The Mindfulness Meditation Effect on Brain Electrical Activity: Stress Assessment, Concentration State and Quality of Life

Abstract

Being healthy is much more than not being sick. It is essentially living day-to-day under a physical and mental well-being. In Europe a large part of the population suffers from depression, anxiety or stress. This public health problem needs urgent treatment for which the individual's psychic self-regulation can respond. The proposed alternative for improving quality of life is an approach to Mindfulness meditation. It is hoped that the beneficial effect of this practice in a continuous way, living the present in "mindfulness", contributes to improve the individual mental state releasing from a depressive past effect or from a future wrapped in anxiety. Based on visual stimuli, concentration test and stress-inducing challenges, 30 individuals are evaluated at regular intervals during 8 weeks of Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) course. Physiological signals are recorded longitudinally through EEG, ECG and EDA. At the same time, each individual completes three inquiries assessing quality of life (WHOQOL), profile mood state (POMS) and depression, anxiety and stress scale (DASS). Applying the neurophysiologic processing and classification data, with synchronous sources isolation, it is intended to verify functional changes that occur in the pre-frontal cortex. This results will inferring that it is possible to change the cerebral electrical activity with the thought. At the same time, it is expected a slowed heart/sweating rate and an increase in the ability to concentrate, as well as a significant improvement in the individual emotional control response. The current PhD study in Biomedical Engineering intends to show that the Mindfulness meditation practice, being "here and now", promotes a healthy mental health, featured by attention self-regulation and the decrease of anxiety, depression or stress. It can be used as a promising treatment for clinical disorders affecting a large part of the population.