Daniel Goleman, Dr. Richard Davidson, 'Altered Traits' (Bonus!)
Dan Goleman, renowned psychologist, and Richie Davidson, prominent neuroscientist, discuss their book "Altered Traits." They examine rigorous research on how meditation impacts the brain and mind at beginner, intermediate, and "Olympic-level" stages, highlighting neuroplasticity and its benefits.
Deep Dive Analysis
18 Topic Outline
Introduction to Daniel Goleman, Richie Davidson, and Altered Traits
Danny Goleman's Early Journey into Meditation and India
Richie Davidson's First Encounter with Danny Goleman
Defining Altered Traits: Lasting Change from Meditation
Neuroplasticity as the Scientific Basis for Meditation's Effects
The Purpose and Scope of the Book Altered Traits
Critique of Subpar Meditation Science and Funding Challenges
Understanding Randomized Control Trials and MBSR
The Health Enhancement Program (HEP) as an Active Control
Why Rigorous Science is Crucial for Public Health Meditation
Benefits for Beginner Meditators: Kindness, Attention, Stress
Brain Mechanisms: Prefrontal Cortex, Amygdala, and Resilience
Trait Effects for Intermediate Meditators: Attentional Blink
Genomic Changes and Reduced Inflammation from Meditation
The Impact of Retreat Practice vs. Daily Meditation
Olympic-Level Meditators: Pain Response and Gamma Waves
Relevance of Expert Meditator Research for General Public
Meditation as a Necessary Mental Fitness Practice
8 Key Concepts
Altered Traits
Altered traits refer to lasting qualities that are the effect and goal of meditation practice, characterizing an individual's day-to-day being rather than just temporary states experienced during meditation. This concept contrasts with 'altered states' which are transient experiences.
The after is the before for the next during
This phrase describes the process by which a trait becomes enduring: the quality of being displayed after a period of practice becomes the new baseline (the 'before') for the next practice session (the 'during'). This repetitive sequence transforms baseline states into established traits.
Neuroplasticity
Neuroplasticity is the brain's ability to change and adapt throughout life, meaning that neural circuits can become stronger and more connected through practice or exercise. This scientific foundation suggests that qualities like compassion, self-awareness, patience, and focus are trainable skills, not fixed 'factory settings'.
Randomized Control Trial (RCT)
An RCT is a research design where participants are randomly assigned to different groups, such as an immediate treatment group and a waitlist control group. This randomization helps ensure that any observed differences in outcomes between the groups are due to the intervention being studied, rather than pre-existing differences.
Health Enhancement Program (HEP)
The HEP is an active control program designed to mirror all non-mindfulness elements of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), including group process, health-promoting activities, and enthusiastic instructors. Its purpose is to isolate the specific effects of mindfulness by providing a comparable experience without the mindfulness component.
Attentional Blink
The attentional blink is a phenomenon where, after noticing an initial stimulus, the mind and brain enter a brief refractory period during which they are insensitive to subsequent stimuli, particularly when changes occur very rapidly. Meditation practice can modify this, reducing the magnitude of the blink and improving the ability to notice small, rapid changes.
Epigenetic Change
Epigenetics is the study of how genes are regulated, specifically how the extent to which a gene is 'turned on' or 'turned off' can change dynamically without altering the underlying DNA sequence. Meditation practice has been shown to induce epigenetic changes, such as downregulating genes implicated in inflammation.
Gamma Wave
Gamma waves are a high-frequency brain oscillation, typically observed briefly during moments of creative insight, problem-solving, or when different sensory inputs are integrated. Advanced meditators exhibit a prevalence of these gamma oscillations as a consistent trait, even when not formally meditating.
9 Questions Answered
Altered traits refer to lasting qualities that are the effect and goal of meditation practice, characterizing an individual's day-to-day being rather than just temporary states experienced during meditation.
Meditation leads to lasting change through neuroplasticity, where repeated practice strengthens neural circuits associated with desired qualities, transforming baseline states into enduring traits.
Subpar science in meditation research is attributed to a lack of funding, making it costly to conduct well-designed studies with large sample sizes and appropriate control groups, and the field's immaturity in its early stages.
The HEP is an active control program designed to include all non-mindfulness elements of MBSR, such as group process, health-promoting activities, and enthusiastic instructors, to isolate the specific effects of mindfulness in research studies.
Beginners can experience immediate benefits such as increased happiness, altruism, generosity, reduced implicit bias (with kindness meditation), improved concentration, reduced mind-wandering, enhanced working memory, and better stress handling.
Meditation strengthens the connection between specific regions of the prefrontal cortex (which can calm the amygdala) and the amygdala (the threat response center), helping individuals recover more quickly from adversity and become less easily triggered by stress.
Intermediate meditators show amplified beginner benefits, improved attentional blink (better at noticing rapid changes), and epigenetic changes that downregulate genes associated with inflammation.
Olympic-level meditators exhibit dramatic differences in pain response, showing minimal brain activation during pain anticipation, a strong sensory response to actual pain, and rapid return to baseline during recovery. They also show a high prevalence of gamma brain waves as a constant trait.
Studying Olympic-level meditators reveals the full potential of human brain systems that can be amplified and improved through practice, providing insights into generalizable benefits like cognitive control that can be applied to everyone, including children.
21 Actionable Insights
1. Integrate Mental Exercise Daily
Incorporate mental exercise, like meditation, into your weekly routine as commonly as physical exercise. The evidence suggests we should take our minds and brains seriously, making meditation a fundamental practice for overall well-being, like brushing teeth.
2. Practice Meditation Consistently
Try meditation and continue practicing regularly. It trains attention, helps handle stress, and the more you do it, the better the benefits get due to neuroplasticity.
3. Use Meditation for Mental Fitness
Treat meditation as a mental fitness exercise. It stimulates neuroplasticity in a positive direction, leading to more wholesome thoughts and positive characteristics.
4. Clarify Meditation Expectations
Understand that meditation is not about fixing things, clearing your mind, or getting rid of thoughts. These are popular misconceptions, and understanding this helps appreciate what meditation is actually useful for.
5. Meditation: Adjunct, Not Cure
Do not view meditation as a primary cure for illnesses, but rather as an adjunct to change your relationship to symptoms. It was not originally developed to cure illnesses, though it can improve quality of life with chronic conditions.
6. Practice Loving-Kindness Meditation
Engage in loving-kindness meditation, wishing well to yourself, loved ones, and an ever-expanding circle of people. It immediately increases happiness, altruism, generosity, and the likelihood of helping others.
7. Reduce Implicit Bias
Practice loving-kindness and compassion meditation for a couple of months. It effectively shifts objective measures of implicit bias, addressing a significant societal issue.
8. Strengthen Focus with Mindfulness
Engage in mindfulness practice, such as watching your breath and noticing passing thoughts, and gently bringing your attention back when it wanders. This process strengthens your ability to concentrate and focus, improving attentional skills.
9. Reduce Stress Reactivity
Begin meditating to cultivate a more relaxed response to stressful situations. It helps you avoid being easily triggered, leading to a more pleasant life and improving interactions with others.
10. Boost Resilience with Mindfulness
Engage in simple mindfulness practices. It helps you recover more quickly from adversity, changing your relationship to difficult experiences rather than buffering them.
11. Regulate Emotions with Mindfulness
Practice simple mindfulness meditation. It strengthens the connection between the prefrontal cortex and the amygdala, enabling better emotional regulation and reducing impulsive reactions.
12. Amplify Benefits with More Practice
Continue and increase your meditation practice beyond the beginner level. There’s a dose-response relationship, meaning the more you meditate, the stronger and more consistent the benefits become across all areas (attention, stress, kindness).
13. Prioritize Meditation Retreats
Incorporate meditation retreats into your practice, in addition to daily meditation. Retreats offer even better benefits than daily practice, acting as an advanced form of training, while daily practice serves as maintenance.
14. Retreats for Slower Breathing
Prioritize longer durations of retreat practice. Retreat practice is a significant predictor of a slower breathing rate, which is an important index related to health and emotional balance.
15. Engage in Intensive Meditation
Participate in even a single day of intensive mindfulness or insight meditation practice. It downregulates genes associated with inflammation, which are implicated in a wide range of diseases.
16. Buffer Alzheimer’s Symptoms
Maintain a consistent meditation practice, especially if there’s a family history of Alzheimer’s or dementia. While not a cure, it’s believed to impact the inflammatory response around the disease, potentially making symptoms less severe.
17. Cultivate Emotional Non-Stickiness
Aim to experience emotions fully and spontaneously without letting them linger or ‘stick.’ This allows for quicker emotional recovery and prevents grudges or prolonged negative states, as observed in advanced practitioners.
18. Increase Gamma Brain Waves
Engage in consistent, long-term meditation practice. It can lead to a trait-like increase in gamma brain oscillations, associated with creative insight and a feeling of having good ideas, even outside of formal meditation.
19. Enhance Sleep Restoration
Engage in consistent meditation practice, reaching an intermediate level. It can lead to gamma oscillations during sleep, potentially playing an important role in restorative mechanisms during deep sleep.
20. Teach Kids Cognitive Control
Teach children a ‘breathing buddies’ practice where they place a stuffed animal on their belly and observe its rise and fall with their breath, counting their breaths. This simple mindfulness exercise strengthens cognitive control, a better predictor of future success than IQ.
21. Motivate Practice with Science
Reflect on the scientific evidence of meditation’s brain-changing effects during your practice. Understanding the tangible impact on your brain can serve as a powerful motivator to continue and deepen your meditation practice.
6 Key Quotes
The after is the before for the next during.
Richie Davidson
Neuroplasticity is, for me, the heart of what got me interested in meditation and what fuels my ongoing, what I like to call evangelism. Because basically what it's saying is that the brain and the mind can change, that we are not stuck with factory settings when it comes to compassion, self-awareness, patience, focus. That actually, these are skills that can be trained.
Dan Harris
The mind wanders on average 50% of the time. One of the things people say at the get-go of meditation often is, oh, my God, I can't do this because my mind wanders all the time. Wrong. You're just noticing how often it does that.
Danny Goleman
Hurt more, suffer less.
Dan Harris
I've seen him a few times actually get angry. It doesn't happen often, but I've witnessed it a few times. And what I witness is that it comes right out, and then the moment later, he starts laughing. He may notice something funny, and it's completely gone. There's absolutely nothing that lingers. It like metabolizes.
Richie Davidson
It's our aspiration that this book can help promote the kind of mental exercise that we are talking about as meditation and that mental exercise will become as commonly practiced in the future as physical exercise is today.
Richie Davidson
2 Protocols
Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) Course
Dan Harris- Attend one class per week for eight weeks.
- Practice meditation derived from Buddhism, typically in a secular environment.
Breathing Buddies Practice for Children
Danny Goleman- Take a small stuffed animal.
- Lie down on a rug.
- Place the animal on your belly.
- Watch the animal rise on the in-breath and fall on the out-breath.
- Count one, two, three with your breaths.