The Effect of Robot-Guided Meditation on Intra-Brain EEG Phase Synchronization
IEEE/ACM International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction March 8, 2021 Sue Yoon, M. Alimardani, K. Hiraki
Practicing mindfulness meditation with a social robot, rather than listening to a lecture from the same robot, alters brain activity. Electroencephalography (EEG) recordings showed that the meditation group had significantly lower global phase synchrony in the beta frequency band compared to the control group. Lower beta synchrony has previously been linked to reduced cognitive processing and a mindful state in experienced meditators. The findings suggest that socially-assistive robots could be integrated into mental healthcare to deliver and monitor meditation interventions, and they introduce new measures for objectively tracking how human-robot interaction affects neurophysiological responses.