Open-eyed meditation suppresses functional connectivity in EEG across a broad frequency range

Meditation produces a broad-frequency (15–200 Hz) state-dependent decrease in functional connectivity (phase consistency) between brain regions, while simultaneously enhancing power spectral density (PSD) across the same range. Visual gratings, which boost narrow-band gamma power, reduced gamma FC in both meditators and controls. Aging and gender affected FC only in narrow alpha (8–12 Hz) and high-beta (20–36 Hz) bands. Average referencing severely distorted FC estimates, yielding uninterpretable results. These findings indicate distinct neural mechanisms for meditation, healthy aging, and vision, and caution against using average referencing in phase-based connectivity studies.

Study at a glance

Abstract

Abstract Functional connectivity (FC) is a statistical measure that reflects the degree of phase consistency between two signals and provides insights about potential interactions between two brain regions. Previous studies have reported conflicting results on the effect of meditation on FC, with some showing enhancement while others reporting suppression of FC. However, even though meditation increases power over a broad frequency range between 15-200 Hz and beyond, most FC studies have reported changes over fixed and narrow frequency bands below 50 Hz. Further, meditation-induced changes in power spectral density (PSD) and FC have never been compared with changes with other factors such as age, gender and stimulus. We recorded electroencephalogram (EEG) from open-eyed meditators (N=35) and their gender-and age-matched controls (N=36) and found that meditation was associated with a‘state’ decrease in FC across a broad frequency range (15-200 Hz), while PSD showed both ‘trait’ and ‘state’ enhancement. Furthermore, visual gratings, which are known to enhance narrow-band gamma power, led to reduced gamma FC in both meditators and controls. We also compared the effect of aging and gender on a different dataset of healthy middle-aged (N=78) and elderly (N=89) participants and found differences in distinct frequency bands that were limited to a narrow range. We also found that often-used average referencing heavily distorted the FC and gave uninterpretable results. Overall, our results suggest distinct neural mechanisms underlying healthy aging, vision, and meditation and further recommend caution while using average referencing to study phase-based metrics. Significance statement Meditation research has reported inconsistent effects on functional connectivity (FC), partly because most studies examined only narrow low-frequency bands despite meditation altering brain activity across a much broader frequency band. This study demonstrates that meditation produces a broadband state reduction in FC across 15–200 Hz, while simultaneously enhancing power. In contrast, healthy aging, gender, and visual stimulation showed frequency-specific effects confined to alpha (8-12 Hz) and high-beta (20-36 Hz) bands, highlighting meditation’s unique large-scale neural signature. The study also shows that average referencing can severely distort phase-based FC estimates, leading to misleading interpretations. These findings clarify conflicting literature, distinguish meditation from other neural modulators, and provide important methodological guidance for EEG connectivity research.