Abstract
The dynamic structure of the EEG signal is characterized by segments of synchronization and desynchronization. In this paper, the frequency and duration of these segments were monitored during calm meditation and insight meditation in experienced and naive meditators.
A newly developed methodology based on complex continuous wavelet coherence was used to estimate these parameters. The durations highly depend on frequency band and vary from 60 ms to 250 ms.
A shorter duration and a lower frequency of synchronization were found for experienced meditators during both types of meditations for the real and the imaginary parts of the complex continuous wavelet coherence. The greatest duration differences were in the gamma band, which may be associated with handling attention during meditation, whereas the differences in the alpha band were most significant for frequency.
Combining the two parameters resulted in the total duration of the synchronization, which has discriminative accuracy of up to 100% and appears to be a sensitive parameter of the length of training of meditators.