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Individual Psychophysiological Coherence induced by Meditative States can be compromised in Community Dynamics

Jeffery Jonathan Joshua (ישוע) Davis; Florian Schübeler; Robert Kozma*

The Embassy of Peace, Whitianga, New Zealand
*CLION, Dept. Mathematical Sciences, University of Memphis, Memphis, TN. 38152, USA
joshua_888@yahoo.com, florian@theembassyofpeace.com, rkozma@memphis.edu

In a previous study (Davis et al., 2019) we showed how meditative states significantly improve psychophysiological coherence when contrasted with baseline or other daily activities. However, meditation benefits can be compromised when individuals participate in energy consuming or unpleasant activities, which lead to stressful states generated as a consequence of the interaction with others and the immediate environment. In this study we show such effects and we explore possible reasons associated with such phenomenon. In order to test our hypothesis, we designed an experiment comprised of two (2) activities: (a) Gibberish Talk and (b) Post Gibberish Meditation. We compared them based on Coherence Ratio derived from Heart Rate Variability (HRV) measures. The data acquisition was part of a study we conducted in February - March 2015, as part of a body of researchers in five (5) countries: The United States of America, United Kingdom, Lithuania, Saudi Arabia and New Zealand, led by the HeartMath Institute in California under the name, International Heart Rate Variability Synchronization Study (IHRVS).

Keywords – Psychophysiological Coherence, Synchronization, Brain-Heart Dynamics, Heart Rate Variability (HRV), Cognition, Intentionality, Knowledge and Meaning, Spiritual and Behavioural Values.

joms | 2019 | 1(34)
Reviewed By: Dr. Sooriya Perumal | Assistant Professor, Department of Civil Engineering, Sri Ramakrishna Engineering College, Coimbatore
Dr. Siva Shankar | Assistant Professor, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Ahalia School of Engineering & Technology
Dates: Submission: 10-Jan-2019 | Acceptance: 02-May-2019 | Publication: 04-May-2019

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INTRODUCTION

Psychophysiological coherence has been greatly studied showing the effects that relaxation, meditation or breathing techniques have on Heart Rate Variability (HRV) and related measures like coherence ratios and scores (McCraty & Childre, 2010), (McCraty et al., 2001), (Childre & Cryer, 2008). The activities consisted of: (1) talking gibberish with a companion (GT) and (2) a post gibberish meditation in close proximity with the same companion (GM). These activities started at around 11:00 AM, 3:00 PM or 7:00 PM for a period of thirty (30) minutes each over a horizon of fifteen (15) days. We measured twenty (20) participants wearing a FIRSTBEAT wireless HRV recorder continuously (24 hours) apart from one (1) hour a day for showers and individual care of the body throughout the study.


As explained in previous work, brain, heart and respiration dynamics mediate heart coherence and cognitive states (McCraty et al., 2006), (Kim et al., 2013) which are crucial for decision making and human performance with relevant spiritual implications associated to values like Love and Compassion, for example (Childre & McCraty, 2001), (McCraty, 2002), (van der Eijk, 2007), (Crivellato & Ribatti, 2007).


Further, we propose that it is plausible that the creation of knowledge and meaning which takes place in the brain when dealing with salient stimuli or relevant events (Kozma et al., 2012), (Davis & Kozma, 2012), (Kozma & Freeman, 2002), (Davis & Kozma, 2013) may also be mediated by heart coherence something we intend to explore more deeply in future studies. Some pioneering research about the cognizance of the heart has already been advanced by (McCraty et al., 2006). We imagine and expect that this body of research will improve our understanding of higher cognitive meanings in the realms of psyche, soul, spirit and body (Childre & McCraty, 2001).


DESCRIPTION OF THE EXPERIMENTS AND DATA PREPROCESSING FOR IBI AND SCORES

We used a FIRSTBEAT Bodyguard 2 HRV recorder that records R-R intervals (Firstbeat Technologies Ltd., 2017) as described in (Davis et al., 2019).


We performed our analysis on a dataset that was preprocessed and converted to text files by the team at the HeartMath Institute. We analysed five (5) minute intervals in order to compute the Coherence Ratio as a function of Total Power (TP) and Low Frequency (LF).


The analysis focuses on the activities of gibberish talk (GT) and post gibberish meditation (GM) periods vs. a baseline period (Baseline). The Coherence Ratio (CR) is computed from the Power Spectrum Density (PSD) of the Interbeat Intervals (IBI) according to (McCraty et al., 2006).


We then performed a statistical analysis and hypothesis testing based on the CR mean values for GT, GM and Baseline in order to compare them.


Concerning GT, we put the companions together in the same room and gave them the task to spontaneously emit sounds pretending they were communicating in a foreign language while creating a "meaningful conversation" though lacking any real meaning in English. We were interested in finding if this kind of interaction would lead to stressful or coherent states, according to the subjective meanings that would emerge for each participant. We hypothesized that these activities (GT, GM and Baseline) would allow us to make a distinction in terms of attention and energy consumption, which presumably are mediated by different areas of the brain (visual, auditory, motor speech and limb movement) that somehow would reflect in the coherence ratios.


GENERAL ANALYSIS

A. COHERENCE RATIO COMPUTATIONS

In Figure 1 we can observe the CR computed for all twenty (20) participants over a fifteen (15) day period (top graph) as well as the mean CR for all days and participants (bottom graph). Generally speaking we observe that CR shows the presence of the daily cycles where events associated with some activities, like certain types of meditation for example, show strong peaks as can be observed in Figure 1 at similar hours every day, as described in (Davis et al., 2019) and different from GM.


The equation for CR is as follows:


CRt = ( LFPt / (TPt - LFPt )) ∀ =0,5,10,... (1)

where the Low Frequency Power (LFP) and the Total Power (TP) are a function of the Power Spectrum calculated over each period of five (5) minutes as described by (McCraty & Atkinson, 1996), (Tarvainen & Niskanen, 2012), (McCraty & Shaffer, 2015), (McCraty et al., 2006).


Figure 1. | Graph (a) shows the evolution of CR over periods of five (5) minutes per participant over a period of fifteen (15) days. Graph (b) shows the daily overall average for all participants for the evolution of the mean CR over periods of five (5) minutes with 95% significance confidence intervals. Note that the hours of the day (x-axis) start at 9:22 AM and they move by steps of one (1) hour to 10:22 AM, 11:22 AM and so on.

B. GIBBERISH TALK AND POST GIBBERISH MEDITATION PERIODS ANALYSIS

This section will present the results obtained from analysing the GT and GM thirty (30) minute periods, which were conducted randomly at one (1) of the following three (3) planned start times of the day, 11:00 AM, 3:00 PM and 7:00 PM for a duration of one (1) hour. We explore three (3) different hypotheses:


  • Hypothesis 1: The activity of GT will in general have a positive impact on coherence since presumably it is a fun activity.
  • Hypothesis 2: GT periods should show significantly lower values when compared with the GM periods.
  • Hypothesis 3: Baseline periods are expected to show lower coherence than both GM and GT periods.


It is important to note that the Baseline periods were identified as any of the thirty (30) minute periods that a participant went about his or her own daily activities. This could mean a baseline related to personal activities of their choice that therefore could lead the participant to coherent or incoherent states without any experimental controls.


Figure 2. | Confidence Intervals with means for the CRs associated to: (a) Gibberish Talk (purple circles and light pink intervals) and (b) Gibberish Meditation (white squares with dark green borders and black intervals).

In Figure 2 we present the confidence intervals (95% confidence) with their respective CR mean values associated with the activities of GT and GM. Generally speaking, most people show significantly higher CR mean values for the activity of GT apart from Participant 10, 14, 15 and 19, that is, four (4) out of twenty (20). We can also observe that for both activities different participants display different levels of coherence where some show low CR values (CR < 2) while others show high (2 < CR < 3) and very high (CR > 3) CR values, somehow related to thresholds arbitrarily for a certain challenge level as described in (HeartMath, Inc., 2018).


Table I displays the results for a test of hypothesis of equal CR mean values for GT and GM and unequal variance with significance level α = 0.05. The null hypothesis (H0) states that the difference between means should equal zero (0). In Table I, a value zero (0) would mean that we have to accept H0 while a value of one (1) would lead to a rejection of H0. In summary:


  1. For GT we observe:
    • Eight (8) participants with low CR.
    • Seven (7) participants with high CR.
    • Five (5) participants with very high CR.
  2. For GM we observe:
    • Thirteen (13) participants with low CR.
    • Two (2) participants with high CR.
    • Five (5) participants with very high CR.


Table I | Hypothesis testing for same mean values of CR for GT vs. GM. Accept H0=0, Reject H0=1

From Figure 2, we derive that twelve (12) of the twenty (20) participants display high or very high CRs for GT while only seven (7) show similar results for GM.


Figure 3 displays a comparison of GT, GM and Baseline CR mean values. As the reader may notice, in GT, GM and Baseline Participant 3 and 4 display higher CR mean values than Participant 14 and 15, a tendency that is also observed for other combinations of participants. Generally speaking, such tendencies between participants are preserved across activities. Also, for most participants, the CR mean values of Baseline are between the CR mean values of GT and GM where values for GT are predominantly above Baseline, while for GM they are predominantly below Baseline. We must note that GT, GM and Baseline show significantly smaller CR mean values when compared to the values recorded during other meditation periods, different than GM periods, as shown in Figure 1 (large peaks).


Figure 3. | Comparative graph of CR mean values for GT, GM and Baseline for the twenty (20) participants.

In Figure 3 we display the results of the Hypothesis test that the CR mean values for each participant are equal for Baseline and GT as well as for Baseline and GM. If the mean is different we reject the hypothesis and these results are codified as: accept H0= 0, reject H0= 1 (for CR mean values greater than Baseline) and reject H0= -1 (for CR mean values less than Baseline). It is clear from Figure 4 that generally speaking, the CR mean values of GT are statistically significantly greater than or equal to the CR mean values associated with Baseline, while the CR mean values of GM are statistically significantly smaller than or equal to the CR mean values associated with Baseline.


Another finding worth mentioning is that half of the participants showed CR mean values significantly similar for GT and Baseline while less than half (seven) of the participants showed significantly similar CR mean values for GM and Baseline.


Figure 4. | Hypothesis test results showing whether the CR mean values for each participant are equal for Baseline and GT, as well as equal for Baseline and GM. The test displays three (3) possible results: accept H0= 0, reject H0= 1 (for CR mean values greater than Baseline) and reject H0= -1 (for CR mean values less than Baseline).

Finally, it is important to mention that most people with CR mean values below Baseline, for both GT and GM, also showed small CR mean values for Baseline.


DISCUSSION

It has been proposed that meditation, relaxation and positive emotions have a direct impact on HRV and psychophysiological coherence (Childre & McCraty, 2001), (McCraty, 2002), (McCraty et al., 2001), (Childre & Cryer, 2008), (McCraty & Childre, 2010). However, here we show that meditation ought to be performed in the proper environment and at appropriate times with certain preparation for its full benefits to manifest as psychophysiological coherence.


Concerning our three (3) previously established hypotheses we present our conclusions as follows:


  • Hypothesis 1: The activity of GT had, generally speaking, a positive or neutral impact on coherence compared to Baseline.
  • Hypothesis 2: Contrary to our expectations, GT periods showed significantly higher values when compared with GM periods for most participants.
  • Hypothesis 3: We were surprised to find that the CR mean values for Baseline were greater than the CR mean values for GM and only smaller than the CR mean values of GT.


The results concerning GT and GM are very diverse and pose some question marks, however, before we address them and arrive at any set of conclusions, we point the reader to some previous studies of (Freeman & Vitiello, 2006), (Freeman, 2008), (Davis & Kozma, 2013) where it is conjectured that the brain demands and consumes energy while it creates meaning and knowledge. Also, according to that line of research, it is usually thought that the processing of familiar or rewarding information is accomplished with less stress and requires less energy consumption. However, foreign, new or distasteful information is expected to have the opposite effect accompanied by more energy consumption and this would explain why for some participants, GT was a stressful experience while for other participants it was either neutral or enjoyable.


What we hypothesized was that the GT activity could induce a more coherent state than the usual Baseline and then improve the quality of the GM period by serving as a tool to dissipate negative (verbal) thoughts. However, we never anticipated that the GT activity could be judged as silly or weird in the mind of some participants and therefore turn out to be an unpleasant, energy demanding and even perhaps a stressful activity. It also turned out that for many of the participants, the GT activity was perceived as fun and beneficial in terms of clearing up any normal day-to-day thought patterns and therefore, as hypothesized, reducing the energy demands associated with the processing of meaningful information.


Looking back we can see that even if speaking in gibberish is verbally dissociated from semantic information, it would certainly be associated with Pragmatic Information (Davis & Kozma, 2013), (Davis, 2018), (Kozma & Davis, 2018) which, would in turn somehow, be associated in the creation of emotion and even verbal meanings, kind of an imaginary story stimulated by the GT activity. This then would explain why the GM activity turned out to show less coherence than the GT activity in general, something that was unexpected. This also could explain why generally speaking, the GT activity showed more coherence than the Baseline period that somehow supports the hypothesis that for most people, the GT activity will have a beneficial effect, however, now with a slight twist which is that the GM activity will show a decrease in coherence potentially due to the demands of the GT activity.


The lesson here could be that fun activities, which are beneficial (coherence wise) for a short period, could have a taxing effect in energy depletion and recovery. Parents will find this possibility quite familiar!


There are some other quite intriguing and for now informal observations that need more research and these are related to the possibility that GT companions could possibly entrain while engaged in GT and then remain like that for some unknown period of time, something we conjecture would be reflected in the CRs, moment to moment, as well as and perhaps more clearly, in the coherence scores as calculated by the emWave software (HeartMath, Inc., 2018). For example, we observed and intuitively derived from subjective accounts of some participants, like Participant 3 and 4, that this is a plausible and real (at least to them) possibility, something that somehow could be implicit in previous figures. Could it be that this phenomenon happened during the study period between some companions? For example, Participant 1 and 2 were companions showing similar CR mean values for all studied periods. Perhaps, if entrainment was present, some companions could also be inversely correlated.


Figure 5. | Spectrograms of Participant 3 (top) and Participant 4 (bottom) for the activity of GM, for Day 1, Day 2 and Day 3. The x-axis displays the time domain while the y-axis shows the frequency domain.

Figure 6. | Spectrograms of Participant 3 (top) and Participant 4 (bottom) for the activity of GT, for Day 1, Day 2 and Day 3. The x-axis displays the time domain while the y-axis shows the frequency domain.

This remains the topic of another research, however, we provide a final set of figures (Figure 5 and 6) where we display the spectrograms of Participant 3 and 4 for the GT and GM periods, for three (3) different days where we can visually observe some similarities in frequency dynamics, only for GT. This certainly is the subject of another study for all participants and for all fifteen (15) days that requires a robust statistical analysis with the aid of linear and non-linear correlation coefficients and perhaps a fractal and correlation dimension analysis. As for now this remains an untested hypothesis.


At this stage we are ready to move on to our final section for future potential research.


CONCLUSIONS AND FUTURE PERSPECTIVES

Here we have successfully tested a set of hypotheses in order to differentiate between GT, GM and Baseline in terms of CR mean values. The GT activity, in our view, raises an interesting field of research, because the creation of meaning may serve as means of synchronization between individuals and is pointing us in the direction that both, cognitive processes and heart coherence, are part of an integrated system, a whole. We need more investigation to explore the possibility that after many GT sessions, and provided that this serves the purpose already suggested, we may be able to measure synchronization at a distance between companions some time after GT interactions. This will require new methods and paradigms. It is plausible that rewarding and pleasant activities different than meditation, may also improve Baseline and general wellbeing even when they are accompanied with significant energy consumption. This remains the object of further research.


Synchronizations between individuals reflected in both HRV and brain dynamics come as a challenge and perhaps the next frontier in the study of human consciousness. As challenging as this may be it is well worth pursuing and perhaps even an imperative for the future survival of humanity. In this regard we have decided to take our first steps on the journey to explore new avenues and develop methodologies to contribute to addressing this challenge.


ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

We are grateful to all participants of this study for their contributions and disciplined efforts to adhere to an impeccable measurement process.

We also acknowledge Carey, Keryn, Sarah, Kali, Enya, Shiloh, Matiu and Stevie together with the other people at The Embassy of Peace in Whitianga, New Zealand for their dedication and contribution to the study.

Finally, we extend our gratitude to Rollin McCraty and Mike Atkinson from the HeartMath Research Center for all their work in designing and coordinating the International Heart Rate Variability Synchronization Study.


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