Brain electric activity and meditation

Dietrich Lehmann

Abstract. Approaches to the analysis of brain electric data (1), and
interpretations of the results will be discussed. Own results during
particular states of consciousness, and specifically during meditation will
be reviewed (2).

Brain-mind work has several major characteristics. Central for
this review are the state-dependency and the discontinuous changes of state
in the sub-second range (microstates).
(1) Microstate analysis (durations, occurrencies and concatenations (syntax)
of these "atoms of mentation"), LORETA brain electric tomography
(millisecond functional 3-D tomography), intracerebral source coherencies (using LORETA modeling), and source modeling in the frequency domain are the main tools.
(2) With these tools, subjective experiences were examined (imagery and abstract thought, positive and negative emotions, brain activity in schizophrenia).
Specifically, we recently studied two individual, experienced meditators with these tools during meditation.

Much earlier, we had examined two groups of meditators (TM and Zen)
with conventional power spectral EEG analysis.