Study on Cardiorespiratory Interactions and Phase Synchronization for Zen-meditation and control group

• Main Authors: Lyu, Bo-Ting, 呂柏廷
• Other Authors: Lo, Pei-Chen
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2017
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/3473s5

碩士 === 國立交通大學 === 電控工程研究所 === 105 === This research is aimed to investigate the cardiorespiratory interaction of Zen-meditation practitioners (Zen-meditation group) and ordinary practitioners (control group) by heart rate variability (HRV), respiratory sinus arrhythmia (RSA) behavior and cardiorespiratory phase synchronization analysis. In the time-domain HRV analysis, it provides the information for evaluating the activity of autonomic nervous system (ANS) at different mental-stress levels. In the frequency-domain, HRV behavior is quantified by the ratio of low-frequency power to high-frequency power (denoted by LF/HF) of HRV spectrum. In traditional HRV analysis (tHRV), the ratio LF/HF is very likely to be overestimated, in this study, adaptive frequency range (AFR) method are developed to deal with the issue. Quantification of respiratory sinus arrhythmia reflects the correlation between cardiac rhythm and respiratory pattern in each subject. In addition, the cardiorespiratory synchronization phenomenon is quantified by the following schemes for comparison, intrinsic mode functions (IMF), continuous wavelet transform (CWT), and Hilbert-Huang Transform (HHT). This study involved 32 subjects, 7 Zen-meditation practitioners and 25 control subjects without any meditation experience. According to our HRV results, most subjects exhibit vigorous ANS activity with parasympathetic dominance at the Zen meditation (experimental group) or in the breathing-control session (control group). In the RSA analysis, breathing-control session induces more apparent respiratory sinus arrhythmia phenomenon in control group. Moreover, higher cardiorespiratory synchronization degree appears either at the Zen meditation or in the breathing-control session. Therefore, we may conclude that Zen meditation can well maintain the efficiency of cardiorespiratory interactions.