International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology

Mindfulness meditation alters alpha amplitude without affecting arousal.

International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology June 14, 2025 Alexander T. Duda, Adam R. Clarke, Robert J. Barry et al. 3 citations

Mindfulness meditation has experienced a surge in popularity due to its well-documented health benefits, although the mechanisms driving these benefits are not clearly understood. This study explored whether mindfulness of breathing meditation induces changes in brain function and physiological responses related to attention or arousal mechanisms. Electroencephalography (EEG) and skin...

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2025.113197 Full text Alpha EEG Scl Attentional control +9

Mindfulness meditation alters neural oscillations independently of arousal.

International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology November 1, 2024 Alexander T. Duda, Adam R. Clarke, Robert J. Barry

Neuroscience has identified that mindfulness meditation induces a state of relaxed alertness, characterised by changes in theta and alpha oscillations and reduced sympathetic arousal, although the underlying mechanisms remain unclear. This study aims to address this gap by examining changes in neural oscillations and arousal during mindfulness meditation using both traditional and data-driven...

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2024.112439 Full text Meditation Mindfulness Arousal Breath +3

Processing of semantic incongruency at the onset of sleep: An auditory N400 evoked potential study.

International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology June 1, 2023 Sarah Diezig, Melissa Spaar, Simone Denzer et al.

The ability to organize self-generated thought into coherent, meaningful semantic representations is a central aspect of human cognition and undergoes regular alterations throughout the day. To investigate whether changes in semantic processing might explain the loss of coherence, logic, and voluntary control over thinking typically accompanying the transition to sleep, we recorded N400 evoked...

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2023.03.006 Full text Event-related potentials Formal thought disorder N400 Self-generated thought +2

Traditional Buddhist meditations reduce mismatch negativity in experienced monk- practitioners.

International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology November 1, 2022 Svyatoslav Medvedev, Julia Boytsova, Y A Bubeev et al.

Thousand-year-old Buddhist traditions have developed a wide range of methods for the subjective exploration of consciousness through meditation. Combining their subjective research with the possibilities of modern neuroscience can help us better understand the physiological mechanisms of consciousness. Therefore, we have been guided by specifically Buddhist explanations when studying the...

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2022.08.011 Full text Auditory erps Auditory attention Buddhist meditations Mismatch negativity

Electroencephalographic correlates of states of concentrative meditation.

International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology December 2016 Dylan DeLosAngeles, Graham Williams, John Burston et al.

Meditative techniques aim for and meditators report states of mental alertness and focus, concurrent with physical and emotional calm. We aimed to determine the electroencephalographic (EEG) correlates of five states of Buddhist concentrative meditation, particularly addressing a correlation with meditative level. We studied 12 meditators and 12 pair-matched meditation-naïve participants using...

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2016.09.020 Full text Absorptions Buddhist meditation Focused attention Independent component analysis +2

Slow cortical potentials and "inner time consciousness" - A neuro-phenomenal hypothesis about the "width of present".

International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology May 1, 2016 Georg Northoff

William James postulated a "stream of consciousness" that presupposes temporal continuity. The neuronal mechanisms underlying the construction of such temporal continuity remain unclear, however, in my contribution, I propose a neuro-phenomenal hypothesis that is based on slow cortical potentials and their extension of the present moment as described in the phenomenal term of "width of...

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2015.02.012 Full text Difference-based coding Low-frequency fluctuations Nrem sleep Resting state +4

Quantum neurophysics: From non-living matter to quantum neurobiology and psychopathology.

International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology May 1, 2016 Sultan Tarlacı, Massimo Pregnolato

The concepts of quantum brain, quantum mind and quantum consciousness have been increasingly gaining currency in recent years, both in scientific papers and in the popular press. In fact, the concept of the quantum brain is a general framework. Included in it are basically four main sub-headings. These are often incorrectly used interchangeably. The first of these and the one which started the...

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2015.02.016 Full text Consciousness Measurement problem Psychopathology Quantum biology +2

Spectral power and functional connectivity changes during mindfulness meditation with eyes open: A magnetoencephalography (MEG) study in long-term meditators.

International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology October 1, 2015 W P Wong, David A Camfield, W Woods et al.

Whilst a number of previous studies have been conducted in order to investigate functional brain changes associated with eyes-closed meditation techniques, there is a relative scarcity in the literature with regards to changes occurring during eyes-open meditation. The current project used magnetoencephalography (MEG) to investigate differences in spectral power and functional connectivity...

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2015.07.006 Full text Default mode network Meditation Mindfulness Eyes-open resting state +5

Is meditation always relaxing? Investigating heart rate, heart rate variability, experienced effort and likeability during training of three types of meditation.

International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology July 1, 2015 Anna-Lena Lumma, Bethany E Kok, Tania Singer

Meditation is often associated with a relaxed state of the body. However, meditation can also be regarded as a type of mental task and training, associated with mental effort and physiological arousal. The cardiovascular effects of meditation may vary depending on the type of meditation, degree of mental effort, and amount of training. In the current study we assessed heart rate (HR),...

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2015.04.017 Full text Meditation Effort Enjoyment Heart rate variability +1

Mindfulness (Vipassana) meditation: effects on P3b event-related potential and heart rate variability.

International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology November 1, 2013 Luis Carlos Delgado-Pastor, Pandelis Perakakis, Pailoor Subramanya et al.

The concept of mindfulness is based on Vipassana, a Buddhist meditation technique. The present study examines the physiological indices of attention and autonomic regulation in experienced Vipassana meditators to test the claim that mindfulness is an effective therapeutic tool due to its effects on increasing awareness of present experience and emotional self-regulation. Ten male experienced...

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2013.07.006 Full text Mindfulness Vipassana Attention Emotional regulation +2

Mindfulness meditation, well-being, and heart rate variability: a preliminary investigation into the impact of intensive Vipassana meditation.

International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology September 1, 2013 Jonathan R. Krygier, James A J Heathers, Sara Shahrestani et al.

Mindfulness meditation has beneficial effects on brain and body, yet the impact of Vipassana, a type of mindfulness meditation, on heart rate variability (HRV) - a psychophysiological marker of mental and physical health - is unknown. We hypothesised increases in measures of well-being and HRV, and decreases in ill-being after training in Vipassana compared to before (time effects), during the...

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2013.06.017 Full text Meditation Mindfulness Vipassana Heart rate variability +3

Ultradian and circadian modulation of dream recall: EEG correlates and age effects.

International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology August 1, 2013 Sarah Laxhmi Chellappa, Christian Cajochen

Dreaming occurs during non-rapid eye movement (NREM) and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, which both are regulated by homeostatic, ultradian, and circadian processes. However, the magnitude of how ultradian REM and NREM sleep and its EEG correlates impact onto dream recall remains fairly unknown. In this review, we address three questions: 1. Is there an ultradian NREM-REM sleep modulation in...

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2013.03.006 Full text Dreaming Brain topography Circadian system Nrem sleep +1

Comparison of coherence, amplitude, and eLORETA patterns during Transcendental Meditation and TM-Sidhi practice.

International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology September 1, 2011 Frederick Travis

This random-assignment study compared coherence, amplitude, and eLORETA patterns during practice of the Transcendental Meditation (TM) and the TM-Sidhi programs. The TM technique involves systematic transcending of contents of experience to a state of pure consciousness. The TM-Sidhi program involves sanyama-the simultaneous experience of dhārānā (fixity), dhyāna (transcending) and samādhi...

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2011.06.011 Full text

Activation of the anterior prefrontal cortex and serotonergic system is associated with improvements in mood and EEG changes induced by Zen meditation practice in novices.

International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology May 1, 2011 Xinjun Yu, Masaki Fumoto, Yasushi Nakatani et al.

To gain insight into the neurophysiological mechanisms involved in Zen meditation, we evaluated the effects of focused attention (FA) on breathing movements in the lower abdomen (Tanden) in novices. We investigated hemodynamic changes in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), an attention-related brain region, using 24-channel near-infrared spectroscopy during a 20-minute session of FA on Tanden...

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2011.02.004 Full text

Mindfulness meditation associated with alterations in bottom-up processing: psychophysiological evidence for reduced reactivity.

International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology November 2010 Paul A M Van den Hurk, Barbara H Janssen, Fabio Giommi et al.

Mental training by meditation has been related to changes in high-level cognitive functions that involve top-down processing. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the practice of meditation is also related to alterations in low-level, bottom-up processing. Therefore, intersensory facilitation (IF) effects in a group of mindfulness meditators (MM) were compared to IF effects in an...

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2010.07.002 Full text

Early-night serial awakenings as a new paradigm for studies on NREM dreaming.

International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology October 1, 2009 Valdas Noreika, Katja Valli, Hetti Lahtela et al.

A new experimental paradigm called "Early-Night Serial Awakenings" (ENSA) was explored to find out its strengths and weaknesses for psychophysiological studies of NREM sleep dreaming. Five participants spent 20 experimental nights in the sleep laboratory, and were serially awakened with approximately 24-minute intervals during Stages 2 and 3 of NREM sleep. As a total, 164 awakenings were...

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2009.06.002 Full text

Meditation (Vipassana) and the P3a event-related brain potential.

International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology April 1, 2009 B Rael Cahn, John Polich

A three-stimulus auditory oddball series was presented to experienced Vipassana meditators during meditation and a control thought period to elicit event-related brain potentials (ERPs) in the two different mental states. The stimuli consisted of a frequent standard tone (500 Hz), an infrequent oddball tone (1000 Hz), and an infrequent distracter (white noise), with all stimuli passively...

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2008.03.013 Full text

Effects of Transcendental Meditation practice on brain functioning and stress reactivity in college students.

International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology February 1, 2009 Fred Travis, David A F Haaga, John Hagelin et al.

This randomized controlled trial investigated effects of Transcendental Meditation (TM) practice on Brain Integration Scale scores (broadband frontal coherence, power ratios, and preparatory brain responses), electrodermal habituation to 85-dB tones, sleepiness, heart rate, respiratory sinus arrhythmia, and P300 latencies in 50 college students. After pretest, students were randomly assigned to...

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2008.09.007 Full text

Synergetics of brain function.

International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology May 1, 2006 Hermann Haken

Several brain functions such as movement coordination and visual perception are analysed in terms of synergetics, an interdisciplinary field of research dealing with spontaneous pattern formation. Accordingly, the brain is conceived as a self-organizing system operating close to instabilities where its activities are governed by collective variables, the order parameters, that enslave the...

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2005.12.006 Full text

Changes in EEG and autonomic nervous activity during meditation and their association with personality traits.

International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology February 1, 2005 Tetsuya Takahashi, Tetsuhito Murata, Toshihiko Hamada et al.

Meditation is the attainment of a restful yet fully alert physical and mental state practiced by many as a self-regulatory approach to emotion management, but the psychophysiological properties and personality traits that characterize this meditative state have not been adequately studied. We quantitatively analyzed changes in psychophysiological parameters during Zen meditation in 20 normal...

DOI: 10.1016/j.ijpsycho.2004.07.004 Full text

Changes in neural complexity during the perception of 3D images using random dot stereograms.

International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology April 2003 Adrian P Burgess, Joseph Rehman, John D Williams

One developing theme in consciousness research is that consciousness is not the product of any specific component of the brain, rather it is an emergent property of the changing patterns of connectivity between different specialised functional components. For example, the dynamic core hypothesis proposes that conscious experience requires high levels of neural complexity, where complexity is...

DOI: 10.1016/s0167-8760(03)00002-3 Full text

Semantic analysis of auditory input during sleep: studies with event related potentials.

International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology December 2002 Hélène Bastuji, Fabien Perrin, Luis Garcia-Larrea

This review summarises the results of event-related potentials studies exploring the extent to which the human brain can extract semantic information from external stimuli during sleep. The persistence of a differential response to the subject's own name, relative to any other proper name, during stage 2 (S2) and paradoxical (REM) sleep (PS) suggests that the brain remains able to discriminate...

DOI: 10.1016/s0167-8760(02)00116-2 Full text

Probing awareness during sleep with the auditory odd-ball paradigm.

International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology December 2002 Kimberly A Cote

During the waking state, a late component of the auditory event-related potential, P300, is elicited when subjects detect a rare 'target' stimulus. It is usually not elicited when subjects either ignore or fail to detect the stimulus. The presence of P300 is therefore thought to reflect conscious processing of the stimulus. Since P300 has been shown to be an attention-dependent cognitive...

DOI: 10.1016/s0167-8760(02)00114-9 Full text

Brain electrical activity and subjective experience during altered states of consciousness: ganzfeld and hypnagogic states.

International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology November 2002 Jirí Wackermann, Peter Pütz, Simone Büchi et al.

Manifestations of experimentally induced altered states of consciousness in the brain's electrical activity as well as in subjective experience were explored via the hypnagogic state at sleep onset, and the state induced by exposure to an unstructured perceptual field (ganzfeld). Twelve female paid volunteers participated in sessions involving sleep onset, ganzfeld, and eyes-closed relaxed...

DOI: 10.1016/s0167-8760(02)00070-3 Full text

Autonomic and EEG patterns distinguish transcending from other experiences during Transcendental Meditation practice.

International journal of psychophysiology : official journal of the International Organization of Psychophysiology August 2001 F Travis

This study compared EEG and autonomic patterns during transcending to "other" experiences during Transcendental Meditation (TM) practice. To correlate specific meditation experiences with physiological measures, the experimenter rang a bell three times during the TM session. Subjects categorized their experiences around each bell ring. Transcending, in comparison to "other" experiences during...

DOI: 10.1016/s0167-8760(01)00143-x Full text

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