Meditation and neurofeedback.

Tracy Brandmeyer (1, 2) , Arnaud Delorme (1, 2)

1 CERCO - Centre de recherche cerveau et cognition
2 Swartz Center for Computational Neuroscience

Dating back as far as 1957, the academic investigation of meditation and the Asian contemplative traditions have fascinated not only the likes of philosophers and religious scholars, but researchers in the fields of neuroscience, psychology and medicine. Over the last decade, we have witnessed an exponential increase in the interest in meditation research. While this is in part due to improvements in neuroimaging methods, it is also due to the variety of medical practices incorporating meditation into therapeutic protocols. With its increasing popularity, many people in Western societies express an interest and motivation to meditate. However, for many it can often be quite difficult to maintain a disciplined and or regular practice, for various reasons, ranging from a lack of time to general laziness. It is possible that machine assisted programs such as neurofeedback may help individuals develop their meditation practice more rapidly. Methods such as neurofeedback incorporate real-time feedback of electro-encephalography (EEG) activity to teach self-regulation, and may be potentially used as an aid for meditation.

Mots clés: meditation; neurofeedback; EEG; biofeedback; enlightenment

Domaines: Neurosciences [q-bio.NC]

Tracy Brandmeyer, Arnaud Delorme. Meditation and neurofeedback.. Frontiers in Psychology, 2013, 4, pp.688. ⟨10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00688⟩. ⟨hal-00876261⟩