Neuroadaptive Meditation in the Real World

Abstract

Meditation and mindfulness techniques are useful for both treatment of various disorders as well as improving the quality of life in general. Meditation offers intriguing possibilities for BCI as it is targeted at able-bodied general population and goes beyond the traditional explicit control BCI paradigm. In previous work, we have shown how neurofeedback can be successfully applied in a laboratory setting to improve the meditation experience. This position paper aims to expand this work in two ways. First, we explore the problems and issues that might arise when moving from the laboratory setting to the normal, everyday world. Second, we will consider the possibilities of extending the neurofeedback with other forms of physiological computing. Our position is that meditation and relaxation applications provide a perfect application area for bringing BCI into the real world.