Last Updated on March 19, 2023 by pg@petergamma.org
We reviewed EEG devices and the effect of practicing meditation since several years. But often happened exactly the opposite of one would expect. In 2004, the group of Richard Davidson wrote a paper about extraordinary brain waves of long-term meditators in PNAS:
https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0407401101
Matthieu Ricard, Buddhist monk with a PhD. in cellular genetics who participated in the study was hoping that the paper was published in Nature, and the results could be revolutionary. But the paper was published in PNAS, and it triggered no revolution. According to Richard Davidson, this paper eventually triggered the Center of Healthy Mind in Madison Wisconsin. And the result was Richard Davidsons book “Altered Traits”. But was this book revolutionary? Only 20 min of practicing meditation is suffient to see an effect in a brain scanner. But is this enough for the next Nobel Prize in Medicine?
In 2005, someone spent a lot of money for the Meditation Research Institute at Swami Rama Sadhaka Grama in India. The results where mainly four papers in international journals.
Then, on 10 March 2014 the last message of the institute written by the M.R.I. Team:
https://www.ahymsin.org/about-the-meditation-research-institute-m-r-i/
We do not know of any further activity of the MRI India. Other strange things happened which give a hint to a strong actor in the background who does want to control the EEG market and what can be done with it. Is it Texas Instruments?
Alexandre Brachant developes a Muse LSL for the Muse 2 for fun and in his spare time over the week end with a friend. His Muse LSL has a lot of issues, so that it can only be used for fun and in our spare time over the weekend. A further observation in this direction: the Muse SDK was pulled from the market, as soon as Arnaud Delorme wanted to use it for LSL for the Muse 1.
Does Texas Instruments want to control all the EEG device in the world, and decide, which devices can be used for fun and in our spare time over the week end, and which people have to buy a g.tec medical device to do research with it?
Tendencies like this hinders development in the field of meditation research. Is this also in the interest of global players? Meditation daily for 20 min for fun and in our spare time, and for the real thing a diagnosis by a medical doctor, drugs and Psilocybin? It is time for an age of enlightenment and to become independent of global players and start to develop open source hard and software for EEG devices which are independent of Texas Instruments or other global players.