Daniel Goleman and Richard J. Davidson: Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body. Avery, New York, NY, 2017, 336 pp

Can meditation bring about enduring changes to our mind, brain, and body? This is the question Daniel Goleman and Richard J. Davidson started asking in the early 1970s, while still graduate students at Harvard University. Since then, Goleman and Davison have been actively engaged in contemplative science, a research field both of them have played prominent roles in defining, establishing, and advancing. Almost 50 years later, their book Altered Traits has been published as a compendium of all they have lived and learned throughout the journey. Altered Traits is an immersive dive into the science of meditation, covering both its origins and history as well as its most consolidated findings to date. The authors make a dedicated effort to address limitations in the existing literature and to dismiss claims from less rigorous research, thus drawing their conclusions only from the best available studies. As a result, the book offers an entertaining and trustworthy introduction to anyone with an interest in contemplative science, and in what meditation can (and cannot) do for us. …