EEG Brain Rhythms During Resting-State Wakefulness and Sleep in Elderly Expert Meditators.
Level 4 - case-series / case-control
Cross-sectional observational comparison between expert meditators and naive controls.
PubMed 40731281 · doi:10.1111/jsr.70161
What was done
A cross-sectional study compared 27 elderly expert meditators (mean age 70.7 ± 5.0 years) with meditation-naive controls (mean age 69.3 ± 3.8 years). Assessments included sleep questionnaires (total n = 135), resting-state EEG (n = 73), and polysomnography (n = 47). Researchers compared sleep microstructure (slow waves, spindles) and EEG features (power, Kolmogorov complexity, permutation entropy) during resting-state, NREM, and REM sleep, and evaluated correlations between differing metrics and meditation expertise.
What was found
The abstract reports directional findings without numerical values, confidence intervals, or p-values. Expert meditators had lower delta power and higher delta permutation entropy at rest compared to controls. Self-reported sleep quality did not differ between groups. On polysomnography, expert meditators slept longer, had reduced %N1, and higher %N2. During NREM sleep, they had reduced delta power, increased alpha power, and greater theta permutation entropy. In REM sleep, they tended to show greater theta power. Meditation expertise was negatively associated with %N1 and tended to correlate positively with %N2 and REM theta power.
Why it matters
This study links long-term meditation practice in older adults to distinct neurophysiological patterns at rest and altered sleep architecture, including reduced light sleep.
Limits
The cross-sectional design prevents causal conclusions, as pre-existing individual differences cannot be ruled out. Objective physiological subsets were relatively small (n = 47 for polysomnography, n = 73 for resting EEG), and the abstract lacks exact numerical estimates and effect sizes.
Cited by
- context In long-term meditators, high-amplitude gamma electrical activity is observed during slow-wave sleep superimposed on delta oscillations.