meditation and band powers, using Muse headband
Jlesaistu
Canada
Hi, i am a meditation practitioner who got interested in looking at the result of various meditation practice (like normal mindfulness vs jhana or absorption meditation) on EG and seeing how sharp and sustained the variation of pattern following shift in state of consciousness can be.
So while not looking for very high refresh rate or whatever but more long term average....i still found even the basic muse headband give some quite decent result. my main goals is look at alternating variation of ACS trough volition control effect over a timeframe.
For exemple, here is a session where i hover, with eye open, betwen trying to get intro deeper and softer meditation pattern tryign to see at how fast and sustain the variation in alpha brand is....and then about midway stich to much more beta/gamma dominant high single point focus practice.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1fupRiNScWSr0TwKNP-bOCz5jhsWQOgsM
My main concern is that, especially for the more active focus...the sheer intensity of focus used make it VERY hard to not get any kind of muscle effect but i did try my best in the various test of "subtain gamma" to get it as stable with the least indication of muscle movement as i could...still tricky especially with the easy to disturb muse headband low sensor count.
Also, i curently have very limited analysis forstware only using quite generic graph.....curious about recomendation for potential hardware upgrade. what could help having a better quality signal and test environement and sujestion for better analytic tool. if anyone want to use they softweare to look at tsome CVS files and give insight that would be apreciated.
thanks
Comments
Hi Jlesaistu,
Some interesting graphs you show there. I understand your goal of wanting to see the effects of the different meditation styles on your band powers. So you are switching back and forth between styles at one or several minute intervals. So your graphs show that you are doing that.
And... at the same time, I get the impression that your goal is to achieve an EEG assisted form of support DURING your meditation practice, which might last much longer than one or two minutes. More like 15 minutes, 30 minutes or an hour.
I believe you would get much insight from studying what Dr. Jeff Tarrant is doing with his Neuromediation Institute. There have been some past threads here on the forum mentioning his links and videos.
https://openbci.com/forum/index.php?p=/discussion/2642/implementing-jeff-tarrants-neuromeditation-focus-protocol
https://openbci.com/forum/index.php?p=/discussion/1829/attention-vs-meditation-alternative-neurosky-mindwave
With the OpenBCI boards, Ganglion or Cyton, you can select which 10-20 scalp sites you are working with. You position your electrodes there. With a Muse headband, the positions are fixed at the forehead and ears. However there is an add-on electrode you can order for the Muse, which allows it to measure one more EEG channel. I don't know the details on ordering or using this, but I do know that the 'Myndlift' system uses Muse and supports that extra electrode.
https://www.myndlift.com/
Regards, William
https://www.neuromeditationinstitute.com/
Hi, yes indeed.....my goal is to see the real time effect of different meditation practice on me and to identify how different state of consciousness transfer to reading. But yes the muse is very limited and I consider having decent skill. I am at the core a very dedicated practitioner, I follow those state of consciousness by how they feel via somatosensory feedback mostly. But the issue with those technique is than they are all based on internal feedback what is useful but give you no real indication on what is happening with the feedback....so suddenly the EGG devise become a fascinating tool do see what "feeling" I get inside or intent/shift I am at relate to what measurable effect.
for example....
yoga nigra style
vs just sitting there doing active body scan
vs open eye meditation (no eye closing there) with no real goal just aware idling.
what obviously have less alpha range but still positive compare to closing eye. and compare to more absorption style meditation than require very hard focus on, basically nothings....you focus on focusing oddly enough and it give very strong internal feeling of pressure and all. This one get weird....
My hypothesis is than those various state are various kind of "configuration" you can learn to guide the brain toward....and FAST. So while very long timeframe study are great at having a overview of what stable practice look like. i am also interesting on at what rate and how fast a shift can happen directly linked to the intent or shifting by following somatosensory feedback.
So it seem the ideal is two goal:
Decent spatial amplitude recording.... So I can see if there is vectorial factor to various kind of focus and intent and state... Or tendency in their behavior. It might look weird to say but the more it goes the more I think of meditation and other as "speed induction routine" and look for sharp, consistent, predictable pattern.
Ability to run decent intuitive visualizer with a like 1-2 minute buffer so you can induce, hold for a minute, release and see what that last minute tendency was looking like and link clear cause-effect. Because obviously breaking concentration to analyze the outcome by itself mess up the graph but if you get a little buffer you can do live feedback oriented session.
CBI is definitively very great for that but a little bit more complex.....I was also considering more complete "plug and play" option like the emotiv EPOC X with it's relatively simple setup 14 channel than might do the trick for the desired purpose. i don't know every available option however so I trough perhaps that forum is a great place to find the best kind fo layout for that very specific
I'm not current on the Emotiv gear, but at some point they denied access to the raw data unless you purchased a subscription. OpenBCI boards are totally open and raw data is unrestricted. For Neuromediation, only a couple channels are needed. So Ganglion would work for you. I assume you watched the videos from Tarrant. He gives 2 channel protocols there for a wide range of mediation styles. By using one of the recommended neurofeedback apps for OpenBCI (BrainBay, neuromore, BioEra), you can easily design your own feedback system based on either Tarrant or your own goals. You asked about 'visualizer', all three of the above do this.
https://docs.openbci.com/Software/CompatibleThirdPartySoftware/BrainBay/
Below page shows a sample BrainBay neurofeedback example, for rewarding alpha. There are other tutorials, manuals at the BrainBay site. Open source and free.
https://sites.google.com/site/biofeedbackpages/brainbay-openbci