Are the devices we reviewed in our journal suitable to study the long-term effect of practicing meditation?

Last Updated on January 5, 2024 by pg@petergamma.org

Does it make any sense to study the long-term effect of meditation with the device we review in this journal?We haven’t found an answer to this question yet. It is not necessary to use those for practicing meditation. Many meditation masters practiced for years without these devices. We do not know as well, if they are practical for long-term use.

What has been studied and evaluated (not by us) is the setup which has been used for instance by Dr. Richard Davidsons group but is also used for instance for the clinical validation of Psylocibin in Switzerland, which consists of 256 EEG channel device combined with fMRI. We suppose these very expensive devices are also used for clinical validation of other new drugs. But we do not know of any other long-term studies with these devices to study the effect of practicing meditation other than the studies of the group of Dr. Richard Davidson which are reported about in the book «Altered Traits».

But still devices like treadmills but also ECG devices are also used for clinical und research applications, and the devices we evaluate here eventually as well.

We suppose that at least the devices sold by g.tec medical would eventually be suitable to study the long-term effect of practicing meditation. g.tec medical engineering has been founded by Dr. Christoph Guger and Dr. Günter Edlinger in 1999 in Austria. g.tec develops and produces high-performance brain-computer interfaces and neurotechnologies for invasive and non-invasive recordings for research or clinical purposes:

Since g.tec devices are on the market for around 20 years they are well established. The devices we review here are partly similar to the devices sold by g.tec medical, and we do not want to found a company similar to g.tec in Switzerland. They differ to the devices sold by g.tec in the respect that the MRIS is a private project and the devices we review are optimized for low-cost high-quality. Many of the devices sold by g.tec are much more expensive. Is it worth to buy a device from g.tec for meditators? We do not know the answer.