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The title is, to put it mildly, overblown. It's a comparative study of two small meditating & non-meditating populations, with no attempt to investigate causali
by crispinb 7y ago
The title is, to put it mildly, overblown. It's a comparative study of two small meditating & non-meditating populations, with no attempt to investigate causality. As usual with studies of this type, there's a disclaimer to that effect in the Discussion, essentially contradicting the paragraphs it follows.
What's more, it's not even a study of 'meditation' per se, but of one little-known practice:
> The recruited meditation practitioners were individuals trained with BWV, a meditation practice that combines ancient Eastern philosophy with modern scientific methods to elevate human awareness
So at most this shows some small brain structure differences between two non-randomly-selected populations. Despite a heroic attempt (figure 3) it doesn't even find a dose response of note.
- themodelplumber 7y agoOh no. Is it a BWV promotion attempt of some sort? Or calculated to prop up the commercial promotion of the activity? That would be disappointing...
- crispinb 7y agoThere's nothing in the 'Conflict of Interest' section to suggest that. Getting a cohort of experienced meditators together is not the easiest so perhaps they're just using what (who) they have. I know nothing about BMV but an antecedent paper they cite contrasts it with mindfulness, the most commonly-studied form of meditation, and it mentions that BMV involves movement, so it at least seems to be an atypical practice.
- monkeycantype 7y agoThe authors are associated with the Korea Institute of Brain Science. (Hover over their names in the paper) Ilchi Lee is the president of the institute and the owner of 'Brain Wave Vibration' http://www.brainkibs.org/About/Greeting.asp http://www.brainkibs.org/About/Greeting.asp https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_%26_Brain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_%26_Brain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilchi_Lee https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilchi_Lee
- themodelplumber 7y agoThanks for the info...that seems pretty disappointing. No conflicts of interest? I would say the idea has little validity on its face.
- crispinb 7y agoWell you can also just read the paper yourself in 10 minutes and see that it's not up to much. It still wouldn't be up to much even if all the authors were the squeakiest of clean Nobel Prize winners.