An analysis of dimensional complexity of brain electrical activityduring meditation
Pradhan, N.
Narayana Dutt, D.
Dept. of Psychopharmacology, NIMHANS, Bangalore ;
Abstract
Meditation is considered to be an altered state of consciousness
associated with heightened cognitive functions and transcendental
experiences. The neural dynamics in meditative states needs to be
explored and an objective analysis of such States is required. Here, the
authors investigate the dimensional complexity of EEG signals of two
subjects of yogic meditation from a renowned school of yoga. Four
channels of EEG have been analysed in terms of compressed spectral array
(CSA), running fractal dimension and running attractor dimension during
the process of meditation. The CSA yields some interesting features. The
running fractal plots show low average fractal dimension values during
pre-meditative and post-meditative periods. During meditation there is
an increase in the average fractal dimension value. The attractor
dimension values also show changes. As the meditation progresses the
average attractor dimension rises to a value which is more than that for
the premeditative period. It shows a decline during some stages of
meditation. The results indicate that the attractor dimension estimation
is more effective in depicting the dynamics of the brain in a highly
complex state. The attractor dimension analysis of meditative state is
compared with that of fractal dimension and CSA. The investigation
reveals that chaotic dynamics provides a mechanism for low dimensional
control of neuronal oscillations in meditation
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