Long-term meditators self-induce high-amplitude gamma synchrony during mental practice

TLDR

Meditation is viewed as mental training that can produce lasting cognitive and emotional changes, yet its neural mechanisms remain poorly understood. Long‑term Buddhist practitioners can self‑induce sustained high‑amplitude gamma oscillations and phase synchrony during meditation, showing higher gamma/slow‑wave ratios at baseline and throughout meditation compared to controls, suggesting temporal integrative mechanisms and potential short‑term and long‑term neural changes.

Abstract

Practitioners understand “meditation,” or mental training, to be a process of familiarization with one's own mental life leading to long-lasting changes in cognition and emotion. Little is known about this process and its impact on the brain. Here we find that long-term Buddhist practitioners self-induce sustained electroencephalographic high-amplitude gamma-band oscillations and phase-synchrony during meditation. These electroencephalogram patterns differ from those of controls, in particular over lateral frontoparietal electrodes. In addition, the ratio of gamma-band activity (25-42 Hz) to slow oscillatory activity (4-13 Hz) is initially higher in the resting baseline before meditation for the practitioners than the controls over medial frontoparietal electrodes. This difference increases sharply during meditation over most of the scalp electrodes and remains higher than the initial baseline in the postmeditation baseline. These data suggest that mental training involves temporal integrative mechanisms and may induce short-term and long-term neural changes.