Determining states of consciousness in the electroencephalogram based on spectral, complexity, and criticality features
Neuroscience of Consciousness April 1, 2022 Nike Walter, T. Hinterberger
Meditation states produce distinct patterns of brain activity measurable by nonlinear complexity and critical dynamics. Highly proficient meditators were measured with EEG during three meditation conditions (thoughtless emptiness, presence monitoring, focused attention) and compared to resting and reading. Compared to eyes-closed rest, emptiness and focused attention showed higher entropy and fractal dimension, while long-range temporal correlations decreased across all meditation conditions. The critical exponent was lowest for focused attention and reading. Gamma-band activity, global power spectral density, and sample entropy best discriminated among states (accuracy 0.83–0.98, 0.78–0.96, and 0.86–0.90 respectively). Meditation states can be quantified by neuronal complexity, long-range temporal correlations, and power law distributions in neuronal avalanches.