[The Influence of Long-Term Meditation Practice on Early Emotional Processing in the Brain: an ERP Study].

The main aim was to study effects of long-term meditation practice on event-related brain potentials (ERPs) during affective picture viewing. The meditators' (N = 20), contrary to control (N = 20), did not demonstrate arousal-related increases in the mid-latency (200-400 ms) ERP positivity over the right hemisphere. We also found in the same time window stronger ERP negativity for meditators over central regions, regardless of picture valence. We assume that long-term meditation practice enhances frontal top-down control over fast automatic detection of stimulus salience.

[Influence of the practice of meditation on the cardiovascular response in the perception and cognitive reassessment emotiogenic stimulus].

This study examines the effects of meditation on cardiovascular activity during affective image processing. 22 meditators and 20 controls were shown affective images and were asked either to attend to the images or to down-regulate negative affect (for negative images) or to up-regulate positive affect (for positive images) while continuous cardiovascular activity were recorded. During natural viewing meditators manifested identical pre-stimulus total peripheral resistance (TPR) for all images, whereas controls exhibited greatest,pre-stimulus TPR for negative images and reduced it only in the emotion regulation condition. No between-group differences were revealed for natural viewing of positive images, whereas up-regulation was associated with greater cardiac activation in meditators. The results provide a contribution to the understanding of the mechanisms responsible for the beneficial influence of meditation on cardiovascular risk factors.

Effects of long-term meditation practice on attentional biases towards emotional faces: An eye-tracking study.

Attentional biases towards affective stimuli reflect an individual balance of appetitive and aversive motivational systems. Vigilance in relation to threatening information reflects emotional imbalance, associated with affective and somatic problems. It is known that meditation practice significantly improves control of attention, which is considered to be a tool for adaptive emotional regulation. In this regard, the main aim of the present study was to evaluate the influence of meditation on attentional bias towards neutral and emotional facial expressions. Eyes were tracked while 21 healthy controls and 23 experienced meditators (all males) viewed displays consisting of four facial expressions (neutral, angry, fearful and happy) for 10 s. Measures of biases in initial orienting and maintenance of attention were assessed. No effects were found for initial orienting biases. Meditators spent significantly less time viewing angry and fearful faces than control subjects. Furthermore, meditators selectively attended to happy faces whereas control subjects showed attentional biases towards both angry and happy faces. In sum we can conclude that long-term meditation practice adaptively affects attentional biases towards motivationally significant stimuli and that these biases reflect positive mood and predominance of appetitive motivation.

[Features of brain oscillatory activity and cardiac defense in treatment arterial hypertensives].

Stress reactivity of the motivational system of defense can be assessed with the aid the cardiac defense response (CDR) - the reaction of the cardiovascular system to unexpected aversive unconditioned stimulus. The main objective of the study was revealing putative contribution of oscillatory systems of the brain into central pathogenic mechanisms of enhanced blood pressure (BP) stress-reactivity in naive patients with arterial hypertension (AH) of the 1st-2nd degrees (n = 17) and healthy control (n = 19) subjects. Using dynamic registration "beat-by-beat" arterial pressure, and oscillatory activity related EEG (64 channels) is estimated using the event-related synchronization/desynchronization (ERD/ERS). Along with abnormally high blood pressure in patients with hypertension background set significantly lower concentrations of serotonin blood platelets and increased tonic activation of the left hemisphere, reflected in the asymmetric reduction of delta- (2-4 Hz) and theta-1 (4-6 Hz) power in the central and parietal cortex in the hemisphere CDR of the patients are characterized by hyperactivity both short- and long-latency components of blood pressure. According to the dynamic analysis of the concomitant EEG, long-latency BP components may be accounted by, among other mechanisms, weakening of the descending ("top-down") inhibitory control, hypothetically implemented with the high-frequency EEG alpha (10-12 Hz) oscillations from the medial central-parietal cortex of both hemispheres of the brain.

[Coupling of brain oscillatory systems with cognitive (experience and valence) and physiological (cardiovascular reactivity) components of emotion].

We investigated the coupling of EEG oscillators with cognitive (experience and valence) and physiological (cardiovascular reactivity) components of emotion. Emotions of anger and joy were evoked in healthy males (n = 49) using a guided imagery method, multichannel EEG and cardiovascular reactivity (Finometer) were simultaneously recorded. Correlational analysis revealed that specially distributed EEG oscillators seem to be selectively involved into cognitive (experience and valence) and physiological (cardiovascular reactivity) components of emotional responding. We showed that low theta (4-6 Hz) activity from medial and lateral frontal cortex of the right hemisphere predominantly correlated with the anger experience, high alpha (10-12 and 12-14 Hz) and gamma (30-45 Hz) activity from central-parieto-occipital regions of the left hemisphere--with cardiovascular reactivity to anger and joy, gamma-activity (30-45 Hz) from the left hemisphere in parietal areas--with cardiovascular reactivity to joy. The findings suggest that specially distributed neuronal networks oscillating at different frequencies may be regarded as a putative neurobiological mechanism coordination dynamical balance between cognitive and physiological components of emotion as well as psycho-neuro-somatic relationships within the mind-brain-body system.

Influence of long-term Sahaja Yoga meditation practice on emotional processing in the brain: An ERP study.

Despite growing interest in meditation as a tool for alternative therapy of stress-related and psychosomatic diseases, brain mechanisms of beneficial influences of meditation practice on health and quality of life are still unclear. We propose that the key point is a persistent change in emotional functioning, specifically the modulation of the early appraisal of motivational significance of events. The main aim was to study the effects of long-term meditation practice on event-related brain potentials (ERPs) during affective picture viewing. ERPs were recorded in 20 long-term Sahaja Yoga meditators and 20 control subjects without prior experience in meditation. The meditators' mid-latency (140-400ms) ERPs were attenuated for both positive and negative pictures (i.e. there were no arousal-related increases in ERP positivity) and this effect was more prominent over the right hemisphere. However, we found no differences in the long latency (400-800ms) responses to emotional images, associated with meditation practice. In addition we found stronger ERP negativity in the time window 200-300ms for meditators compared to the controls, regardless of picture valence. We assume that long-term meditation practice enhances frontal top-down control over fast automatic salience detection, based on amygdala functions.