I am I from moment to moment

methods and results of grasping intersubjective and intertemporal neurophysiological differences during meditation states

Thilo Hinterberger

pp. 95-113

in: Stefan Schmidt, Harald Walach (eds), Meditation, Berlin, Springer, 2014

Abstract

An essential aspect of counsciousness is rooted in the subjectivity of the human experience. Such subjectivity implies that we are all individual beings, and each moment is unique. This uniqueness of each moment is a fundamental wisdom taught in many meditation schools. However, most research focusing on uncovering the psychophysiological correlates of meditation practice reports on statistical averages across subjects and across the time of the meditation task. Such averaging cannot show individual states and unique peak experiences within an individual. On the other hand, such statistics seem to be necessary for generalization. This chapter illustrates the inter-individual differences among 50 meditation participants with various meditation proficiencies. The inter-individual differences were measured with 64 channels of EEG plus peripheral measures during meditative practice. The results show that meditation brings about highly individual brain patterns. Furthermore, they illustrate how meditative states vary over time. Finally, methodological suggestions are given as to how an intra-individual and inter-individual analysis could be presented. Therefore, this chapter is dedicated to present details of the data which are invisible in common statistical analysis.