Neurodynamic profiles in the alpha band distinguish different forms of meditation.

Overview

1. School of Psychology, University of Ottawa, 136 Jean-Jacques Lussier, Ottawa, ON K1N 6N5, Canada
2. The Royal’s Institute of Mental Health Research & University of Ottawa, Brain and Mind Research Institute, Centre for Neural Dynamics, Faculty of Medicine, University of Ottawa, 145 Carling Avenue, Rm. 6435, Ottawa, ON K1Z 7K4, Canada
3. Centre for Consciousness Studies, Department of Neurophysiology, National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences, Hosur Road, Bengaluru, 560029, Karnataka, India

Abstract

Different forms of meditation, like Vipassana and Shoonya, require distinct attentional features. For instance, Vipassana, which involves systematically scanning different body parts, may demand a sustained yet dynamic focus with a temporally stable and regular attentional emphasis. In contrast, Shoonya meditation has been described as involving a non-directed or defocused attentional stance, likely with a temporally variable and irregular attentional flow. We used electroencephalography (EEG) to examine whether these differences could correspond to distinct neurodynamic patterns in the alpha band. We measured two time-resolved dynamic measures including phase-based Peak Frequency Sliding (PFS), indexing fine-grained millisecond temporal resolution, and Power Sliding (PS), indexing oscillatory amplitude. Beyond mean values, we additionally quantified the temporal dynamics of PFS and PS using coefficient of variation (CV) as an index of variability, and permutation entropy (PE) as a measure of temporal irregularity. While mean differences between the two practices were observed only for PS (and not PFS), their dynamic variants more robustly distinguished the two practices. Specifically, Vipassana exhibited lower CV and PE in both PFS and PS compared to Shoonya. These findings indicate that the two practices differ more strongly in the temporal-dynamic organization of alpha-band activity than in their static averaged measures. More broadly, they support the view that dynamic features such as variability and temporal irregularity may be shared by both brain and experience, as their “common currency,” during different contemplative practices.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

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Data

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• openneuro:ds003969, at OpenNeuro; found in “Data availability”

Data availability

The data underlying this article are publicly available in OpenNeuro at https://openneuro.org/datasets/ds003969/versions/1.0.0.

Reproduced under the paper's license (CC BY), from the paper cited above.

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Version 1, 27 September 2026: the first record

Recorded: type, language, journal, volume, issue, pages, dates, 7 authors, 5 keywords, 77 references.

Cite

This paper

Ventura, B., Buccellato, A., Malipeddi, S., Venugopal, R., Nagendra, R. P., Kutty, B. M., & Northoff, G. (2026). Neurodynamic profiles in the alpha band distinguish different forms of meditation. Neuroscience of consciousness, 2026(1), niag036. https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niag036

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