The American Journal of Chinese Medicine
January 1, 2003
Pei-Chen Lo, Ming-Liang Huang, Kang-Ming Chang
64 citations
Based on experimental results and practitioners' subjective experience, hypotheses are proposed to account for meditative phenomena in Zen-Buddhist practice. Orthodox practitioners aiming to prove the most original true-self discover inner energy or light, perceived as resonance, which optimizes physiological and mental health. In a meditation experiment, a significant correlation was observed between perception of inner light and EEG alpha blockage. During a blessing unknown to subjects, significant alpha blocking occurred in those who had meditated for years to resonate with inner light. This offers new insight into how meditation benefits health.
Biomedical Engineering Applications Basis and Communications
August 25, 2005
Kang-Ming Chang, Pei-Chen Lo
14 citations
Meditation alters brain electrical activity in ways that can be detected with EEG. This paper introduces a new automated method for scoring meditation stages from EEG recordings, using wavelet analysis and fuzzy c-means clustering with novel cluster-management strategies to produce interpretations that more closely match expert visual inspection. The resulting gray-scale chart of EEG features reveals five distinct meditation scenarios that differ from those of control subjects.
Journal of Behavioral and Brain Science
January 1, 2017
Pei-Chen Lo, Tian Wu, Fang-Ling Liu
4 citations
During Zen meditation, the brain's frontal midline regions show more stable and stronger neural interconnectivity compared to normal resting states. Using 30-channel EEG recordings, the study analyzed nonlinear interdependence between brain regions by reconstructing phase trajectories and computing similarity-index matrices every 5 milliseconds. These microstate matrices were classified into macrostates via K-means clustering. Zen-meditation EEG exhibited stationary and robust coupling among frontal midline neural oscillators, while resting EEG showed connectivity that drifted more frequently from the midline and extended to inferior brain regions.
Journal of Behavioral and Brain Science
January 1, 2021
Pei-Chen Lo, Nasir Hussain
1 citation
During Zen meditation, practitioners focus on three brain regions simultaneously, producing widespread high-frequency brainwave activity above 16 Hz, in contrast to resting EEG which is dominated by lower frequencies around 14.4 Hz. Using an unsupervised machine learning technique called self-organizing maps on EEG data from 30 participants, the study found that Zen meditation EEG shows globally high-frequency oscillations throughout the recording. The authors note that while beta waves are typically associated with active concentration, they are also induced by benzodiazepine medications for anxiety and insomnia. They hypothesize that Zen practitioners achieve a unique state of mindful concentration combined with optimal body-mind relaxation.
International Conference on Systems and Informatics
November 1, 2019
Pei-Chen Lo, Yizhou Wu
A modified self-organizing map (IwSOM) that weights input features differently is used to analyze cross-bifrequency maps of heart rate and respiration during Zen-meditation and resting states. The cross-bispectral analysis quantifies quadratic phase coupling between cardiac and respiratory oscillators. IwSOM classification shows that the rest session of the control group is characterized by coupling frequencies where respiratory rate resonates with heart rate at 0.05 Hz. Zen-meditation exhibits strong resonance between heart rate and respiration in the same low frequency range, indicating distinct cardiorespiratory interaction patterns during meditation compared to rest.
Evidence-based complementary and alternative medicine : eCAM
March 1, 2009
Chuan-Yi Liu, Ching-Chuan Wei, Pei-Chen Lo
Zen-meditation practitioners showed greater increases in blood-pressure-waveform parameters reflecting heart ejection ability, aorta compliance, arterial elasticity, and aortic valve function, along with a greater decrease in a parameter indicating peripheral resistance, compared to a control group. All changes were statistically significant. The authors infer that Zen meditation may effectively improve characteristics of the cardiovascular system.
Biomedical research (Tokyo, Japan)
October 1, 2008
Shr-Da Wu, Pei-Chen Lo
Inward-attention meditation, a technique practiced in Zen that focuses attention inward rather than on slow breathing, shifts the autonomic nervous system toward greater parasympathetic activity. Experienced meditators showed a decrease in the LF/HF ratio and LF norm and an increase in HF norm compared to non-meditators during rest, indicating improved sympathovagal balance. Regular oscillating rhythms of heart rate appeared in the high-frequency band of heart rate variability when the LF/HF ratio was small, a pattern previously observed only in the low-frequency band during slow breathing. These oscillations had smaller amplitude in the high-frequency band.