Heart rate variability during meditation in pranic healers.

Background: Heart rate variability (HRV) can be measured non-invasively in humans to study the physiological responses to various stimuli. The sympathetic branch increases heart rate and the parasympathetic branch decreases heart rate. HRV is an indicator of the dynamic interaction and balance between these two divisions of the Autonomic Nervous System. The pranic healers practice meditation which utilizes unification of body and mind. A reduced HRV is associated with increased risk of cardiac and overall mortality. Studies suggest a number of non-pharmacological techniques for the improvement of HRV. These techniques are believed to stabilize the ANS by modulating the parasympathetic nervous system and in turn improve HRV. The impact of these techniques on HRV and their effectiveness as therapeutic tools in patients with reduced HRV is to be determined.Methods: This study included 15 professional pranic healers as subjects in the age group 18-40 years. ECG was recorded during the phases, Series 1 (before meditation) and Series 3 (during meditation). HRV parameters were computed with the aid of suitable software and were analyzed. Results: The HRV parameters (Mean, Low frequency / LF, High frequency / HF, Total power, pNN50%) were compared. Power spectrum analysis showed distinctive change in frequency components. Low frequency component (LF; 0.04Hz to 0.15Hz), high frequency component (HF; 0.15Hz to 0.40Hz) and total power were significantly higher during the meditation phase (p = 0.05). pNN50% showed a trend towards decrease (though not significant) during the meditation phase (p = 0.066).Conclusions: The variance of the heart rate during meditation was significantly higher during meditation than before meditation for all subjects. These techniques are believed to stabilise the ANS by modulating the parasympathetic nervous system and in turn improve HRV.

A comparative study of median nerve somatosensory evoked potential in the totally blind and normal subjects.

The totally blind individuals are often considered to be compensated for their visual loss by augmentation in the auditory and tactile perceptions as against the normal sighted individuals. The objective of the present work was to study the somatosensory evoked potentials (SEPs) after median nerve stimulation in the wrist of totally blind and normal sighted individuals. SEPs were recorded after median nerve stimulation in the wrist of 15 Braille reading totally blind females and compared with 15 age matched normal sighted females. Latency and amplitudes of SEPs (N9, N13, and N20) were measured and analyzed statistically. Amplitude of N20 SEP was significantly larger in the totally blind than in normal sighted individuals (P < 0.05). The amplitudes of N9 and N13 SEPs and the latencies of all SEPs showed no significant differences. The congenitally blind individuals have larger N20 amplitude, suggestive of greater somatosensory cortical representation than normal sighted individuals.