Why this book
Daniel Goleman, the science journalist best known for popularizing emotional intelligence, and Richard Davidson, the University of Wisconsin–Madison neuroscientist who has spent decades studying contemplative practice, wrote this book as much as a corrective as a celebration: after reviewing more than six thousand published studies on meditation, they concluded that the overwhelming majority suffered from weak methodology — missing control groups, self-selection bias, tiny sample sizes, or a publishing culture that rewarded positive findings regardless of rigor. Rather than cite the whole pile approvingly the way much popular meditation writing does, they narrowed their evidence to roughly sixty studies meeting genuinely high standards, and built their argument only from what survives that filter.
Their central distinction is between altered states, the temporary experiences of calm or clarity that occur during or shortly after a meditation session and fade without reinforcement, and altered traits, durable changes in brain structure, stress reactivity, and everyday behavior that persist independent of active practice. The book tracks this distinction across a rough dose-response scale: beginners under roughly a hundred hours of practice show real but temporary gains (reduced amygdala reactivity after about thirty hours of mindfulness-based stress reduction, for instance); long-term practitioners with one to ten thousand hours show more durable structural changes, including altered default-mode-network activity tied to reduced mind-wandering; and a small number of extraordinarily experienced yogis studied in Davidson's lab, including the monk Mingyur Rinpoche, showed baseline brain patterns — extremely high-amplitude gamma-wave activity, minimal anticipatory anxiety before pain, near-instant physiological recovery afterward — that suggest the meditative state has become, for them, simply their resting condition. The authors are candid that this last category represents a tiny, self-selected group of extreme practitioners rather than a realistic target for casual meditators, and they stop well short of claiming mindfulness apps or short retreats can replicate it.
Who should read it
Anyone drawn to meditation but skeptical of breathless wellness-industry claims will find this book's evidentiary caution genuinely refreshing, as will readers who want to understand what current neuroscience can and cannot yet say about contemplative practice. It will frustrate readers hoping for a simple, universally applicable prescription — the authors' insistence on methodological rigor means many popular claims about meditation's benefits get quietly narrowed, qualified, or set aside as unproven, and casual readers wanting quick answers may find the science more tentative than marketing promises.
About the author
Daniel Goleman is a psychologist and former New York Times science journalist best known for his 1995 bestseller Emotional Intelligence, which brought the concept to mainstream attention. Richard J. Davidson is a neuroscientist and the William James and Vilas Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he founded and directs the Center for Healthy Minds; his decades-long collaboration with the Dalai Lama, beginning after a pointed challenge from the Dalai Lama in 1992 to study positive mental qualities rather than only pathology, redirected his research career toward the neuroscience of meditation. Goleman and Davidson first met as graduate students at Harvard in the 1970s and have collaborated on contemplative science projects for decades since.