Changes in Brainstem and Cortical Auditory Potentials During Qi-Gong Meditation

"Qi Gong" (QG) is a meditation exercise known for thousands of years in China and has always been widely practiced. It has been claimed to have a variety of healing and other health benefits. To provide an understanding of the effect of QG on brain structures along the whole neural axis from the periphery to the cerebral cortex, we have monitored short-latency auditory brainstem evoked response, middle-latency response, and long-latency cortical auditory evoked potentials, before, during, and after QG. Our results showed that QG caused an enhancement of brainstem auditory evoked response with a concomitant depression of cortical responses. These observations may be related to the healing and other health benefits of QG.