• Atefeh Goshvarpour and Ateke Goshvarpour.
• Computational Neuroscience Laboratory, Department of Biomedical Engineering, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Sahand University of Technology, Tabriz, Iran.
• Biomed J. 2015 May 1; 38 (3): 229-34.

BackgroundPoincare plots are commonly used to study the nonlinear behavior of physiologic signals. The aim of this study is to evaluate the Poincare plot indices of human heart rate signals during meditation.MethodsFor this purpose, heart rate time series of eight Chi meditators available in Physionet database were used. Poincare plots with lags of 1 and 6 were constructed, and the ratio of the minor axis to major axis (SD1/SD2) and the area of Poincare plots were calculated for each lag.ResultsThe results show that the SD1/SD2 ratio increased significantly during meditation compared to that before meditation, especially the index measured from Poincare plots reconstructed with a lag of 6 (p < 0.05). In addition, in both lags, the area of Poincare plots decreased significantly during meditation compared to before meditation (p < 0.05).ConclusionThe comparative dynamic measures of the Poincare plot indices during and before meditation give more insight of the heart rate signals in a specific psychophysiological state.

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