Heartbeat-Evoked Potentials as a Neural Marker of Meditative Depth

Nath, M.^1,2, Reggente, N. ^1,

¹Institute For Advanced Consciousness Studies, Santa Monica, CA, USA
²Albert Ludwig University of Freiburg, Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany

PrePrint: https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/7c3er

Quick Summary

This study examined Heartbeat Evoked Potentials (HEPs) during meditation in expert Vipassana practitioners (n=30), revealing progressive amplitude increases tracking self-reported meditative depth in real-time across multiple site visits. While traditional EEG markers often reflect non-specific states like relaxation or drowsiness, HEPs capture the heart’s direct influence on brain activity—a neurophysiological marker inherently personalized to each practitioner’s embodied experience. This heart-brain coupling, robust over the C3 region, serves as a putative precise indicator of interoceptive processing, addressing a core dysfunction across mental health conditions that meditation ameliorates. The specificity of HEPs as a marker of meditative depth, combined with their accessibility via single-channel EEG, makes them ideal for neurofeedback interventions fostering heightened embodied awareness. By quantifying the heart’s causal influence on neural signatures during meditation, this approach offers a tractable pathway toward personalized meditation training, illuminating mechanisms underlying its broad therapeutic effects.

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