Gamma wave - Relation to Meditation

A gamma wave is a pattern of neural oscillation in humans with a frequency between 25 and 100 Hz, though 40 Hz is typical

Gamma waves

Gamma waves were initially ignored before the development of digital electroencephalography as analog electroencephalography is restricted to recording and measuring rhythms that are usually less than 25 Hz. One of the earliest reports on them was in 1964 using recordings of the electrical activity of electrodes implanted in the visual cortex of awake monkeys.

Benefits Of Gamma

People with very high levels of gamma activity are exceptionally intelligent, compassionate, happy, and have excellent memories and strong self-control. IQ scores of people with high gamma wave activity are correspondingly high.

High gamma activity also corresponds to a state of peak performance.

Elite athletes, top-notch musicians and high achievers in all fields produce far more gamma waves than average.

The benefits of producing the gamma frequency are:

• Increased memory recall (the 40 Hz frequency is known to regulate memory processing); people with high gamma activity have exceptionally vivid and rapid memory recall.
• Increased sensory perception. Senses are heightened when the brain produces gamma waves. Food tastes better; vision and hearing sharpen; sense of smell becomes more powerful; and your brain becomes far more sensitive to all sensory input. This makes for a much richer sensory experience and a better perception of reality.
• Increased focus; but this enhanced focus is not necessarily aimed at one individual object or task. In the gamma state, your brain is able to process all sensory information faster and more fully with greater sensitivity; and combine the whole scenario into a highly memorable experience. People with high gamma activity can recall everything about any memorable event – the food they ate, the music they heard, the conversations, the names of people they met, the air temperature, etc.
• One of the most remarkable properties of the gamma state is the processing speed: the brain is able to process incredible amounts of information very quickly, remember it, and retrieve that memory later.
• People with high gamma activity are naturally happier, calmer and more at peace. This is Nature’s best anti-depressant (people suffering from depression typically have very low gamma activity).
• Gamma waves are present during REM sleep and visualization.
• Compassion comes from a feeling of one-ness with all creation. This is the “feeling of blessings” and ecstasy that accompanies high levels of gamma brainwave activity.

Relation to meditation

Experiments on Tibetan Buddhist monks have shown a correlation between transcendental mental states and gamma waves. A suggested explanation is based on the fact that the gamma is intrinsically localized. 

Neuroscientist Sean O'Nuallain suggests that this very existence of synchronized gamma indicates that something akin to a singularity - or, to be more prosaic, a conscious experience - is occurring. This work adduces experimental and simulated data to show that what meditation masters have in common is the ability to put the brain into a state in which it is maximally sensitive.

As mentioned above, gamma waves have been observed in Tibetan Buddhist monks. A 2004 study took eight long-term Tibetan Buddhist practitioners of meditation and, using electrodes, monitored the patterns of electrical activity produced by their brains as they meditated. The researchers compared the brain activity of the monks to a group of novice meditators (the study had these subjects meditate an hour a day for one week prior to empirical observation). 

In a normal meditative state, both groups were shown to have similar brain activity. However, when the monks were told to generate an objective feeling of compassion during meditation, their brain activity began to fire in a rhythmic, coherent manner, suggesting neuronal structures were firing in harmony. This was observed at a frequency of 25–40 Hz, the rhythm of gamma waves. These gamma-band oscillations in the monk’s brain signals were the largest seen in humans (apart from those in states such as seizures). 

Conversely, these gamma-band oscillations were scant in novice meditators. Though, a number of rhythmic signals did appear to strengthen in beginner meditators with further experience in the exercise, implying that the aptitude for one to produce gamma-band rhythm is trainable.

Such evidence and research in gamma-band oscillations may explain the heightened sense of consciousness, bliss, and intellectual acuity subsequent to meditation. Notably, meditation is known to have a number of health benefits: stress reduction, mood elevation, and increased life expectancy of the mind and its cognitive functions. 

The current Dalai Lama meditates for four hours each morning, and he says that it is hard work. He elaborates that if neuroscience can construct a way in which he can reap the psychological and biological rewards of meditation without going through the practice each morning, he would be apt to adopt the innovation.

Gamma Brain Waves For Peak Concentration

Gamma brain waves are considered to be relatively new in brainwaves research. This class of brainwave oscillates at a rate of over forty times per second. It is the highest basic brainwave range that has been studied in humans. Typically this wave is not entrained or used in neurofeedback practices, but it definitely can be. It has been shown that this particular brainwave is useful for focus and concentration.

That means people hoping to get into a state of "peak performance" will be able to benefit by increasing the amount of gamma waves that cycle through their brains. How can you increase the amount of overall gamma activity? There are a couple of things that you can do in order to access the gamma state. The first way to get yourself into this brainwave state is to practice "concentration meditation" as often as you can.

Studies that were conducted on Buddhist monks in the state of Wisconsin showed that their brains were really different from the brains of other people because they had a lot of gamma activity. The type of meditation that they practiced involved focused breathing. If you want to build up your gamma waves, you can simply sit with your eyes closed and clear your mind of all thoughts by focusing on your breathing pattern (i.e. in and out).

It takes practice, discipline and dedication, but after awhile you are going to be feeling much happier and have a much easier time focusing. The reason that you will start feeling happier is because gamma brain waves are also linked directly to feeling blissful. This means that if you meditate on a daily basis and are doing it properly, you are going to get the emotional result of happiness.

Getting into the peak performance state is also very easy to do when you practice this concentration style meditation. If meditation is just not something that you are able to do, you can pay money to go visit a neurofeedback specialist and he or she may be able to help you tweak your brainwaves so that you can experience gamma. There are more ways to increase your gamma patterns that scientists are just starting to learn about. If you want to maintain full brain strength and brain power, then it would be a good idea to keep yourself updated with the emerging brain news and practices.

Gamma waves may be meditation's tool for changing the brain

Long-term meditators know that meditation can change people’s experience of the world, usually for the better. Highly experienced practitioners of meditation often report greater feelings of equanimity, patience, and compassion for others – even at times when they’re not meditating, such as during the workday or at dinner with family. Now researchers at the University of Bonn in Germany say they have an explanation for the new states of consciousness that arise as a result of meditation – gamma brain wave states, associated with expert-level meditation, assist in the reshaping of brain structures that persist beyond actual periods of meditation.

Brain researchers Jürgen Fell, Nikolai Axmacher, and Sven Haupt, in an August 2010 paper published in Medical Hypotheses, report that a survey of meditation research suggests a quantifiable difference between meditation’s effects on beginners and its benefits for experts. Upon initiating meditation training, beginners’ electroencephalogram (EEG) readings show slowed-down alpha wave states, an effect often seen when people are increasing their attention and focus during everyday activities. Theta wave activity is also often increased, under normal circumstances a sign of drowsiness and the beginning stages of sleep. Brain wave states for novice meditators, then, seem to reflect patterns also seen during prosaic human activities like concentrating and resting.

However, EGG readings for expert meditators (those who have practiced rigorously for years or decades) show something quite different: high-frequency gamma waves, sometimes thought to play a role in assimilating perceptions, are sharply increased. This certainly distinguishes expert meditators from their novice counterparts. But perhaps the most interesting finding is that gamma wave readings are also higher even when the experts aren’t meditating. This means that something about how advanced meditators experience the world appears to be fundamentally different, both during meditation and everyday activities, from how non-meditators or beginners experience it.

Backing up the suggestion that long-term meditation alters people’s ways of experiencing the world is data showing that expert meditators often boast increased cortical thickness and more gray matter in specific parts of their brains, meaning that their physical brains may have changed after all those years of meditating. Interestingly, gamma wave activity is thought to be associated with a phenomenon known as “neuroplasticity,” or the ability of the brain to form new connections and build on preexistent structures. This connection helps meditation researchers’ hypotheses fit with a fundamental tenet of neuroscience: that all unique states of consciousness are associated with unique brain states. Under this model, altered physical brain structures allow advanced meditators to experience novel states of consciousness.

While meditation research has exploded in recent years, there is still much work to be done. For example, many researchers are beginning to investigate how different meditation styles lead to different states of consciousness. Fell, Nicholai, and Haupt suggest in their article that many different meditation traditions lead to similar increases in gamma activity, but how such shifts are effected is still a mystery. The Bonn researchers hope their hypotheses will help others scientists to better categorize levels of meditation accomplishment, thus leading to new ideas for investigating these and other questions in the future.

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