Use EGG to Explore the Impact of Mindfulness Meditation on Physiological and Neurological Responses

This study proposed to use wearable EEG to study the impact of vipassana mindfulness practice on beginner's physiological and neurological responses. Mindfulness meditation has been shown to have numerous benefits, including stress reduction, improved attention and cognitive function, and enhanced emotional regulation. The roots of mindfulness meditation in Buddhism emphasize cultivating present-moment awareness and insight. However, the neural mechanisms together with physiological mechanism and their interaction underlying these benefits remain poorly understood.

Method: One middle age man (50 years old) participated in this longitudinal study using wearable EEG to investigate the neurophysiological change during a one-month consecutive vipassana mindfulness practice. Both EEG and heart rate responses were recorded each time, before (5 minutes), during (20 minutes), and after (5 minutes) meditation sessions. The EEG and HR data were analyzed by Matlab and EEGlab to examine changes in brainwave activity and heart rate.

Results: alpha peak frequency (APF) is significantly lower after mindfulness meditation, as shown by comparison of APF before mindfulness (pre-5) and during mindfulness practice (med-20), and comparison between APF of pre-5 and after mindfulness practice (post-5). The same is with the beta peak power. While for theta peak frequency, it is significant lower during mindfulness meditation (med-20), when comparing to either pre-5 or post-5. See figure 1a. However, peak power index is not so sensitive, and it is more obvious in theta wave band. That is, the theta power peak is significantly lower after meditation, as can be observed in comparison between pre-5 and med-20, also between pre-5 and med-20. See figure 1b. STATE Heart-mean (bpm) Heart-std(bmp) pre-5 69.88 3.88 med-20 68.36 2.81 post-5 69.55 4.13 t-value test (pre-med) 0.0694 0.0003 t-value test (pre-post) 0.7934 0.3656 t-value test (post-med) 0.3193 0.0001 Table 1. The difference of Heart rate (mean and SD) in before (pre-5), during (med-20) and after (post-5)mindfulness meditation. We find significant change in standard deviation (SD) of heart rate between meditation and non-meditation mental states, as shown in table 1. The study provides insights into the underlying neurophysiological mechanisms of mindfulness meditation using wearable EEG devices. It demonstrates that in term of EEG measurement, spectrum frequency can be more sensitive than spectrum power; also heart rate variability as measured by SD is more sensitive to mean of HR. The proposed study contributes to the literature by using wearable EEG devices to collect data in a more accessible and convenient manner.