Peter Gamma (Physiologist & Director) Meditation Research Institute Switzerland (MRIS)

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Is an equipement with fMRI with 256 channel EEG required for decoding Depth of Meditation – no, there are other tools availabe

Posted bypg@petergamma.org

Last Updated on May 7, 2024 by pg@petergamma.org

Richard R. Davidson and others used fMRI with 256 channel EEG for Decoding Depth of Meditation, as for instance in this PNAS paper published in 2004

Long-term meditators self-induce high-amplitude gamma synchrony during mental practice

https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.0407401101

what is shortly reviewed in this video:

We now found a paper on Google Scholar published in 2024:

Decoding Depth of Meditation: EEG Insights from Expert Vipassana
Practitioners

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=de&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=Decoding+Depth+of+Meditation%3A+EEG+Insights+from+Expert+Vipassana&btnG=

  • The data of this paper will be made publicly available and shared with the ENIGMA-meditation working group upon completion of peer-review.

https://europepmc.org/article/ppr/ppr834486

  • Before you read all of the about 4 000 post written by Peter Gamma from www.petergamma.org look at these papers.
  • We did not study the scientific literature when we started the site www.petergamma.org, we only searched on YouTube and in the web what we found.
  • And we don’t know if we will continue with that process since one finding for us personally is that we find many scientific projects on YouTube and in the web which are basically given up by scientsits but not labeled as such, which is just a waste of time, if you go trough it once more.
  • So if you look for the state of the affairs of our knowledge, you can find it in the most recent blog posts under www.petergamma.org.
  • Christian Kothe who is co-author of the above paper about EEG Insights from Expert Vipassana Practitioners worked at the Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience
  • William Croft from www.openBCI.com wrote while ago that BCILAB is basically been given up and not developed further.
  • We found here a paper about BCILAB in the Journal of Neural Engineering published in 2013:

https://iopscience.iop.org/article/10.1088/1741-2560/10/5/056014/meta

  • Arnaud Delorme recently made a demonstration on YouTube with the Neurofeedbacklab, which is eventually based on BCILAB:
  • BCILAB developer Christian Kothe is a computer scientist trained at the Technische Universtiät Berlin, Germany:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/christian-kothe-32900110

  • And he worked as EEGLAB developer Arnaud Delorme for the Swartz Center of Compiutational Neuroscience up to 2015
  • Then Christian Kothe went to Intheon

https://intheon.io/team

  • Intheon accelerates scientific research and empower developers to create transformative brain- and body-aware applications impacting health and wellness.
  • But we found the information that Intheon is temporarily closed.
  • Christian Kothe is still listed as working at Intheon since 9 years.
  • What makes the above paper about mediation depth in Vipassana meditators is that it was co-authored by computer scientists like Christian Kothe who worked for the Swartz Center of Compational Neuroscience.
  • Christian Kothe is a highly qualified computer scientist.
  • He worked and studied in well-known institutions.
  • The Swartz Center of Computational Neuroscience is a well-known insitution, and the place also EEGLAB developer Arnaud Delorme works.
  • But all the same the paper about Decoding Depth of Meditation: EEG Insights from Expert Vipassana is not published in a high-level scientific journal.
  • So is this project basically been given up?
  • Concerining the paper about ENIGMA-Meditation:

https://europepmc.org/article/ppr/ppr834486

  • We found the first entry concerning this paper in the web under researchgate.net
  • ENIGMA-Meditation: Worldwide consortium for neuroscientific reserach on mediation: is listed as published in 2024:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=de&as_sdt=0%2C5&q=ENIGMA-Meditation&btnG=

  • many papers on researchgate.net are not peer-reviewed and are basically been given up by scientists.
  • From the ENIGMA-Meditation project we only found one low-level published in 2024.
  • But does the ENIGMA mediation project not runs since a longer period of time, since we found many evidence for such a project in the web.

But a conclusion of Peter Gamma from www.petergamma.org is that we basically found no sustainable project which measures mediation depth and continues to publish papers.

  • If people suffer from mental issues and diseases the usually consult a psychotherapist or a psychiatrists:
  • Since which fMRI, EEG device or other apparatus has the sensivity of a human being and the capacity of a human brain?
  • And another option is to learn Yoga and Meditation from a Spritual teacher such as Yogi Bhajan,
  • Thích Nhất Hạnh or the Dalai Lama the 14 th. or Osho.
  • But Osho was only avaible for rich peope.
  • Other spiritual teachers such as Milarepa from Tibet:
  • Where also discussed by Sadhguru on YouTube.
  • There are tools available to measure meditation depth with brain scanners, fMRI, and EEG,
  • But if we search for those, is someone really using those tools on sustainable way for research, developement and four our daily life?

Other people than Cody Rall MD with Techforpsych which continues to review these devices on a regular basis?

What is your opinion abouth this topic? Write it in the comments below.