleep, along with higher brain integration, greater emotional stability, and decreased anxiety during challenging tasks. Transcendental experiences may foster higher human development.
International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology
September 1, 2011
Frederick Travis
Practicing the TM-Sidhi program, which involves a combined state of fixity, transcending, and pure consciousness, produces distinct brain activity compared to the Transcendental Meditation technique alone. In experienced meditators randomly assigned to either two TM sessions or one TM session followed by TM-Sidhi practice, the TM-Sidhi condition showed higher frontal alpha1 and beta1 brainwave amplitudes. Source localization revealed alpha1 activity in right-hemisphere areas involved in object recognition and holistic word representation, such as the parahippocampus and fusiform gyrus. These patterns align with descriptions of sanyama as encompassing both specific content and holistic awareness.
The Journal of continuing education in the health professions
Marie Loiselle, Carla Brown, Frederick Travis et al.
Burnout is common among physicians and harms both individuals and institutions. A mixed methods randomized controlled trial with 40 academic physicians from 15 specialties tested the Transcendental Meditation (TM) technique. At 4 months, the TM group showed significant improvements in total burnout, emotional exhaustion, personal accomplishment, and depression compared with controls. Qualitative interviews supported these results: physicians who regularly practiced TM reported relief from burnout and depression symptoms, while the control group did not. The findings suggest TM is a viable intervention for reducing burnout and depression in academic physicians, though larger studies are needed.