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Religious chanting appears to increase endogenous neural oscillations in the low frequency delta-band, especially in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). This brain region shows the largest decrease in centrality during religious chanting in a highly-trained meditator.
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Learn More »Combining multi-modal data, the present study illustrates neural and physiological mechanisms related to religious chanting. Religious chanting appears to increase endogenous neural oscillations in the low frequency delta-band, especially in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC). This brain region shows the largest decrease in centrality during religious chanting in a highly-trained meditator. Such changes are not due to implicit language processes and are not attributable to differences in cardiac activity between religious and non-religious chanting. Nonetheless, religious chanting does influence cardiac activity significantly, compared to resting state. Strong delta waves have been localized in several brain regions, including the posterior cingulate cortex, during slow-wave sleep18. Less strong delta oscillations are present during the awake state and have been suggested to modulate behavioral performance and memory processes19. Several EEG studies have found increased delta-band power due to meditation practices such as transcendental meditation1 and Qigong20. Increased delta activity in the medial prefrontal cortex was also found during Zen meditation and this may facilitate detaching from attending to one’s immediate surroundings21. Delta waves have also been proposed to act as inhibitory brain oscillations that prevent sources of distraction from interfering with internally focused concentration22. Accumulating evidence suggest that the increased delta wave in posterior regions, especially the PCC, is related to the reduction of self-oriented thoughts23 and the suspension of sensory monitoring24. Because during Amitābha Buddha chanting individuals focus on chanting the Buddha’s name repeatedly, they experience fewer random thoughts and less mind-wandering. The increase of delta-band power in the PCC during religious chanting is a finding with important implications, especially in relation to current research efforts on meditation assisted by real-time neurofeedback25 and on controlling addiction craving24. It is worth noting that, ceteris paribus, endogenous generation of delta waves in the PCC during wakefulness would naturally lead to a de-synchronization of the PCC in relation to the rest of the brain, thereby explaining the decrease in centrality that was observed in the fMRI data. The increased delta-band power observed in the vicinity of the PCC cannot be attributed to peripheral physiological changes, as there was no difference in HRV and respiration between the religious chanting and non-religious chanting. To our knowledge, this is the first study of religious chanting or prayer that has used an active control condition (non-religious chanting), providing stricter control over confounding effects due to implicit language processing. Religious chanting, as an active faith-based practice, overlaps with both meditation and prayer. Nevertheless, it comprises a unique, special case. Practitioners of religious chanting are encouraged to chant the name of the Buddha Amitābha as an object of meditation, while practicing the development of two equally important mental processes: samatha which corresponds to concentration and vipassana which corresponds to mindful observation2. During the chanting of Amitābha Buddha, the practitioner contemplates on the vow and compassion of the Buddha as a practice of vipassana. Such contemplation is meant to induce affective priming that helps the practitioner remain concentrated on the meditation object (the practice of samatha)26,27. By frequently practicing samatha and vipassana during religious chanting, advanced practitioners become able to combine these two aspects of the practice and reach a state called samadhi, during which both mental processes run in parallel. The present study corroborates evidence suggesting that the neurophysiological correlates of religious chanting are distinct from correlates of the extensively researched mindfulness meditation. Mindfulness enhances alpha and theta power and in our previous EEG study on mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR), the alpha-band power increased while the delta-band power decreased during MBSR meditation, compared to the resting state11. Therefore, it appears that despite certain overlaps between mindfulness and spiritual prayer28, different forms of meditative practices are associated with different patterns of brain activity29. This implies that different religious or meditative practices may be more effective for the alleviation of specific neuropsychiatric symptoms; e.g. chanting Amitābha Buddha and relevant practices that increase delta-band power are likely to be beneficial to a wide range of patients suffering from sleep disorders. We suggest this to be the case because, apart from being the dominant frequency band during sleep30, delta-band power reflects the physiological tendency for sleep, by increasing due to sleep deprivation31 and decreasing following extended sleep32. Similarly to sleep, delta-band activity has been suggested to comprise a universal response to injury or pathology33, due to its role for neural plasticity30,34 as well as for the integration of cerebral activity and homeostatic processes33. That is, mental states dominated by delta-band activity are considered as evolutionarily ancient states, in which compensatory and restorative mechanisms replenish biological resources in the brain and peripheral organs, resulting in beneficial effects encompassing biological and cognitive domains33. Variations in delta activity originate in the reticular formation35, which receives afferent inputs from all sensory systems and can reach the PCC through ascending, efferent connectivity, via the thalamus36. The loci of the PCC findings are close to the center of mass of the posterior default mode network (DMN)37. Although the fMRI finding is specific to the PCC, it suggests that at least part of the DMN is affected by religious chanting. Previous studies have independently shown that 53% of DMN functional connectivity variance is explained by delta-band power38 and that DMN activity is related to self-monitoring functions39. In this context, through the described mechanisms involving the suspension of modal brain activity, religious chanting appears to provide a streamlined procedure for the modulation of biological processes.
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Read More »While our study on religious chanting found increased delta-band power during practice, one previous EEG study compared the Buddhist loving-kindness meditation (LKM) with Christian religious prayer and found that LKM practice was associated with increased delta, alpha and beta waves, whereas the practice of religious prayer was associated with increased alpha and gamma waves40. Thereby, it seems that the neurophysiological correlates of religious chanting may be different from those of meditation and religious praying. Future studies should address to what extent increased delta-band power in the PCC is common to all religious chanting (e.g. Byzantine chanting) or specific to love-kindness oriented Buddhist mantras. Moreover, it is important to investigate the extent to which specific practices (e.g. chanting, praying, meditating) can transcend cultural differences associated with specific religions. Practitioners of Buddhist religious chanting concede that chanting Amitābha Buddha is usually accompanied by spiritual feelings of bliss and calmness, as well as visualizations of the ‘splendid Pure Land’ or ‘Land of Bliss’ referenced in the Buddhist scriptures2. Positive feelings and calmness nurture relaxation. This is in line with previous studies showing that prayer facilitates relaxation, which is accompanied by lower metabolism, lower breath rate and distinctive slow brain waves41. The emerging perspective suggests that praying may indeed counteract the physiological and psychological effects of stress and pain42. In addition to the difference in brain activity, our results also showed that religious chanting can increase the stability of cardiac function, compared to the resting state. The HRV analysis is sensitive to changes in autonomic nervous system activity43. The reactivity of the autonomic nervous system, approximated through HRV changes, has been linked to positive and negative moods44. The observed decrease in HRV during religious chanting is a very plausible finding in the context of the accompanying feelings of spiritual bliss and emotional tranquility. Indeed, our previous study showed that mindfulness meditation can also induce similar cardiac effects26. According to the polyvagal theory, HRV indicates the modulation of cardiac activity by the autonomic nervous system and can reflect affective states, including increased stress45. The different components of the HRV have been proposed to reflect modulatory effects from different sources. The VLF component and TP of the HRV were significantly lower during religious chanting, and more than half of the TP is accounted by the VLF component. The VLF component may partly reflect a fluctuation in activity of the renin-angiotensin system, which regulates the cardiovascular tone. The VLF component also reflects the peripheral chemoreceptors and the thermoregulatory mechanism46. The decreased VLF power during religious chanting may indicate a reduction of the cardiac defensive response and general systemic stress level. It is worth noting that the relation of HRV to cardiac vagal effects is not linear. Respiratory activity can also influence the VLF component of HRV, especially in patients with chronic heart failure47. However, in the present study we did not find that religious chanting had any effect on respiration. The power of the HF component of HRV decreased during religious chanting compared to the resting state, while the HF power during non-religious chanting showed a similar trend but did not differ significantly from the HF power of the resting state. HF power is associated with respiratory sinus arrhythmia which is mainly modulated by the nucleus ambiguus activity. In fact, the HF component of the HRV reflects the magnitude of fluctuation in the modulation of cardiac activity by the parasympathetic nervous system48. May and colleagues have shown that a mindfulness meditation intervention can also positively modulate cardiovascular function by decreasing cardiac sympathovagal tone, ventricular workload and vascular resistance49.
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Learn More »Due to the monotonous repetition of the brief chant and the ability of experienced meditators to effectively enter the meditational mental state at will, the associated brain activation is assumed to be relatively homogeneous across a meditative session, especially when lasting only a few minutes. Therefore, the EEG and fMRI versions of the paradigm can be considered equivalent, despite minor differences in the length of experimental trials between the fMRI conditions and between the two neuroimaging modalities. A possible limitation of the present study is that the fMRI and EEG data were acquired from different subjects, with considerable differences in religious chanting experience. For future research, we hypothesize that replicating the present study with a sample comprised of Buddhist monastics would yield similar results with stronger effect sizes, whereas replicating the present study with a sample comprised of non-believers would result in no significant difference between chanting conditions. The lack of cognitive and affective ratings, with regards to either the effect of each experimental condition or the overall psychometric evaluation of each participant, is another potential shortcoming of the present study. Future studies should include the acquisition of such data, with regards to which we hypothesize that the effects reported herein would correlate positively with positive affect and negatively with the level of self-referential cognition. Further, we recommend that future studies acquire EEG data in an electromagnetically shielded EEG cabin, with a high sampling rate (e.g. 5000 Hz), to enable analysis of high gamma band activity as well. In conclusion, compared to non-religious chanting, the PCC decreases in centrality due to a regional increase in endogenous generation of delta oscillations. These functional effects are not due to peripheral cardiac or respiratory activity, nor due to implicit language processing, and are associated to feelings of transcendental bliss and decreased self-oriented cognition. Compared to the resting state, religious chanting increases the stability of cardiac activity, reflecting enhanced stability in the regulation of cardiovascular tone and the parasympathetic modulation of cardiac function. Such physiological changes illustrate the mechanisms through which relaxing meditative practices exert positive stress-reducing effects. The neurophysiological correlates of religious chanting are somewhat different from those of mindfulness meditation and those of other types of religious prayer and future research should address the replicability and specificity of the neurophysiological effects of different religious and meditative practices, as well as their differential suitability as psychological interventions. Research in this field is still in a nascent stage and the tentative interpretations offered here can serve to provide several hypotheses for future research.
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