A Measure of Phase Locking of Cortico-cortical Brain Rhythms in Meditation EEG

Phase synchrony analysis of EEG signals from 23 meditators during meditation reveals that an Improved Phase Locking Value (IPLV) method outperforms the standard Phase Locking Value (PLV) in detecting neural synchrony. Neural synchrony modulated the EEG signals independently, offering a better interpretation of functional connectivity between cortical areas during meditation. The work uses phase synchrony to study simultaneous peaks and valleys in EEG activity, capturing transient spectral perturbations across different brain regions.

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Abstract

The neural dynamics and its interpretation is a bit challenging task in the measure of synchronization. In this paper, in order to infer the neural mechanism in a different cognitive activity like meditation was observed through EEG signal and was investigated using Phase Synchrony (PS) estimation method. EEG signals are highly oscillating in nature. Its interpretation, on generalized phase synchrony, has studied to extract neural information transfer and neuronal dynamics of a complex system of the brain, which results from time-varying interactions of several subsystems. In this work, phase synchrony is used to study the simultaneous occurrences of peaks and valleys within EEG activities during meditation to obtain the transient spectral perturbation between different cortical areas. The result of both Phase Locking Value (PLV) and Improved Phase Locking Value (IPLV) has been shown and analyzed in meditation EEG signals. IPLV outperforms the results of PLV in EEG signal obtained from 23 meditators during meditation. Combining, we found that neural synchrony modulated the EEG signals independently. This finding has strong implication for interpretation of functional connectivity of EEG signal during meditation.