Dr. Ram Bilas Pachori

IIT Indore

Abstract:
Meditation, having roots in ancient times, has gained popularity in recent years as individuals seek to enhance mental and physical well-being naturally. A growing body of research is dedicated to uncovering the biological mechanisms that underlie the positive effects of meditation. However, despite its ancient origins spanning thousands of years, research investigating the impact of meditation on the human brain remains limited. Various Mantras like Hare Krishna Mahamantra, Rudram Mantra, and other Vedic Mantras play important roles in meditation. This talk will present the effect of Hare Krishna Mahamantra and Rudram Mantra on the human brain based on the analysis of the electroencephalogram (EEG) signals. The characteristics of the Vedic mantras based on the speech signal analysis will also be covered in this talk. The change in EEG rhythm power due to the chanting of Mantras is investigated. The EEG signal has been recorded before and after the chanting of Hare Krishna Mahamantra. Another study has been performed to see the effect of listening to Rudram Mantra. The change in EEG rhythm power shows the manifestation of a relaxed and peaceful state of mind. Instantaneous fundamental frequency (IFF) or pitch detection has a number of applications, such as language recognition, speech recognition, vocal activity recognition, etc. A study has been performed to extract the pitch of four Vedic Mantras. This IFF of chanting from a learned person has been compared to a naïve learner to identify the regions where the chanting needs to be corrected.

Bio:
Ram Bilas Pachori received the B.E. degree with honours in Electronics and Communication Engineering from Rajiv Gandhi Technological University, Bhopal, India, in 2001, the M.Tech. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from IIT Kanpur, India, in 2003 and 2008, respectively.
Before joining the IIT Indore, India, he was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at the Charles Delaunay Institute, University of Technology of Troyes, France (2007-2008) and an Assistant Professor at the Communication Research Center, International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad, India (2008-2009). He was an Assistant Professor (2009-2013) and an Associate Professor (2013-2017) at the Department of Electrical Engineering, IIT Indore, where he has been a Professor, since 2017. He is also associated with the Center for Advanced Electronics, IIT Indore. He was a Visiting Professor at the Department of Computer Engineering, Modeling, Electronics and Systems Engineering, University of Calabria, Rende, Italy, in July 2023; Faculty of Information & Communication Technology, University of Malta, Malta, from June 2023 to July 2023; Neural Dynamics of Visual Cognition Lab, Free University of Berlin, Germany, from July 2022 to September 2022; School of Medicine, Faculty of Health and Medical Sciences, Taylor’s University, Malaysia, from 2018 to 2019. Previously, he was a Visiting Scholar at the Intelligent Systems Research Center, Ulster University, Londonderry, UK, in December 2014.
His research interests include signal and image processing, biomedical signal processing, non-stationary signal processing, speech signal processing, brain-computer interface, machine learning, and artificial intelligence and the internet of things in healthcare. He is an Associate Editor of Electronics Letters, IEEE Transactions on Neural Systems and Rehabilitation Engineering, and Biomedical Signal Processing and Control, and an Editor of IETE Technical Review journal. He is a Fellow of IETE, IEI, and IET. He has 317 publications, which include journal articles (194), conference papers (87), books (10), and book chapters (26). He has also eight patents, including one Australian patent (granted) and seven Indian patents (published). His publications have been cited more than 15,000 times with h-index of 66 according to Google Scholar.