Two things:

1) A recently discovered very strong correlation (needs further longitudinal study) between mindfulness practice and a reduced decline in mental performance with age.

http://journal.frontiersin.org/Journal/10.3389/fnagi.2014.00...

2) I had a demo -- the device is actually very responsive and seems to really work. The science (not conclusive but interesting) behind it is a well known correlation with meditation and brain alpha waves. YMMV.

I have been doing zazen meditation as 2-3 hours per day for 10+ years.

The way I see it, mindfulness practices and meditation gives long term effects because you are doing the effort yourself. It's not the mental state you are in during the meditation that brings the long term benefits. What works is your constant effort to look at your mind and notice what it does, even when you are distracted or feel vexed and especially then.

When you do 7 day zazen retreat where you meditate 10-16 hours per day, you feel pain in your legs, periods of intense drowsiness, agitation, strong emotions, boredom, etc. all this while sitting and looking calm outwards. Within all this internal storm you are just looking at what happens your own mind at the current moment. Attaching yourself to pleasant mental states you get in meditation is just waste of time.

The way these EEG devices work is by giving you feedback loop that gets you into relaxed state. That's not same as meditation. It can have good effects, but it's not the same.

One person drives with car 10 km every day and other person runs 10 km every day. The amount they travel correlates very closely, but only one person gets exercise.

But meditating for 2-3 hours PER DAY seems a bit excessive, no?

Then meditating for 10-16 hours per days seems really excessive.

It's almost like you're saying, these people who meditate, they don't really meditate, they just pay lip service. To meditate you have to be dedicated and spend 2-3 hours per day doing it if you're going to it correctly.

A bit judgmental aye? Reads to me like the comment is based on the meditator's experience and isn't an injunction on other, but an observation based on experience.

I think it's an important observation to point out to that this device may intact hinder the desired effects of (at least) zazen.

People watch TV or play games for mutiple hours, meditating 2-3hours seems hardly excessive in light of that.

You don't really need a gadget to meditate, any more than you need an app to go running. But it's nice to be able to keep track of your progress, and maybe even use the data to see how variables like sleep or exercise affect your ability to stay focused and relaxed.

I wrote a small app to record short meditation sessions using a NeuroSky MindWave [https://github.com/zenobase/zenobase-mindlog]. But I stopped using it because getting this device positioned correctly was a pain...

Having done some small experiments with EEG I'm wary of these consumer devices (have seen 'performance improving' gaming gear too), mostly work with muscles etc. This doesn't claim EEG that I can see though so... who knows? (EDIT: just saw EEG details, if they can get a clean signal without using conductive gel fair play to them, I would love to hear how because that is an achievement!)

As an aside a friend once described capitalism as 'viral' in that everything can be looked at through its eyes, packaged and sold, and that's why it can be so hard to change, even radical movements to disrupt it are packaged and sold, think Che Guevara t-shirts. It's fascinating to see.

I agree. EEG signals are buried within layers of much stronger artifacts.

I'm relatively sure that this device just notices when you you relax your face and forehead muscles. That's good indicator of your relaxation.