A comparative study of the effects of yoga meditation and napping on response inhibition: ERP and spectral evidence from the Go/NoGo task

Response inhibition is a core component of executive function and is closely associated with various mental disorders. Yoga meditation and daytime napping are two different rest strategies believed to improve cognitive function, but their immediate effects on response inhibition and the underlying neural mechanisms remain unclear. This study compared the immediate effects of a 15‑min yoga meditation and a 15‑min daytime nap on response inhibition in healthy adults, and explored the neural dissociation between the two interventions using event‑related potentials (ERPs) and EEG spectral analysis. A repeated‑measures crossover design was adopted. Twenty‑five healthy right‑handed participants completed both a yoga meditation session and a nap session. During each session, 64‑channel EEG was recorded while participants performed a Go/NoGo task before and after the 15‑min intervention. Behavioral, ERP, and spectral measures were analyzed. Behaviorally, yoga meditation significantly increased NoGo accuracy, whereas the nap significantly shortened Go reaction time. At the ERP level, yoga meditation enhanced NoGo‑N2 and NoGo‑P3 amplitudes, while the nap only shortened N2 latency. Spectrally, yoga meditation increased fronto‑central theta power, while the nap decreased parietal alpha power (i.e., enhanced task‑related alpha desynchronization). Correlation analyses showed that, in the yoga group, pre‑post changes in N2 amplitude and theta power were strongly correlated with improvements in accuracy and reaction time, respectively; no such correlations were found in the nap group. These findings suggest that both interventions improve response inhibition through dissociable neural pathways: yoga meditation is associated with enhanced prefrontal conflict monitoring and top‑down attentional control, whereas a daytime nap is associated with restoration of attentional resources and modulation of parietal alpha oscillations. EEG measures can effectively distinguish the cognitive effects of the two rest strategies.