Breakdown of Long-Range Correlations in Heart Rate Fluctuations During Meditation

TL;DR

This study investigates how meditation affects heart rate variability, revealing a reduction in long-range correlations and complexity at larger scales, indicating changes in underlying physiological mechanisms.

Contribution

It introduces an entropy analysis in the natural time domain to examine the impact of meditation on heart rate dynamics across multiple scales.

Findings

Weaker long-range correlations during meditation at larger time scales.

Significant loss of complexity in heart rate signals during meditation.

Altered physiological mechanisms indicated by changes in correlation structure.

Abstract

The average wavelet coefficient method is applied to investigate the scaling features of heart rate variability during meditation, a state of induced mental relaxation. While periodicity dominates the behavior of the heart rate time series at short intervals, the meditation induced correlations in the signal become significantly weaker at longer time scales. Further study of these correlations by means of an entropy analysis in the natural time domain reveals that the induced mental relaxation introduces substantial loss of complexity at larger scales, which indicates a change in the physiological mechanisms involved.