Classroom Group Meditation and Frontal EEG Power-Envelope Networks: A Large Scale Hyperscanning Study
Abstract
Portable electroencephalography (EEG) allows neural activity to be recorded from whole classrooms, but correlated activity across students can arise from shared instructions, parallel changes in arousal or common artefact rather than interpersonal coupling, and dyads within one class are not independent observations. In this exploratory analysis, single-channel frontal EEG was recorded during eyes-closed rest and guided group meditation in twelve classroom sessions at four schools (194 students; 9–23 per session). For each session and band (alpha, theta, delta, beta), sparse partial-correlation networks among participants were estimated from 140 consecutive 2-s band-power values with the Graphical Lasso, using one condition-blind penalty for both conditions. The primary outcome, positive network strength, was compared between conditions with the session as the unit of inference, using exact sign-flip tests and false-discovery-rate control across bands. No band differed between meditation and rest (alpha: mean session difference = 0.00006, 95% CI [−0.00083, 0.00096], raw p = .887, q = .939). No band differed after calibration against circular-shift surrogates or when one penalty was applied to all sessions, and alpha stayed null when any one session was removed. Along the penalty path, 9 of the 12 sessions changed the sign of their own alpha difference. A tuning-free mean pairwise correlation, calibrated against circular-shift surrogates, also showed no condition difference in any band. These data do not show that brief group meditation changes interparticipant EEG organisation in classrooms, and they indicate that per-session penalised network summaries need penalty-path and tuning-free checks before they are interpreted.
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BibTeX
@misc{junling2026classroom,
title = {{Classroom Group Meditation and Frontal EEG Power-Envelope Networks: A Large Scale Hyperscanning Study}},
author = {GAO JUNLING and Yilin Zhang and Hank Leung and Kin Cheung (George) Lee and Chun Chi Poon and Bonnie Wai Yan Wu and Hin Hung Sik},
howpublished = {PsyArXiv},
year = {2026},
month = oct,
doi = {10.31234/osf.io/5ghrb_v2},
url = {https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/5ghrb_v2/},
note = {CC BY 4.0},
}
RIS
TY - UNPB
TI - Classroom Group Meditation and Frontal EEG Power-Envelope Networks: A Large Scale Hyperscanning Study
AU - GAO JUNLING
AU - Yilin Zhang
AU - Hank Leung
AU - Kin Cheung (George) Lee
AU - Chun Chi Poon
AU - Bonnie Wai Yan Wu
AU - Hin Hung Sik
PY - 2026
DA - 2026/10/15
PB - PsyArXiv
DO - 10.31234/osf.io/5ghrb_v2
UR - https://osf.io/preprints/psyarxiv/5ghrb_v2/
AB - Portable electroencephalography (EEG) allows neural activity to be recorded from whole classrooms, but correlated activity across students can arise from shared instructions, parallel changes in arousal or common artefact rather than interpersonal coupling, and dyads within one class are not independent observations. In this exploratory analysis, single-channel frontal EEG was recorded during eyes-closed rest and guided group meditation in twelve classroom sessions at four schools (194 students; 9–23 per session). For each session and band (alpha, theta, delta, beta), sparse partial-correlation networks among participants were estimated from 140 consecutive 2-s band-power values with the Graphical Lasso, using one condition-blind penalty for both conditions. The primary outcome, positive network strength, was compared between conditions with the session as the unit of inference, using exact sign-flip tests and false-discovery-rate control across bands. No band differed between meditation and rest (alpha: mean session difference = 0.00006, 95% CI [−0.00083, 0.00096], raw p = .887, q = .939). No band differed after calibration against circular-shift surrogates or when one penalty was applied to all sessions, and alpha stayed null when any one session was removed. Along the penalty path, 9 of the 12 sessions changed the sign of their own alpha difference. A tuning-free mean pairwise correlation, calibrated against circular-shift surrogates, also showed no condition difference in any band. These data do not show that brief group meditation changes interparticipant EEG organisation in classrooms, and they indicate that per-session penalised network summaries need penalty-path and tuning-free checks before they are interpreted.
ER -