Meditation practices, originated from ancient traditions, have increasingly received attention due to their potential benefits to mental and physical health. The scientific community invests efforts into scrutinizing and quantifying the effects of these practices, especially on the brain. There are methodological challenges in describing the neural correlates of the subjective experience of meditation. We noticed, however, that technical considerations on signal processing also don't follow standardized approaches, which may hinder generalizations. Therefore, in this article, we discuss the usage of the electroencephalogram (EEG) as a tool to study meditation experiences in healthy individuals. We describe the main EEG signal processing techniques and how they have been translated to the meditation field until April 2020. Moreover, we examine in detail the limitations/assumptions of these techniques and highlight some good practices, further discussing how technical specifications may impact the interpretation of the outcomes. By shedding light on technical features, this article contributes to more rigorous approaches to evaluate the construct of meditation.

中文翻译：

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通过脑电图表征冥想体验的批判性分析

冥想练习起源于古老的传统，由于其对身心健康的潜在益处而越来越受到关注。科学界投入精力仔细审查和量化这些做法的影响，尤其是对大脑的影响。描述冥想主观体验的神经关联存在方法论上的挑战。然而，我们注意到，信号处理的技术考虑也不遵循标准化方法，这可能会阻碍泛化。因此，在本文中，我们讨论使用脑电图（EEG）作为研究健康个体冥想体验的工具。我们描述了主要的脑电图信号处理技术，以及它们如何在 2020 年 4 月之前转化为冥想领域。此外，我们详细研究了这些技术的局限性/假设，并强调了一些良好的实践，进一步讨论了技术规范如何影响解释结果。通过阐明技术特征，本文有助于提供更严格的方法来评估冥想的结构。