Weeks Of Meditation Research Articles

Carotid-body modulation through meditation in stage-I hypertensive subjects: Study protocol of a randomized and controlled study

Adjunctive therapy for hypertension is in high demand for clinical research. Therefore, several meta-analyses have provided sufficient evidence for meditation as an adjunct therapy, without being anchored on reliable physiological grounds. Meditation modulates the autonomic nervous system. Herein, we propose a hierarchical-dependent effect for the carotid body (CB) in attenuating blood pressure (BP) and ventilatory variability (VV) fine-tuning due to known nerve connections between the CB, prefrontal brain, hypothalamus, and solitary tract nucleus. The aim of this exploratory study was to investigate the role of CB in the possible decrease in BP and changes in VV that could occur in response to meditation. This was a prospective, single-center, parallel-group, randomized, controlled clinical trial with concealed allocation. Eligible adult subjects of both sexes with stage 1 hypertension will be randomized into 1 of 2 groups: transcendental meditation or a control group. Subjects will be invited to 3 visits after randomization and 2 additional visits after completing 8 weeks of meditation or waiting-list control. Thus, subjects will undergo BP measurements in normoxia and hyperoxia, VV measurements using the Poincaré method at rest and during exercise, and CB activity measurement in the laboratory. The primary outcome of this study was the detection of changes in BP and CB activity after 8 weeks. Our secondary outcome was the detection of changes in the VV at rest and during exercise. We predict that interactions between hyperoxic deactivation of CB and meditation; Will reduce BP beyond stand-alone intervention or alternatively; Meditation will significantly attenuate the effects of hyperoxia as a stand-alone intervention. In addition, VV can be changed, partially mediated by a reduction in CB activity. Trial registration number: ReBEC registry (RBR-55n74zm). Stage: pre-results.

Effect of Practicing Meditation, Pranayama, and Yoga on the Mental Health of Female Undergraduate Medical Students: An Interventional Study

BackgroundMedical education is a rigorous formal education with a vast syllabus. Burnout and stresses are common among medical students and more prominent in females. Female medical students suffer from a higher level of stress than male medical students. For the improvement of physical and mental health, meditation, pranayama, and yoga are some of the ancient techniques. Meditation is a technique of focusing the mind on a target like an object, activity, or any thought. Pranayama is an ancient yogic practice focusing on the breath. Yoga is a combination of physical, mental, and spiritual dimensions that has the potential to improve mental and physical health.ObjectiveThis study aimed to find the effect of meditation, pranayama, and yoga on the improvement of mental health among female undergraduate medical students.Materials and methodsThis was an interventional study. A total of 105 females with a median age of 19 years (first quartile - third quartile: 18-20) first-year undergraduate medical students were recruited for this study. They were randomly allocated to control, meditation, pranayama, and yoga groups. The control group did not practice any form of meditation, pranayama, or yoga. The rest of the group practiced a designated program for their group, six days a week for 12 weeks. The anxiety, depression, anger, and sense of well-being were assessed by a validated self-administered questionnaire developed by the Defence Institute of Physiology and Allied Sciences, New Delhi before starting the study, at six weeks, and at 12 weeks after the intervention. Inter-group levels of anxiety, depression, anger, and well-being were compared by the Kruskal-Wallis test with Dunn’s posthoc test. Intra-group parameters at baseline, at six weeks, and at 12 weeks after the intervention was tested by Friedman’s test.ResultThe age (years) (p = 0.07), height (cm) (p = 0.98), and weight (kg) (p = 0.26) of participants among groups were similar. Anxiety, depression, and anger significantly decreased after six weeks in all three intervention groups. A further decrement was seen after 12 weeks of meditation, pranayama, and yoga. The maximum effect was seen in the yoga group. A sense of well-being was improved after practicing all types of interventions. However, meditation was found to increase a sense of well-being to the highest level compared to pranayama and yoga.ConclusionIntroduction and sustainment of meditation, pranayama, and yoga programs for first-year female undergraduate medical students may help reduce anxiety, depression, and anger and promote a sense of well-being. Although a six-week program helps to improve mental health, a 12-week program helps in further improvement. A yoga program is more effective for improving the mental health of the students in comparison with pranayama and meditation.

Effect of meditation on emotional response: An EEG-based study

Abstract Meditation is one of the accepted practices to flourish in life. Emotional harmony is essential for personal well-being. In this paper, the effect of meditation on emotional response using EEG is investigated. The simple meditative technique such as focused attention on breathing is taught to the subjects. EEG is recorded at the beginning of meditation experiment and after eight weeks of regular meditation (every day 20 min). EEG signals are recorded using 14 electrodes EMOTIV EPOC+ device. The asymmetry of band power (theta, alpha and beta band) and Hjorth features are used as emotion-specific EEG features. The average effect of these features is more on frontal asymmetry. EEG functional connectivity of selected brain regions during four emotions (Happy, Angry, Sad, and Relax) in pre and post-meditation state is examined. The results revealed that more coherence in the post-meditation is found for all emotions. The K-Nearest Neighbors (K-NN) classifier is used and emotion classification accuracy after 8 weeks of meditation is decreased. This indicates the divergence of four emotions (happy, angry, sad, and relax) are less as a result of increased awareness and reduced aversion in the 11 subjects after 8 weeks of meditation.

Dynamics of human slow brain potentials and changes of cortisol and hGH under mental load

Meditation is one of the accepted practices to flourish in life. Emotional harmony is essential for personal well-being. In this paper, the effect of meditation on emotional response using EEG is investigated. The simple meditative technique such as focused attention on breathing is taught to the subjects. EEG is recorded at the beginning of meditation experiment and after eight weeks of regular meditation (every day 20 min). EEG signals are recorded using 14 electrodes EMOTIV EPOC+ device. The asymmetry of band power (theta, alpha and beta band) and Hjorth features are used as emotion-specific EEG features. The average effect of these features is more on frontal asymmetry. EEG functional connectivity of selected brain regions during four emotions (Happy, Angry, Sad, and Relax) in pre and post-meditation state is examined. The results revealed that more coherence in the post-meditation is found for all emotions. The K-Nearest Neighbors (K-NN) classifier is used and emotion classification accuracy after 8 weeks of meditation is decreased. This indicates the divergence of four emotions (happy, angry, sad, and relax) are less as a result of increased awareness and reduced aversion in the 11 subjects after 8 weeks of meditation.

The Relation of Economic History to Economic Theory

THE obligation to deliver an inaugural lecture must rank high among the impediments to vertical mobility in academic life. After some weeks of meditation on the matter I am constrained to suggest to the august personages who determine these things that the cause of learning and academic mobility might be advanced by the abolition of the requirement. If some ceremony were thought to be essential the newly elected professor might simply be sworn in and enrolled on the acceptance by him of the sum of one shilling in legal tender money. Or, if it were considered that this would impose an unwarranted strain on the University chest, the initiation might follow the tradition, long established in other fields of human endeavour, by which the apprentice, elevated to the rank of master-craftsman, stands his footing in a form which, unlike a lecture, can hardly with accuracy be described as dry. In my own case there are special reasons for wishing that the obligation did not exist. By training I am more of an economist than a historian. In the first decade of this century I was one of a small group of students at Manchester who took draughts of Marshallian theory at the hands of Sydney Chapman, a teacher whose virile beauty of form and clarity of mind can never be forgotten by any of us who had that stimulating experience. Chapman, like Marshall himself, always insisted that high theory must be supplemented by realistic and historical investigation; it was under his direction that I made a few halting enquiries into the growth of businesses in the textile industries. Some years later, as lecturer in Economics at Manchester, I had the supreme fortune to be the colleague of one of whom Eileen Power spoke as the most original of English economic historiansa man in whom faith and scepticism, tenderness and irony, daring speculation and austere scholarship were combined in a way that only a biographer of exceptional insight and skill could possibly convey to those who had not been in daily contact with him. (Happily, I may add, such a biographer was found.) The personality of George Unwin was magnetic. One by one, the young theorists ceased to twitter in their nests of indifference curves and fluttered down to earth. If only the first World War had not deflected Chapman's abilities from academic life to government service, if only it had not broken Unwin's constitution, Manchester might have effected that synthesis of theory and history about which, at a later stage, I propose to offer a few remarks.