Institute of Noetic Sciences, Petaluma, California 94952, USA.
Explore (NY). 2011 Sep-Oct;7(5):286-99. doi: 10.1016/j.explore.2011.06.004.
Advanced meditators occasionally report experiences of timelessness, or states of awareness that seem to transcend the usual boundaries of the subjective present. This type of experience was investigated in eight experienced meditators and eight matched controls by measuring 32 channels of EEG before, during, and after exposure to unpredictable light and sound stimuli. The experiment postulated that if some aspect of consciousness extends beyond the present moment, then prestimulus electrocortical signals should differ depending on stimuli that were about to be selected by a truly random process, and that if such experiences were catalyzed through meditation practice, then prestimulus differences should be more apparent in meditators than in nonmeditators. Each of the 32 EEG channels was baseline adjusted on each trial by the electrical potential averaged between two- and one-second prestimulus, then for each channel the average potential was determined from one-second prestimulus to stimulus onset. The resulting means across subjects in each group were compared by stimulus type using randomized permutation procedures and corrected for multiple comparisons. Within the control group, no EEG channels showed significant prestimulus differences between light versus sound stimulus conditions, but within the meditator group five of 32 channels resulted in significant differences (P < .05, two tailed). Comparisons between control and meditator groups showed significant prestimulus differences prior to audio tone stimuli in 14 of 32 channels (P < .05, two tailed, of which eight channels were P < .005, two tailed). This outcome successfully replicates effects reported in earlier experiments, suggesting that sometimes the subjective sense of awareness extending into the future may be ontologically accurate.
高级冥想者偶尔会报告无时间感的体验，或者意识状态似乎超越了主观当下的通常界限。通过在暴露于不可预测的光和声刺激之前、期间和之后测量 32 个 EEG 通道，对 8 名经验丰富的冥想者和 8 名匹配的对照组进行了这种体验的研究。该实验假设，如果意识的某些方面超越了当前时刻，那么在前刺激电皮质信号应该根据即将通过真正随机过程选择的刺激而有所不同，如果这些体验是通过冥想练习催化的，那么在前刺激差异应该在冥想者中比在非冥想者中更为明显。在每次试验中，通过在两个和一个秒前刺激之间平均的电潜力对每个 EEG 通道进行基线调整，然后确定每个通道从一个秒前刺激到刺激开始的平均潜力。通过使用随机排列程序比较每组中每个 EEG 通道的平均潜力，并对多次比较进行校正，从而比较每个组中跨主题的结果。在对照组中，没有 EEG 通道在光与声刺激条件之间显示出显著的前刺激差异，但在冥想者组中，32 个通道中的 5 个通道导致了显著的差异（P <.05，双侧）。控制组和冥想者组之间的比较显示，在音频音调刺激之前，32 个通道中有 14 个通道存在显著的前刺激差异（P <.05，双侧，其中 8 个通道 P <.005，双侧）。该结果成功复制了早期实验报告的效果，表明有时延伸到未来的主观意识感可能在本体论上是准确的。
