Department of Psychiatry, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2013 Aug 28;8(8):e73417. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0073417. eCollection 2013.
Over the past several years meditation practice has gained increasing attention as a non-pharmacological intervention to provide health related benefits, from promoting general wellness to alleviating the symptoms of a variety of medical conditions. However, the effects of meditation training on brain activity still need to be fully characterized. Sleep provides a unique approach to explore the meditation-related plastic changes in brain function. In this study we performed sleep high-density electroencephalographic (hdEEG) recordings in long-term meditators (LTM) of Buddhist meditation practices (approximately 8700 mean hours of life practice) and meditation naive individuals. We found that LTM had increased parietal-occipital EEG gamma power during NREM sleep. This increase was specific for the gamma range (25-40 Hz), was not related to the level of spontaneous arousal during NREM and was positively correlated with the length of lifetime daily meditation practice. Altogether, these findings indicate that meditation practice produces measurable changes in spontaneous brain activity, and suggest that EEG gamma activity during sleep represents a sensitive measure of the long-lasting, plastic effects of meditative training on brain function.
在过去的几年中，冥想练习作为一种非药物干预措施，已经引起了越来越多的关注，它可以带来与健康相关的益处，从促进整体健康到缓解各种医疗状况的症状。然而，冥想训练对大脑活动的影响仍需要充分描述。睡眠为探索与冥想相关的大脑功能的可塑性变化提供了一种独特的方法。在这项研究中，我们对长期进行佛教冥想（大约有 8700 小时的生命实践）的冥想者（LTM）和冥想新手进行了睡眠高密度脑电图（hdEEG）记录。我们发现，LTM 在 NREM 睡眠期间增加了顶枕部 EEG 伽马功率。这种增加是伽马频带（25-40 Hz）特有的，与 NREM 期间自发唤醒的水平无关，并且与终生每日冥想练习的长度呈正相关。总的来说，这些发现表明冥想练习会导致自发脑活动产生可测量的变化，并表明睡眠期间的 EEG 伽马活动是衡量冥想训练对大脑功能的长期、可塑影响的敏感指标。
