Forthcoming,

Science and Consciousness Review

www.sci-con.org

Breakthrough study on EEG of meditation

Long-term meditators self-induce high-amplitude gamma synchrony during

mental practice, by Antoine Lutz, Lawrence L. Greischar, Nancy B. Rawlings,
Mathieu Ricard and Richard J. Davidson, in The Proceedings of the National Academy
of Sciences USA 101(46)16369-16373, 2004
The challenge in studying consciousness has always been to match subjective, first
person accounts with objective, third person measurements. Consciousness is, after all,
publically unobservable. So there exists a dichotomy between phenomenological
descriptions on the one hand and, on the other hand technologies such as fMRI and
EEG which map brain activities correlating with cognition and consciousness.
First person phenomenological descriptions have largely stayed outside scientific and
Western philosophical approaches, with the exception of William James and
Husserlian types of introspection which recount the detailed content of consciousness.
But the content of consciousness is not necessarily the same as consciousness itself.
Indeed, an ongoing controversy has been whether one could be conscious of nothing.
In an interesting debate at a Tucson conference a few years ago, Jonathan Shear
argued for the affirmative, pointing out that meditators commonly cleared their mind
of content but were nevertheless highly conscious of being. Other forms of meditation
focus the practitioners mind on specific objects or actions, such as breathing or
reciting mantras. In either type of case, an altered state of heightened awarenessof
heightened consciousnessis said to be achieved. One might think that EEG or brain
imaging of meditative states would be revealing, however previous studies have been
largely unremarkable, suggesting for example a modest increase in slow alpha or theta
wave EEG activity during meditation. However in those studies meditators were
focusing on specific objects or activities. Moreover, higher frequency EEG activity
such as gamma wave synchrony (greater than 25 Hz) was omitted.
Meanwhile, a controversy over gamma synchrony simmers. Synchronized gamma
EEG is composed of field potentials measured from scalp or implanted electrodes
which may be coherent both in local brain regions and more globally across the brain
in a range from 30 to 70 Hz, known euphemistically as coherent 40 Hz
oscillations. In the mid 1980s Wolf Singers lab showed that gamma synchrony
corresponded with specific recognition in cat visual cortex. As other similar findings
followed, coherent 40 Hz became the favorite electrophysiological correlate of
cognition and consciousness. Gamma synchrony/40 Hz coherence was found to
correspond with attention, face and linguistic recognition, visual binding, task

performance, working memory, dreaming and consciousness (e.g. by virtue of its

selective disappearance with general anesthesia).
However backlash set in, fueled largely, as far as I can tell, by the failure to account
for gamma synchrony by axonal action potentials (spikes), the favorite level of
reduction in much of neuroscience. The prevalent view has been that consciousness
and cognition emerge from functional networks of neurons (assemblies, modules,
cartels, coalitions etc.) linked by axonal outputtodendritic input chemical
neurotransmitter synapses. Donald Hebb showed in 1947 that altered sensitivities of
such synapses would sculpt transient network assemblies, each of which could
temporarily take the stage of attention and consciousness by dominant firing. So when
40 Hz correlations were discovered, the presumption was that sequences of axonaldendritic Hebbian assemblies were firing synchronously at gamma range/40 Hz
frequencies.
But synchrony among axonal spikes, and integration of spikes into network-like
phenomena proved to be elusive. Francis Crick and Christof Koch, who in 1990 had
helped launch the 40 Hz/consciousness bandwagon, were among the first to abandon
ship. In some circles, gamma synchrony/40 Hz was discredited as an essential feature
of consciousness, despite the continued correlations of gamma synchrony/40 Hz field
potentials with cognition and consciousness. No spikes, no deal.
In recent years gamma synchrony has indeed been shown to derive not from axonal
spikes and axonal-dendritic synapses, but from post-synaptic activities of dendrites.
Specifically, gamma synchrony/40 Hz is driven by networks of cortical inter-neurons
connected by dendro-dendritic electrotonic gap junctions, windows between
adjacent cells. Groups of neurons connected by gap junctions share a common
membrane and fire synchronously, behaving (as Eric Kandel says) like one giant
neuron. Gap junctions have long been recognized as prevalent and important in
embryological brain development, but gradually diminish in number (and presumably
importance) as the brain matures. Five years ago gap junctions were seen as irrelevant
to cognition and consciousness. However more recently, relatively sparse gap junction
networks in adult brain have been appreciated and shown to mediate gamma
synchrony/40 Hz.1-11 Such networks are transient, coming and going like the wind
(and Hebbian assemblies), as gap junctions form, open, close and reform elsewhere
(regulated by intraneuronal activities). Therefore neurons (and glia) fused together by
gap junctions form continually varying syncytia, or Hebbian hyper-neurons whose
common membranes depolarize coherently and may span wide regions of cortex. (The
internal cytoplasm of hyper-neurons is also continuous, prompting suggestions they
may host brain-wide quantum states.) By virtue of their relation to gamma synchrony,
gap junction hyper-neurons may be the long-sought neural correlate of consciousness
(NCC).
Which brings us to the study by Antoine Lutz and colleagues in the Proceedings of
the National Academy of Sciences USA, a prestigious and austere (one might even say
stodgy) journal of extremely high repute. The authors compared EEG in two subject

groups before and during meditationnot of an object or activity, but of a pure feeling
of unreferenced compassion. Dare I say this pure feeling might be deemed a quale?
One subject group was composed of young students trained for a week in meditative
technique; the second group consisted of Tibetan Buddhist practitioners with 15 to 40
years of meditation training and practice. The EEG methodology was rigorous, and the
results were clear. Compared to novice meditators, the highly trained Tibetan Buddhist
meditators had markedly higher amplitude, long-range global gamma synchrony in
bilateral frontal and parietal/temporal regions. An increase in gamma synchrony was
also observed in baseline measurement (before meditation) which became enhanced
and more global during meditation in the trained Tibetan meditators.
For technical reasons (possible muscle artifact and 60 Hz AC interference) the
absolute frequency spectrum was not determined, though the experimenters hinted of a
significant rise in synchrony and amplitude in the 80 to 120 Hz range during the
Tibetans meditation. The coherence and power in the range of 25 to 42 Hz was
significantly increased statistically. Amplitude of the synchronized gamma activity
was greater than any previously reported nonpathological (i.e. non seizure-based)
gamma synchrony.
So, what does this tell us about consciousness? Well first, there is an increase in
gamma synchrony amplitude and coherence during what I think is fair to call an
enhanced state of consciousnesspure intense experience unfettered by cognitive
contents. This supports the notion of gamma synchrony as an electrophysiological
correlate of consciousness.
Second, the trained Tibetan meditators had baseline increases in gamma synchrony
and amplitude, suggesting long-term changes in their brains from years of meditation.
One might say they are more highly conscious in a baseline state, achieving even
greater intensity of consciousness during meditation.
In a book titled The Quantum and the Lotus by Mathieu Ricard and Trinh Xuan Thuan
(Crown Publishers, 2001), Ricard (a molecular biologist turned Buddhist meditator
and co-author of the Lutz study) describes the Buddhist concept of three levels of
consciousness, including the most important fundamental luminosity of the mind.
This is a state of pure awareness that transcends the perception of a subject/object
duality and breaks free from the constraints and traps of discursive thought. Moreover
this form of consciousness, according to Mathieu Ricard, can exist independently of
the brain, and in fact pervades the universe. Presumably, the meditative state marked
by enhanced gamma synchrony represents an immersion of the subjects in this
fundamental luminosity. (Such a connection may possibly be explained through the
quantum approach to consciousness. For example the Penrose-Hameroff model
suggests a connection between brain processes and a funda-mental Platonic realm
embedded in the space-time continuum.12,13)

Back to the brain. The enhanced gamma synchrony during the meditative state (as the
authors tell us) is most likely due to a) an increase in the size of coherently responding
neural assemblies, and/or b) increased precision in the coherence of responding neural
assemblies.
Before addressing these possibilities, consider the origin of coherence. Even assuming
that cortical neuronal assemblies interconnected by gap junctions (hyper-neurons)
are the neural correlate of gamma synchrony, there are two possibilities for the
coherence. One is that ascending or re-entrant thalamo-cortical inputs drive the cortical
neuronal assemblies, like a piano player might rhythmically strike keys on a piano.
The other is that the cortical neuronal assembly (hyper-neuron) itself is the source of
coherence, due either to some internal reverberative feedback or common underlying
mechanism in the extended membrane and/or cytoplasm/cytoskeleton. There are
arguments against the thalamo-cortical drive mechanism for coherence based on
delays in chemical neurotransmission and the slightly varying lengths of thalamocortical axons required to reach appropriate regions of cortex. In addition, thalamocortical drive would mean that the thalamus (rather than cortex) was responsible for
choosing areas of cortex for consciousness (though proponents of this view point to
cortical-thalamic feedback). These are open questions, though the fact that meditators
whose consciousness is devoid of sensory inputs from the external world exhibit more
highly coherent cortical excitations suggests that thalamic inputs reduce, rather than
promote, gamma synchrony. Thus both enhanced a) size and b) coherence precision of
cortical assemblies seem likely.
Like most good research, this study raises more questions than it answers. How is the
contentin this case the pure quale of compassionrepresented? Is it in the specific
coherent frequency? Is it in the specific neural regions entrained in the coherent
process? Is it in some finer-grained process? Are the coherence, amplitude and/or
frequency related to intensity of experience?
One could say (I would not) that the gamma synchrony/coherent 40 Hz corresponding
with contentless meditation implied a blank slate, perhaps like a radio station carrier
wave, that the coherent amplitude increase was due to lack of interference stemming
from lack of cognitive processing. But the trained meditators were conscioushighly
consciousof the feeling of pure compassion. So my impression, as suggested above,
is that their enhanced gamma synchrony reflected a release from external (e.g.
thalamic) distractions, allowing pure qualia to fill consciousness. Why gamma
synchrony (or any brain activity) should be conscious is, of course the hard problem.
As those familiar with my views might suppose, my guess is that conscious experience
derives from quantum mechanisms in cytoskeletal structures within coherently excited
components of hyper-neurons. These in turn facilitate a more direct absorption in what
Buddhists call fundamental luminosity. My guess is also that intensity of experience
corresponds not only with coherence, but also frequency, that the 80 to 120 Hz
coherence is present in the trained meditators and represents the highest form of
consciousness.

The experimenters plan on further work, with refined analysis of the meditative
practice and feeling of unreferenced compassion. Among other issues, I personally
would like to see them look closely at the higher frequencies they tantalized us with in
this paper.
In any case this is a landmark study and the researchers are to be congratulated, and
thanked! They cite the work of the late Francisco Varela who pioneered the connection
between meditation and neuroscience. Francisco would be pleased indeed.
Stuart Hameroff M.D.
Professor, Departments of Anesthesiology and Psychology
Director, Center for Consciousness Studies
The University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona
www.consciousness.arizona.edu/hameroff
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