Advanced meditation stabilizes cortical dynamics through inhibitory gain control linked to absorptive depth
Rajanikant Panda, Gulshan Kumar, Pablo Núñez, Balachundhar Subramaniam, Kalpana Bhandare, Saketh Malipeddi, Genevieve Major, Olivia Gosseries, Steven Laureys, Prejaas K.b. Tewarie
bioRxiv (Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) November 11, 2026 preprint DOI: 10.64898/2026.11.08.765124 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Observational within-subject comparison |
|---|---|
| Sample size | 18 |
| Population | Long-term meditators |
| Intervention | Rajyoga meditation |
| Topics | Meditation |
| Key findings | Compared with eyes-open rest, Rajyoga meditation was associated with higher beta1, beta2, and gamma power, unchanged slower bands, and lower beta-band temporal non-stationarity. Corticothalamic modeling indicated stronger cortical inhibitory gain and lower effective intracortical gain during meditation, and these estimates related to subjective absorption with trend-level links to dissociation. The authors propose that meditation stabilizes cortical dynamics through inhibitory gain control. |
Abstract
Advanced meditation can shift conscious experience from ordinary body- and world-centered awareness toward absorption, detachment and dissociation-like states, yet the neural mechanisms that stabilize these immersive states remain unclear. We studied 18 long-term meditators during eyes-open rest and Rajyoga meditation, a practice in which practitioners reduce bodily identification while enhancing inner self-awareness. We combined multidimensional neural approach including frontal EEG spectral power, temporal non-stationarity and corticothalamic neural-field modeling, because these measures probe underlying complementary levels of the brain state transition: the strength of neural activity, its temporal stability, and the circuit level inhibition-excitation gain mechanisms. This framework is especially relevant to meditation because oscillatory, temporal organization may distinguish stable meditative states, and corticothalamic dynamics are closely linked to arousal and conscious state regulation. We correlated meditation induced neural changes with subjective ratings of absorption and dissociation. Compared with rest, meditation was associated with higher beta1, beta2 and gamma power, with no change in the slower bands (delta, theta and alpha), and with lower beta-band temporal non-stationarity, indicating a more stable expression of fast cortical dynamics. Fitting the corticothalamic model to the EEG spectra showed stronger cortical inhibitory gain and lower effective intracortical gain, placing meditation in an inhibition-dominant regime, with lower gain in the loop between excitatory and inhibitory neurons within the cortex. During meditation, these model estimates were related to subjective absorption and showed trend level links with dissociation. Together, these findings suggest that Rajyoga meditation stabilizes cortical dynamics through inhibitory gain control, linking absorption (deep and steady attention on the meditation) to dissociation-like self-detachment.
Comparable studies
Other experimental studies on meditation, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| The benefits of being present: Mindfulness and its role in psychological well-being. Cancer patients (clinical intervention study) | 2003 | Mixed methods: scale development, correlational, quasi-experimental, laboratory, experience-sampling, and clinical intervention study | |
| Loving-kindness meditation increases social connectedness. | 2008 | Controlled laboratory experiment | |
| Mindfulness and mind-wandering: Finding convergence through opposing constructs. | 2012 | Two studies: correlational study and experimental study | |
| Mental Training Enhances Attentional Stability: Neural and Behavioral Evidence | 2009 | Experimental study | |
| Mindfulness meditation and substance use in an incarcerated population. Incarcerated population | 2006 | Quasi-experimental with treatment-as-usual control condition |