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Here is a summary of Daniel Goleman and Richard J. Davidson:

Daniel Goleman is a psychologist and science journalist. He studied meditation in India and Sri Lanka and has practiced meditation for decades. He writes about the science of meditation.
Richard J. Davidson is a neuroscientist who founded the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin. He has scanned the brains of advanced meditators. He has also practiced meditation for many years.
Goleman and Davidson have been close friends and collaborators since the 1970s when they met at Harvard. They both faced skepticism about studying meditation from their academic mentors at the time.
Together in this book, they draw on their personal meditation practices, scientific research, and decades of collaboration to explain what meditation truly is and its real benefits based on rigorous research.
They discuss both the “deep path” of intensive meditation traditions as well as more widely accessible “wide approaches” to meditation. Their goal is to shift the conversation about what meditation can and cannot do based on evidence from the science of meditation.
Both bring complementary skills - Goleman as an experienced science writer and Davidson as a leading neuroscientist who runs a meditation research lab. Their book combines personal experience, science reporting, and the latest research findings on how meditation impacts the brain, mind and body.
The concept of altered traits, or lasting changes in personality and behaviors from meditation practice, has been a long pursuit of the authors. Dan studied meditation in India and tried to introduce the concept to psychology, while Richie researched it scientifically.
Richie’s research group has generated data supporting the theory of altered traits through contemplative neuroscience. This field studies experienced meditators and the effects on the brain. Richie’s lab has studied dozens of Tibetan yogis.
The data confirms that profound, positive personality changes described in ancient texts from long-term meditation practice are real and observable in brain function changes. This challenges modern psychology’s view of human potential.
The Dalai Lama challenged Richie to scientifically study Buddhist meditation practices to reduce destructive emotions. This led Richie to focus his lab on both the “deep path” of long-term practice and the “wide path” of practical applications for general well-being.
A cautionary tale is provided of an early “meditation master” they studied named Swami X, who turned out to be a fraud and could not demonstrate any special abilities as claimed. This highlights the need for skepticism toward exaggerated claims about meditation benefits.
The study described an anti-aging treatment that involved meditation mixed with a special diet and intensive exercise. It was impossible to determine the specific impact of meditation alone.
While social media often makes exaggerated claims about meditation benefits, science provides a more rigorous and evidence-based view. It is difficult for well-meaning people to distinguish sound research from questionable or nonsensical claims without scientific scrutiny.
The book will start by covering the authors’ initial forays into meditation research in the first three chapters. Chapters 4-12 will narrate their scientific journey on specific topics like attention and compassion. Chapters 11-12 will share findings on advanced meditators. Chapter 13 will outline benefits at beginner, long-term and expert levels. The final chapter will speculate on future implications for individuals and society.
Khunu Lama was a respected Tibetan Buddhist master known for his humility, gentle presence, and loving attention to all who visited him. Even the Dalai Lama sought his guidance.
Dan was struck by how Khunu’s qualities differed from what he studied in clinical psychology, which focused on negatives like neuroses rather than exemplars of human positivity.
Dan first encountered another master, Neem Karoli Baba, who radiated a state of ongoing rapture and kindness. He seemed perpetually at ease and interested in all who visited.
After studying meditation intensively with Goenka in Bodh Gaya, Dan gained insights into how sensations are experienced and the illusion of a separate self. Manuals provided detailed guidance on cultivating mindfulness and insight.
Exemplars like Khunu and Neem Karoli seemed to embody the long-lasting ultrabenign state of consciousness that Dan had previously only hypothesized about. He resolved to share what he learned with others.
Many religions that originated in India, such as Hinduism, Jainism, emphasize the concept of “liberation” or enlightenment. However, cultural assumptions and beliefs can bias our perception and lead to rose-tinted views.
Richie Perez and Dan met while studying psychophysiology in graduate school at Harvard. They bonded over their shared interest in using scientific research to document the benefits of meditation. However, the field of psychology at the time was dominated by behaviorism, which rejected the study of inner subjective experiences.
Richie had faced criticism for his interests in consciousness while getting his undergraduate degree. He designed his dissertation research to peripherally study meditation effects while also functioning as a standalone study, to gain more acceptance. Dan struggled to find an academic job reflecting his interests in consciousness.
William James had recognized and written about altered states of consciousness induced by nitrous oxide, inspiring Dan and Richie. However, altered states were dismissed as psychopathology within mainstream psychology at the time. Richie and Dan had to pursue their interests privately while establishing their careers through more accepted research.
The passage discusses Richie and Susan’s first intensive meditation retreat with S.N. Goenka in Dalhousie, India in 1973.
The 10-day retreat involved 12 hours of sitting meditation each day focusing on breathing and body scanning. This was challenging for Richie due to pain in his knees and back from prolonged sitting.
However, by day 3 Richie started to experience equanimity and absorption. He was able to sit for up to 4 hours continuously.
Richie felt he was in a high meditative state even after the retreat, but this began fading during their travels afterwards as they got sick.
When they returned home to the US, their families reacted negatively to their changed appearance, contributing to the end of Richie’s meditative experiences.
The passage references the Visuddhimagga, an ancient Pali Buddhist text that provides detailed guidelines on meditation states and experiences along the path to enlightenment. It describes stages of concentration from initial distraction to full absorption.
This text would have informed the meditation teachings Richie received and helped contextualize his experiences during and after the intensive retreat.
The passage discusses Dan’s second trip to Asia in 1973, this time on a fellowship to study Asian systems of analyzing the mind. He spent time in Sri Lanka consulting with Nyanaponika Thera, a Theravada monk scholar, on Abhidhamma theory and meditation practice.
Abhidhamma provides a detailed map of the mind’s elements and how to transform consciousness through different meditative stages. It outlines “healthy” and “unhealthy” mental states and how meditation can shift one towards predominance of healthy states like equanimity and mindfulness.
In 1973, Richie and Susan visited Dan in Kandy. Richie was interested in the Abhidhamma model of mental well-being.
In 1974, back at Harvard, Dan taught a popular course called “The Psychology of Consciousness” covering meditation, Buddhist psychology, and attention. Hundreds enrolled and it was moved to the largest venue. Richie was a TA, and was excited to pursue this area of research.
Dan’s unconventional topics were outside mainstream psychology at the time. His appointment was not continued after the course, but he and Richie had begun collaborating on writing and research in this area.
The passage describes the authors’ early work developing the hypothesis of “altered traits” through meditation, which they saw as lasting psychological and neural changes beyond temporary altered states.
In the 1970s when they first proposed this idea, there was little scientific evidence to support it. They published one of the first articles discussing altered traits through meditation.
Over decades, brain science increasingly provided rationales for their hypothesis. Studies showed experiences could leave lasting neural impacts, either shrinking or growing important brain regions.
This supported the possibility that meditationpractice could induce beneficial lasting changes in the brain and traits. However, it would take many years for definitive scientific evidence to emerge supporting the concept of altered traits through meditation.
The authors saw themselves as speculative thinkers bringing novel ideas to science, which then takes time to test and develop new understanding through balancing skepticism with innovative hypotheses.
The passage discusses the concept of neuroplasticity and how it helped resolve debates between the “nature” and “nurture” camps in sociology and social sciences.
In the early 1990s, researcher Richie proposed neuroplasticity, which shows how repeated experiences can change the brain and shape it over time. This reconciled the nature vs nurture debate by showing their interaction.
However, evidence for human neuroplasticity was still limited at that time. Studies in the following years provided greater evidence, like how learning a musical instrument enlarged relevant brain areas.
Experiments on deaf individuals also showed neuroplasticity - their auditory cortex took on visual functions to help with sign language. This illustrated how the brain can dramatically rewire itself through experiences.
Neuroplasticity provides a framework for how mindfulness meditation could shape the brain through intentional mind training. It offers a scientific basis for how meditation could cultivate highly positive altered traits like compassion.
The passage discusses concepts like flourishing, virtues, and ideals of inner transformation described in both Western philosophy and Eastern spiritual traditions.
The passage discusses Aristotle’s conception of eudaimonia, or human flourishing, which modern psychology sees as equivalent to well-being.
It outlines psychologist Carol Ryff’s model of well-being, which has six components drawing on Aristotle: self-acceptance, personal growth, autonomy, mastery, satisfying relationships, and life purpose.
Several studies have found that meditation may increase scores on Ryff’s well-being scale, but the studies had small sample sizes and need replication before firm conclusions can be drawn.
A lack of purpose in life beyond work and family is common in the US, but one study linked strengthening purpose during a meditation retreat to increased telomerase activity later, suggesting improved health. However, more research is needed.
While meditation is often claimed to prove benefits, the field has varied in scientific rigor. The passage advocates applying rigorous standards to sort valid findings from unsupported claims when evaluating research on meditation’s impacts.
The study used physiological measures like heart rate and galvanic skin response (sweat response) to measure changes in stress and arousal in response to accidents, rather than relying solely on subjective self-reports which can be biased.
Preliminary results suggested that meditation sped up recovery from stress arousal induced by the accidents, and that experienced meditators recovered quickest. However, the researcher Dan was also the one analyzing and scoring the physiological data, opening up the possibility of experimenter bias skewing the results.
The technology used to measure sweat response, paper traces, required manual scoring which Dan did, introducing another source of potential bias if his scoring was influenced by wanting to find certain results.
Overall the study had limitations like potential for experimenter bias, reliance on a homogeneous student sample, and not distinguishing between different types of meditation practices, making the conclusions somewhat questionable. More objective measures and study designs are needed to reduce bias in researching meditation’s effects.
Researchers studied novices practicing three different types of meditation over several months: focusing on breath, generating loving-kindness, and monitoring thoughts. Breath focus was calming but the other two required mental effort and didn’t relax the body. Loving-kindness created a positive mood.
Different meditation techniques produce unique results, so studies need to clearly specify the specific technique used. However, confusion remains common about meditation specifics.
One research group had valuable brain anatomy data from 50 meditators but didn’t clearly record the specific techniques, resulting in a “hodgepodge” that limited insights.
Researchers sometimes show confusion or mistaken assumptions about meditation techniques. For example, thinking zen and vipassana both use open eyes when they have different practices.
More precision is needed in categorizing meditators’ experience levels beyond vague terms like “beginner” and “expert.” Few studies track total lifetime hours of practice, which is important for understanding dose-response relationships.
Proper control conditions are needed to account for factors like instructor enthusiasm/expectations confounding reported benefits (the Hawthorne effect). One lab developed an active Health Enhancement Program control condition.
The scientific research on meditation benefits needs to be more rigorous, using active control groups and objective outcome measures rather than just self-reports. Simply finding meditation groups report improvements compared to no-treatment controls doesn’t prove the benefits are from meditation.
The term “mindfulness” is ambiguous and can refer to different meditation techniques. It’s important for researchers to clearly define what type of mindfulness/meditation is being studied.
Commonly used self-report measures of mindfulness have shown problems like not discriminating between meditation and non-meditation groups. Behavioral measures like breath-counting accuracy may be better.
Traditional contemplative texts describe trait changes meditation aims to cultivate. Research should aim to isolate the strongest evidence for changes in areas like stress response, compassion, attention and sense of self.
Overall the review calls for higher scientific standards when evaluating meditation research, focusing only on the most rigorous studies with clearest evidence of meditation’s benefits for both physical and mental health. More work is still needed to precisely define techniques and objectively measure outcomes.
The passage discusses the concept of having an “undisturbed mind”, which is a prominent goal of meditation in spiritual traditions. It aims to reduce angst, worry, and stress from life’s challenges.
Chronic stress can impact health by worsening conditions like diabetes and hypertension. Meditation may help deal with stress.
The passage then briefly describes Jon Kabat-Zinn and the origins of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR). Kabat-Zinn had an insight during a difficult vipassana retreat to apply meditation techniques to help medical patients, especially those with chronic pain.
MBSR combines body scans, breathing meditation, mindful movement, and bringing awareness to daily activities. It was adapted to be accessible to a general population rather than just dedicated meditators.
Early research showed MBSR lowered activity in the amygdala (associated with stress/anxiety) and strengthened attentional networks in the brain. It reduced self-reported stress reactivity compared to aerobic exercise.
MBSR has become one of the most widely researched and practiced forms of meditation globally. It is claimed to boost stress handling abilities, as will be discussed further in the book.
Alan, the focus of the study, had extensive training in religious studies, quantum physics, and Tibetan Buddhist philosophy. He developed a meditation program called Mindful Attention Training based on his expertise.
In an Emory study, participants randomly practiced Mindful Attention Training, compassion meditation, or participated in health discussions (active control). After 8 weeks, their brains were scanned while viewing upsetting images.
The Mindful Attention group showed reduced activity in the amygdala, the brain’s threat response center. This suggested their meditation altered amygdala function from a “trait” level, not just a temporary state.
Other research had novices meditate for just 20 minutes daily for a week. During scans, their amygdala response to upsetting images was significantly lower while meditating, indicating a “state” effect.
The article discusses how meditation can help “unpack” pain by separating sensory and emotional components. Studies found experienced Zen meditators could withstand more heat pain and showed less brain activity in pain evaluation regions. Their brains seemed to “decouple” pain sensation from reactions.
Zen meditators also displayed a 2 degree Centigrade higher pain threshold than non-meditators, suggesting possible trait changes from long-term practice. However, selection effects are a confounding issue.
Healthcare professions like nursing and medicine as well as caring for loved ones with illnesses like Alzheimer’s can lead to burnout due to constant stress. Customer service jobs and startups with tight deadlines can also be sources of chronic stress.
Constant stress physically shapes the brain for the worse over time. Brain scans of overworked individuals showed enlarged amygdalae and weaker connections between prefrontal cortex areas that regulate emotional responses. These stressed individuals had difficulty regulating their emotional reactions.
Indirect evidence suggests meditation may enhance resilience by strengthening one’s sense of purpose and ability to recover from stressors. A longitudinal study found three months of intensive meditation practice led to improved emotion regulation and well-being effects that lasted at least 5 months later.
Further research exposed experienced meditators and non-meditators to the Trier Social Stress Test involving a mock job interview and difficult mental math. Meditators had a smaller stress response and perceived the stressor as less stressful, indicating a trait effect of meditation practice.
Brain scans found experienced meditators had less amygdala reactivity to disturbing images coupled with stronger prefrontal-amygdala connectivity, allowing better emotional regulation. Shorter MBSR training did not produce the same brain changes, implying long-term practice may confer greater resilience to major life challenges.
Mindfulness meditation has been shown to reduce amygdala activation, the brain’s stress center, after just 30 hours of practice. Further reductions of up to 50% are seen with more daily practice.
Experienced meditators can withstand higher levels of pain and have less reaction to stressors. Long-term practices like 3000+ hours are associated with greater ability to regulate emotions and recover quickly from stress.
Loving-kindness meditation aims to cultivate compassion. Studies show it can increase feelings of self-compassion and decrease self-criticism. It involves wishing well-being for oneself and others.
Divinity students were less likely to help someone in need if they felt rushed, showing how daily stresses can reduce compassionate action. Meditation may counter this by cultivating habits of empathy, concern for others’ suffering.
TheDalai Lamaintroduced the conceptof “self-compassion” to characterize inclusive compassion for all people, including oneself. This contrasts with typical English use of “compassion” directed just outward.
In the early 20th century, the German word “Einfühlung” was translated into English as “empathy”, meaning feeling what another person is feeling. Purely cognitive empathy lacks sympathetic feelings, while emotional empathy involves feeling another’s suffering in one’s own body.
When people feel upset by others’ suffering, they often tune out to feel better, but this blocks compassionate action. Research shows people avert their gaze from graphic suffering images.
Compassion training with loving-kindness meditation was shown to activate different brain circuits related to parental love, rather than distress circuits activated by empathy instructions. This allowed people to confront suffering without feeling disturbed.
Follow-up studies found those with compassion training gave more money to help victims and showed increased brain activation related to attention, perspective-taking and positive feelings when viewing suffering. Their help was not just about self-interest but caring for others.
Brief loving-kindness training of just a few hours or minutes showed early signs of the brain and attitude changes seen in long-term meditators, suggesting compassion effects can happen rapidly with meditation practice.
Research found that practicing compassion meditation enhanced people’s ability to empathize with others’ suffering by activating brain regions related to feelings of warmth, love and concern. However, cultivating equanimity through meditation may lead to decreased donations to help others due to feelings of detachment.
A study found that simply doing compassion meditation did not make people more likely to donate money to help others compared to a control group. Factors like expectations and the specific type of meditation (e.g. cultivating equanimity vs compassion) may influence donations more than meditation alone.
Another study found that both loving-kindness meditation and mindfulness meditation increased helpful behaviors like giving up a seat for someone in need, compared to a non-meditating control group. However, it’s unclear if mindfulness enhances empathy in the same way as loving-kindness, or through different mechanisms like increased attention to context.
The specific meditation technique and how it is taught appears to influence the outcomes on empathy and compassionate behaviors. Focused practices like loving-kindness may have more direct effects than techniques cultivating broader skills like mindfulness or equanimity. More research is needed to understand the active ingredients and mechanisms involved.

This summary covers key points about cognitive-based compassion training (CBCT) research:

CBCT was spearheaded by Geshe Lobsang Tenzin Negi, a Tibetan Buddhist monk with a Tibetan geshe degree (equivalent to a PhD) as well as a PhD from Emory University where he teaches.
CBCT methods draw on his background in Buddhism and psychology to teach loving-kindness meditation and understanding how attitudes support or hinder compassionate responses.
In research at Emory comparing CBCT to other types of meditation, the CBCT group showed increased activity in the right amygdala in response to photos of suffering. More practice hours correlated with higher amygdala response, suggesting they were sharing others’ distress.
However, the CBCT group also reported feeling generally happier on a depression test. Focusing on others’ suffering can distract from one’s own troubles.
Women generally show higher amygdala reactivity to emotional images, confirming research that women are more attuned to others’ emotions. However, women are not necessarily more likely to help when confronted with opportunities.
Many factors beyond brain responses influence compassionate action, like time pressures, identity with the person in need, and social context. Research continues to examine how meditation may prime compassionate responses despite other influences.
The passage discusses the neural process of habituation, where the brain tunes out or pays less attention to repeated, familiar stimuli to conserve energy. This allows radar operators to stay vigilant without getting fatigued by empty signals.
Habituation is driven by the brain stem’s reticular activating system (RAS). When something is familiar, prefrontal cortex circuits inhibit the RAS. Novel stimuli activate the RAS through prefrontal cortex circuits.
Mindfulness meditation can reverse habituation by focusing attention on details one would normally tune out. Studies found meditators had less eye blink habituation to sounds.
Attention involves multiple abilities like selective attention, vigilance, allocating attention, goal focus, and meta-awareness. It involves various brain regions like the prefrontal cortex, which plays a key role in voluntary attention control.
The passage profiles cognitive neuroscientist Amishi Jha’s research showing MBSR improves the selective attention component of orienting. It discusses Richie Davidson’s early work finding meditators had stronger “cortical specificity” in focus during attention tasks.
The sensory areas of the cortex are more active when focusing attention on a particular sense, like visual cortex when paying attention to what is seen. This makes the stimulated sense the “signal” and others the “noise”.
Concentration means having much more signal than noise by reducing distraction and noise drowning out the signal.
Richie’s early study using EEG saw a small reduction in noise levels, improving the signal-to-noise ratio when practicing sensory awareness.
Later MEG studies at MIT found 8 weeks of MBSR training improved the ability to focus selectively on sensations like tapping, showing attention can be trained.
Mindfulness and meditation practices like vipassana can strengthen selective attention and the ability to sustain focus, contrary to beliefs that attention was fixed. Retreat studies found improvement before and after 3 months of intensive training.
The “attentional blink” refers to a temporary blindness in attention after detecting a target, like missing a second number briefly shown after the first. Meditation was found to reduce this refractory period and lessen the blink.
Research showed that short sessions of breath-counting meditation can improve cognitive control and attention skills. Undergrads who did three 10-minute sessions of breath meditation performed better on attention tests than those who did a comparison task of browsing sites.
Another study found that even a brief 8-minute instruction in mindfulness of the breath lessened mind wandering in volunteers compared to a control group.
A longer 2-week mindfulness training program covering breathing and daily activities improved concentration, lessened mind wandering, and boosted working memory. Surprisingly, it also increased students’ GRE exam scores by over 30%.
Meditation can strengthen meta-awareness, the ability to be aware of one’s own awareness. This allows monitoring of the mind without getting swept away by thoughts and feelings. It introduces a choice point to redirect focus when the mind wanders.
Meta-awareness is linked to increased activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, an area involved in conscious mental processing and lessening unconscious bias.

The passage discusses how meditation can impact different aspects of attention. Short mindfulness sessions can improve selective attention and reduce mind wandering, but these effects may only be temporary. Longer-term meditation practice, such as months-long retreats, leads to more lasting benefits like enhanced alertness and reduced “attentional blink.”

However, the impacts vary depending on the type of meditation and duration of practice. For example, while orienting attention may improve initially for beginners, it may stall after longer retreats. Alerting attention seems to benefit more from sustained practice over time.

The passage cautions that brief meditations alone likely won’t cause lasting changes unless combined with daily practice and intensive refresher sessions. Ongoing practice is needed to maintain shifts in attention and prevent reversion back to previous levels. Meditation fundamentally retrains attention, but building new neural pathways requires consistent work over an extended period.

Here is a 314-word summary:

Brain imaging research has found that certain brain regions, known as the default mode network (DMN), are highly active even when we are doing nothing in particular. This network includes the medial prefrontal cortex and posterior cingulate cortex. Studies observed that activity in the DMN decreases when people engage in difficult cognitive tasks that require focus, and increases again when the tasks finish.

To understand what the brain was doing during periods of apparent inactivity, researchers asked people what they were thinking about. They often reported mind-wandering focused on themselves - their thoughts, emotions, relationships, worries, etc. This suggests the DMN is constantly constructing and reinforcing our sense of self. It helps weave together our autobiographical memories and experiences to form a cohesive narrative with ourselves at the center.

Meditation involves managing attention and returning the mind when it wanders. Neurologically, this correlates with strengthening connections between the DMN and regions involved in cognitive control. Long-term meditators have stronger connections, making it easier to inhibit self-focused thoughts. Spiritual traditions view lessening attachment to the constructed sense of self as a key to reducing suffering. Evidence suggests meditation may gradually weaken DMN activity in stages, helping free us from identification with constantly changing mental and emotional states.

Efforts to intentionally quiet the mind and redirect attention activate the dorsolateral prefrontal area, a key region for cognitive control. This helps manage the default mode network, which is associated with self-referential thought.
Mindfulness practice over three days led to increased connections between the control network and default network for novices. They rely on cognitive control to redirect attention away from self-focused thoughts.
Experienced meditators show decreased activity in parts of the default network compared to novices. They have strengthened connections between control and default networks, but less reliance on cognitive control areas.
A study of expert meditators found lessened default network connectivity both during and before meditation, suggesting an enduring trait effect of practice. Other research also found decreased default network activity in experienced meditators.
Meditation may facilitate a “loosening” or decreased attachment to the self over time. This is reflected in reduced activity and connectivity within the brain regions underlying self-referential processing and narrative construction of self-identity.
Experienced meditators show less distraction by rewards and attachments, reflecting diminished grasping or identification with experiences. They also have decreased gray matter in the nucleus accumbens, linked to emotional attachments and addictions.
While letting go of attachments, meditators report feelings of openness, compassion and bliss, suggesting an alternate source of joy emerges independent of the reward circuitry. Meditation facilitates greater wellbeing and equanimity.
MBSR (Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction) was developed by Jon Kabat-Zinn at UMass Medical Center to help patients with chronic conditions like pain that did not improve with medical treatment alone.
Hundreds of studies have found MBSR effective in reducing pain levels, disability, and psychological stress in conditions like chronic back pain, arthritis, fibromyalgia, and others. However, it does not appear to improve the underlying biology causing the conditions.
Relief comes from how patients relate to and experience their pain, rather than any medical improvements. This gives a sense of empowerment and self-efficacy.
Effects are often better immediately after the 8-week MBSR course, but may diminish over 6 months if patients do not continue daily mindfulness practice. Continuing practice long-term may provide lifelong benefits in experiencing less pain and stress.
While patients find MBSR helps their condition, medical research wants definitive evidence of reversing biological causes of diseases, which mindfulness has not clearly shown. But it can improve quality of life, which is the goal from a patient’s perspective.

Here is a summary of the key points about how stress impacts our health from the passage:

Stress causes inflammation in the body which plays a role in worsening diseases like Alzheimer’s, asthma and diabetes. Psychological stress triggers the same biological inflammatory response as physical threats.
The skin is highly sensitive to stress and stress-induced inflammation (neurogenic inflammation) can worsen skin conditions like psoriasis and eczema. Skin provides a way to study how stress impacts the body.
Studies showed mindfulness meditation (MBSR) reduced stress-induced skin inflammation and sped healing compared to an active control group. More experienced meditators had lower stress hormone levels and smaller inflammatory responses.
Meditation appears to lessen day-to-day inflammation, not just during practice. Even brief mindfulness practice can reduce inflammatory markers and cytokines linked to stress-related diseases.
How we relate to negative thoughts affects health - reducing rumination through mindfulness reduced inflammatory cytokines in unemployed job seekers.
Retreats practicing mindfulness meditation have shown short-term reductions in blood pressure for individuals, supporting its role in managing stress and stress-related hypertension over the long run.
Researchers are studying the potential epigenetic impacts of meditation, meaning how meditation may influence which genes are expressed. Early studies found one day of intensive meditation downregulated inflammatory genes in experienced meditators.
However, more rigorous studies are still needed. Factors like group settings and encouragement from instructors could also potentially influence results in early studies.
Other pilot studies found meditation associated with increased telomerase activity and longer telomeres, both signs of healthier aging. But these studies have not proven meditation directly causes these biological effects.
Combining meditation with other treatments like herbal medicines and diet changes in panchakarma makes it impossible to determine meditation’s individual impact on genetics.
Different types of meditation may have different physiological impacts. Concentrating on the breath was found to be more relaxing while loving-kindness meditation increased heart rate, indicating more effort.
Long-term meditators were found to breathe slower on average than non-meditators, which could translate to long-term health benefits from reduced stress on the body.
Brain imaging studies show meditation may thicken key areas of the brain involved in attention, interoception and sensory processing like the insula and prefrontal cortex. However, more research is still needed to fully understand meditation’s impacts on the brain and genes.
Various areas of the brain are involved in meditation and its effects, including areas related to emotional self-awareness, bodily awareness, attention, self-regulation, and meta-awareness.
One study found that long-term meditators had brains that appeared 7.5 years “younger” than non-meditators of the same age, suggesting meditation may slow brain atrophy with age. However, this study had limitations like including various meditation types without distinguishing their effects.
Some studies found increased volume in certain brain areas after a short period of meditation, but these studies had small sample sizes and methodological limitations. More research with larger samples is still needed.
Different meditation types may have different anatomical effects on the brain. One study found a method emphasizing cognitive empathy enhanced thickness in an area related to perspective-taking.
While some research suggests meditation may shift brain activity ratios in a positive direction, the evidence is still inconclusive and requires more replication studies to confirm the findings. Different meditation types and levels of experience also need to be distinguished.
Dr. Aaron Beck, the founder of cognitive therapy, asked Tara Bennett-Goleman about mindfulness in the 1980s, as he wanted his wife Judith Beck to try meditation before surgery for possible mental and physical benefits.
Tara introduced them to mindfulness meditation, marking the early roots of integrating mindfulness with cognitive therapy.
Tara’s book Emotional Alchemy was one of the first to combine mindfulness and cognitive therapy approaches.
Psychologist John Teasdale independently developed Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) for depression at Oxford. MBCT uses mindfulness to help people “decenter” from thoughts and views them more objectively.
Research found MBCT cut relapse rates of severe depression in half, more than any medication - remarkable findings that helped spur further research combining mindfulness and cognitive therapy.

So in summary, pioneering work by Tara Bennett-Goleman and John Teasdale in the 1980s began integrating mindfulness meditation into cognitive therapy approaches, laying early foundations for the burgeoning field of mindfulness-based cognitive therapy. Research showed great promise for using these combined approaches to treat depression.

The article summarizes research on Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), which combines meditation and cognitive therapy to treat depression.
Early studies of MBCT showed promising results but didn’t meet high scientific standards like using randomized controlled groups.
A meta-analysis of 47 studies of meditation alone (without cognitive therapy) found mindfulness reduced anxiety, depression, and pain as much as medications, without side effects. However, no benefits were found for other issues like sleep, eating, weight, etc.
When compared to active controls like exercise, the benefits disappeared, indicating more rigorous research is needed. Only 3% of initial studies reviewed met scientific standards.
More recent, rigorous randomized controlled trials found MBCT significantly reduced relapse rates for severe, recurrent depression - even more so than standard treatments alone.
Follow-up research explored potential mechanisms and found MBCT was most effective for those able to “decenter” from thoughts and view them more mindfully. Amount of mindfulness practice correlated with lower relapse rates.
Overall, the research suggests MBCT shows promise for treating depression, but more high-quality studies are still needed, especially for other mental health issues.
The study looked at patients with social anxiety doing breath awareness meditation while in a brain scanner. They reported feeling less anxious when hearing upsetting phrases, and brain activity lessened in the amygdala and increased in attention circuits. This hints at how meditation may help mental health issues.
The NIMH prefers research focusing on specific brain circuits and symptoms rather than broad DSM categories. The finding that MBCT helps depressed patients with trauma histories suggests an overly reactive amygdala may be involved in this subgroup.
Open questions remain about what precisely makes mindfulness effective, which disorders it best helps, if it should be used along with standard treatments, and which types of meditation best help which issues through what neural mechanisms.
The article then describes how loving-kindness meditation helped veteran Steve Z manage his severe PTSD accumulated from combat and 9/11. Early findings found it improved PTSD symptoms in other veterans, but more research is needed.
“Dark nights” refer to intensely difficult mental states some experience during retreats. Willoughby Britton is conducting research to help people suffering meditation-related psychological difficulties, as current knowledge focuses more on benefits than potential harms. More study is needed on rates of problems among meditators versus the general population.
Meditation has shown promise in treating some mental health problems like depression and anxiety according to meta-analyses of studies. It can lead to decreases in depression, anxiety, and pain, about as much as medications but without side effects.
Mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) which integrates mindfulness meditation with cognitive therapy has become the most empirically validated meditation-based psychological treatment.
While occasional reports of negative effects exist, overall the research indicates meditation-based strategies have potential benefits and more scientific studies are ongoing.
In the early 1990s, scientists including Richie Saron traveled to remote Himalayan villages to study highly experienced Tibetan yogis. However, the yogis refused to be monitored during meditation, citing concerns about how the results might influence others. This expedition highlighted challenges in scientifically studying expert meditators.
More success may involve bringing meditators to well-equipped brain labs, but willingness to participate remains an issue given meditators’ disinterest in scientific goals and rankings. Prospects for such scientific studies remained dim at that time.

Matthieu Ricard is a French biologist who left a career in science to become a Buddhist monk. He has lived in monasteries and retreat centers for decades.

Matthieu was a collaborator with the Dalai Lama and Richie Davidson’s lab on studies investigating meditation and the brain. His background in science and connections in the Tibetan meditative community helped recruit advanced meditators as subjects.

Matthieu participated himself as the first subject, testing the study protocol. He helped bridge the “first person” experience of meditation with the “third person” objective brain measures. His expertise was crucial to the scientific validity and success of the studies.

In total, Matthieu helped bring 21 highly trained meditators, including 7 Westerners and 14 Tibetans, to Richie’s lab for pioneering research combining meditation, neuroscience, and the first, second, and third person perspectives.

Mingyur Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist monk and meditation master, was the first subject studied in Richie Davidson’s lab after an initial session with Matthieu Ricard.
During the EEG experiment, which had Mingyur alternate between compassion meditation and rest periods, there were dramatic bursts of electrical activity in Mingyur’s brain during the meditation periods despite him being perfectly still. This was an unprecedented finding.
Subsequent fMRI scans showed Mingyur’s brain circuitry for empathy increasing 700-800% during compassion meditation compared to rest, far more than seen in normal subjects. This displayed his exceptional control over brain activity.
Mingyur has over 62,000 lifetime hours of meditation practice due to growing up in a family of experts. He is considered a meditation prodigy. The findings from his brain scans created a scientific stir and furthered the understanding of meditation and consciousness.
Mingyur Rinpoche began meditation training from a young age, doing his first 3-year retreat at age 13.
In 2016, he returned to Richie Davidson’s lab for brain scanning, 8 years after his previous scan.
Between 2010-2015, Mingyur went on an unexpected wandering retreat for over 4 years with no contact, living as a mendicant in remote areas of India and Himalayas.
Brain scans from 2002, 2010, and 2016 provided an opportunity to examine age-related changes in Mingyur’s brain over time compared to others the same age.
Preliminary analysis found Mingyur’s brain aging more slowly, resembling a 33 year-old rather than his chronological age of 41, highlighting the effects of long-term meditation practice on neuroplasticity.
Richie’s lab went on to study 21 seasoned yogis like Mingyur with lifetime meditation hours ranging from 12,000 to 62,000. Experiments assessed brain activity during compassion, focus, and equanimity meditations.
These experts could generate specific meditative states at will and Transition between them easily, as shown by distinctive neural signatures, revealing significant mental training effects.
Scientists Antoine Lutz and Richie Davidson discovered an unprecedented brain pattern in Tibetan Buddhist yogis while studying their brain activity during meditation.
Even at rest before meditating, the yogis showed unusually strong and widespread gamma brain wave activity across their brains. Gamma waves are associated with heightened focus and information integration.
Ordinary people only show brief gamma bursts, but the yogis had sustained, high-amplitude gamma waves lasting a full minute at rest. This indicates an enduring neural trait from their extensive meditation practice.
No other brain study has seen gamma oscillations persist so strongly for so long or be so synchronized across regions. It reflects the yogis’ reported ongoing experience of open, rich awareness even outside meditation.
The yogis also showed remarkable ability to instantly enter specific meditative states on command, another sign of meditation transforming traits. Their skills likely emerge from neural changes underlying altered traits. This represents an interaction between meditative states and enduring traits.
One study compared Tibetan and Western yogis (with an average of 34,000 hours of meditation experience) to meditation novices while they did a compassion meditation practice.
The yogis showed a pronounced elevation in gamma brain activity during compassion meditation, much greater than novices, indicating a state-trait effect where the meditative state influences everyday traits.
While practicing “open presence,” the distinction between state and trait blurs for the yogis as they are instructed to bring that meditative state into everyday life.
The yogis showed greater activation in brain areas related to empathy, perspective taking, attention to salient things, and motor preparation - suggesting greater readiness to help those suffering.
When exposed to sounds of human suffering, the yogis showed less self-focused brain activity and stronger connectivity between self and prefrontal regions, indicating a “down-regulation” of self-concern that can dampen compassion.
With practice, meditation becomes more effortless as automaticity increases, according to studies showing beginners find it gets easier over 10 weeks of practice, and advanced yogis experience “effortless awareness.”
The default mode network (DMN) in the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) is active during self-oriented mental operations. Studies found lower PCC activation in long-term meditators when they reported feeling “undistracted awareness” and “effortless doing,” and higher activation when they felt “distracted” or felt they were “efforting.”
Beginner meditators also reported increased ease, but only during meditation - the effects did not persist outside of meditation sessions. For beginners, increased ease is still relative as they have to exert great effort to avoid mind-wandering.
Expert meditators show little prefrontal cortex activation during focused attention tasks, indicating a state of “effortless” concentration. Those with the most meditation experience (40,000+ hours) showed the least brain activation.
Expert meditators also showed very little amygdala response to distracting emotional sounds compared to those with less experience, indicating highly selective attention.
Further research linked expert meditators’ heart rate increases to brain regions involved in interoception when hearing sounds of human distress, suggesting meditation tuning the brain to the heart during compassion.
Studies of attention and self-regulation suggest mind training can alter basic neural functions thought to be immutable, challenging cognitive science assumptions. However, more data is still needed on long-term impacts of meditation.
The study looked at the effects of meditation practice at different levels - beginners, long-term meditators, and yogis.
Beginners saw quick benefits like reduced stress reactivity and better attention/focus after only a few weeks of practice. However, these effects likely won’t last without continued practice.
Long-term meditators with 1,000-10,000 hours showed deeper impacts, like strengthened emotional regulation and attention networks in the brain. Benefits emerged more strongly from retreat practice.
Yogis with 12,000-62,000 hours including long retreats showed remarkable altered traits. Their meditation states merged with daily life. Brain function and structure changed, along with highly positive human qualities like compassion. Synchronized gamma waves suggested vast awareness states even during sleep.

In short, the study found meditation’s benefits progressed based on lifetime practice hours and retreat time, from initial improvements for beginners to truly altered traits in accomplished yogis. More practice over the long-term deepened and stabilized the gains.

Meditation was found to have some effects even in the baseline non-meditative state for experienced long-term meditators or yogis. This suggests meditation practice can become a trait or lasting change in the brain.
State-trait interactions mean experienced yogis respond very differently during meditation practices compared to novices. For example, they show minimal brain activity during anticipation and recovery from pain during mindfulness practice.
For experienced yogis, concentration becomes effortless and their neural attention circuits are less activated while maintaining focus.
Long-term compassion meditation strengthens heart-brain connectivity beyond normal levels.
Studies hint that advanced meditators may experience structural changes like a shrinking nucleus accumbens, relating to reduced attachment and grasping.
More research is needed to fully understand the neural changes that occur with advanced long-term practice and how altered traits emerge over long periods of time. Longitudinal studies provide some of the best evidence of meditation causing lasting changes.
Neem Karoli Baba practiced devotional (bhakti) yoga focused on the Hindu god Ram. He encouraged followers of different paths rather than promoting one as best.
Meditation practices can be categorized at different levels - they share a common core but have unique particulars. Types include mantra recitation vs mindfulness of thoughts.
Dan Grossman developed a taxonomy distinguishing one-pointed concentration from free-floating awareness.
Richie Davidson’s typology categorizes meditations as attentional (focus on attention), constructive (cultivate virtues) or deconstructive (pierce nature of experience).
Most research has focused on narrow subsets like MBSR mindfulness. A wider study of varieties beyond these could target unique brain changes and qualities cultivated by different techniques. Comparing findings across practices could provide more insights.
The passage discusses different spiritual traditions’ meditation practices and goals of cultivating “altered traits” like generosity, ethics, patience, concentration, and wisdom.
It describes the Dalai Lama’s generosity in promptly donating his Templeton Prize money to charity, as an example of showing generosity without attachment, which is one of the traits cultivated in contemplative practices.
Ancient Buddhist and other texts outline lists of virtues and qualities known as “paramitas” or perfection of character that represent progress in spiritual development. These align with indicators of brain changes seen in meditators.
However, as meditation spreads outside its original religious contexts, many crucial aspects of contemplative practice that helped develop altered traits have been left behind or forgotten. These include an ethical framework, altruistic intention, faith in the path, personalized teacher guidance, and devotion. Maintaining these may be important for cultivating the level of altered traits seen in lifelong contemplative practitioners.

Here is a summary of the key points about the teacher’s altered traits or quality of mind:

Long-term meditators who have practiced for many years (averaging around 27,000 lifetime hours) show signs of altered traits compared to normal individuals.
Their brain scans show large gamma waves synchronizing across distant brain regions, a pattern not seen in other people. This occurs both during meditation and at rest.
Their brains appear to age more slowly than others the same age.
They can effortlessly start and stop meditative states within seconds.
Their pain response is muted, with less anticipatory anxiety, a brief but intense reaction during pain, and rapid recovery.
During compassion meditation, their brains and hearts synchronize in unique ways not seen in others.
At rest, their brain states resemble those of others during meditation, suggesting the meditative state has become a trait even when not practicing.

In summary, extensive long-term meditation practice appears to result in biologically and neurologically measurable altered traits related to attention, emotional processing, mindfulness, and the aging process compared to normal individuals. The meditative state becomes a consistent quality of the practitioner’s mind.

Fleet Maull founded the Prison Mindfulness Institute while serving a 14-year sentence for drug smuggling. The institute now teaches mindfulness in around 80 prisons across America.
Contemplative science aims to understand how practices like meditation can improve mental, physical, and social well-being as defined by the WHO. Findings can lead to evidence-based applications that may not resemble meditation directly but still help solve personal and social issues.
A kindness curriculum tested by the Davidson group taught preschoolers mindfulness and empathy skills. Children in the program shared stickers more with disliked or sick peers compared to other kids, showing increased empathy. The curriculum aims to teach important life skills like kindness that are often left to chance.
Neuroplasticity shows the brain can be guided through skills training. While attention deficits are a societal problem, childhood offers opportunities to strengthen attention circuits through practices adapted from meditation. Video games may offer a route for these lessons through games designed around mindfulness research.
Just as we exercise physically, we can “exercise” our minds through contemplative practices like meditation. Neuroplasticity means our everyday experiences shape the brain in conscious or unconscious ways; contemplative science aims to shape it intentionally for benefits like improved well-being.

The passage discusses the potential for developing “mental gyms” or meditation apps that can deliver the benefits of contemplative practice digitally to wide audiences. While some meditation apps already exist, there is little scientific evaluation of their actual effectiveness.

Two examples are provided of digital programs that have shown benefits in studies. One was a web-based loving-kindness instruction that reduced stress and increased generosity. The other was an online mindfulness course derived from MBCT that reduced depression and anxiety symptoms.

However, the authors note that just because some online programs have worked does not necessarily mean all will. Rigorous testing of specific apps is needed to determine what works and why.

The discussion then focuses on opportunities for “neural hacking” - developing apps that provide neurofeedback to help train the brain. One example discussed is using neurofeedback to target the postcingulate cortex, a brain region linked to craving, addiction, and mindfulness practice. The authors envision next-generation meditation apps incorporating relevant biological or neural feedback loops.

In summary, the passage discusses the promise and challenges of developing digital mental fitness programs and meditation apps, emphasizing the need for rigorous scientific evaluation to determine their actual effectiveness. It also explores opportunities to incorporate neural feedback into future app-based contemplative training.

The passage discusses some early experiences and intellectual inspirations that helped shape the authors’ hunches about the possibility of altering traits through sustained mind training practices like meditation.
As graduate students at Harvard in the 1970s, they were inspired by Thomas Kuhn’s idea of scientific paradigms shifting abruptly. Kuhn’s work spurred them to look for paradigms that proposed new possibilities for human potential beyond what was accepted in psychology at the time.
One author spent time with meditation teachers from India to learn ancient methods, while the other pored over classical texts on meditation from traditions like Buddhism.
They became convinced that meditation could change the mind and brain in ways that were not recognized in modern Western psychology, which was dominated by behaviorism at the time.
As their research matured, mounting empirical studies confirmed their early hunches that sustained meditation practice can structurally and functionally alter the brain, demonstrating the neural basis of altered traits described for millennia in contemplative traditions.

There was a more general movement in academic psychology in the mid-20th century to make the field more “scientific” through experimental research and experimentation. This was a reaction to the dominance of psychoanalytic theories at the time, which were largely supported by clinical anecdotes rather than controlled experiments. Proponents of this new experimental approach aimed to apply the scientific method of hypotheses testing through experimentation to rigorously study psychological phenomena. A key figure in this movement was B.F. Skinner, whose 1957 book “Verbal Behavior” proposed that language acquisition in humans was learned through reinforcement like other behaviors, an idea that was strongly criticized by linguist Noam Chomsky for overlooking innate cognitive abilities. The rise of this experimental approach sparked debate and tensions in psychology departments between proponents of different theoretical perspectives.

The study found that deaf participants were more accurate than hearing controls at detecting visual stimuli presented in their peripheral vision. This was expected given deaf individuals’ extensive experience with sign language, which involves rich visual information not centered directly in front.
Notably, the primary auditory cortex of deaf participants, which normally receives auditory input, showed robust activation in response to the peripheral visual stimuli. Hearing participants showed no activation in this area. This suggests the auditory cortex can take on new functions to support enhanced visual skills when deprived of auditory input.
This challenges the idea that brain areas have fixed functions and cannot adapt. It provides evidence that experience can change the functioning of brain regions over time through neuroplasticity. The primary auditory cortex adapting to support enhanced visual skills in deaf individuals goes against traditional assumptions of strict regional specialization in the brain.

Here is a summary of the article “MBSR vs. Aerobic Exercise in Social Anxiety: fMRI of Emotion Regulation of Negative Self-Beliefs” by Illipe Goldin et al.:

The study compared the effects of mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) training and aerobic exercise training on social anxiety and the neural correlates of regulating negative self-beliefs.
It involved 81 socially anxious individuals who were randomized to one of three 8-week programs: MBSR, aerobic exercise, or a waitlist control group.
fMRI scans were conducted before and after to assess brain activity when participants regulated negative self-beliefs.
Both MBSR and aerobic exercise significantly reduced social anxiety symptoms relative to the control group.
MBSR showed significantly greater reductions in negative self-beliefs and led to increased activity in brain regions involved in emotion regulation compared to aerobic exercise.
The findings suggest MBSR may be an effective treatment for social anxiety and has an added benefit of enhancing neural mechanisms underlying regulating negative thoughts about the self.

So in summary, the study found that while both MBSR and aerobic exercise reduced social anxiety, MBSR led to greater reductions in negative self-beliefs and increased brain activity in emotion regulation regions more so than aerobic exercise alone.

#book-summary

The Science of Meditation - Daniel Goleman