title: Cognitive behavior evaluation based on physiological parameters among young healthy subjects with yoga as intervention.
abstract: OBJECTIVE
  To investigate the effect of yoga practice on cognitive skills, autonomic nervous system, and heart rate variability by analyzing physiological parameters.
  
  
  METHODS
  The study was conducted on 30 normal young healthy engineering students. They were randomly selected into two groups: yoga group and control group. The yoga group practiced yoga one and half hour per day for six days in a week, for a period of five months.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The yoga practising group showed increased α, β, and δ EEG band powers and significant reduction in θ and γ band powers. The increased α and β power can represent enhanced cognitive functions such as memory and concentration, and that of δ signifies synchronization of brain activity. The heart rate index θ/α decreased, neural activity β/θ increased, attention resource index β/(α + θ) increased, executive load index (δ + θ)/α decreased, and the ratio (δ + θ)/(α + β) decreased. The yoga practice group showed improvement in heart rate variability, increased SDNN/RMSSD, and reduction in LF/HF ratio.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Yoga practising group showed significant improvement in various cognitive functions, such as performance enhancement, neural activity, attention, and executive function. It also resulted in increase in the heart rate variability, parasympathetic nervous system activity, and balanced autonomic nervous system reactivity.
authors.affiliation: Faculty in E & CE Department, Poojya Doddappa Appa College of Engineering, Kalaburagi 585 102, India ; Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Roorkee 247 667, India.
authors.forename: H
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Nagendra
authors.affiliation: Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee, Roorkee 247 667, India.
authors.forename: Vinod
authors.initials: V
authors.lastname: Kumar
authors.affiliation: Moradabad Institute of Technology, Moradabad 244 001, India.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Mukherjee
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000465:Algorithms; D001341:Autonomic Nervous System / Q000502:physiology*; D001519:Behavior / Q000502:physiology*; D003071:Cognition / Q000502:physiology*; D004562:Electrocardiography; D004569:Electroencephalography; D005260:Female; D064368:Healthy Volunteers; D006339:Heart Rate / Q000502:physiology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D015203:Reproducibility of Results; D012815:Signal Processing, Computer-Assisted; D058067:Wavelet Analysis; D015013:Yoga; D055815:Young Adult