Summary:
Altered traits is a book that integrates the research mainly from Richie Davidson's lab about meditation, which he has been interested in and researching since the 1970's. Altered traits distinguishes itself from most other popular science and psychology books about meditation in two ways. First, it has a much stronger focus on what the authors call "The Deep Path", which is a focus on the tremendous ability of very long-term meditation practice (tens of thousands of hours) to fundamentally change someone's mind. This is where the title of the book comes from because there is a lot of popular focus on how meditation can change someone's "states," such as making someone feel more relaxed or grounded, but those states usually dissipate quickly after the meditation. An altered "trait" suggests longer-lasting changes that remain stable after the meditation. The second way the book distinguishes itself from most other popular meditation books is that is a bit more critical of some of the hype around what meditative practices can do, and the authors provide more clarity about what there is good evidence for and less good evidence for and also how much meditation is required for certain changes to take place.
The book begins by giving some biographical background of the authors. They note how, although they have been involved in meditation research for a long time, meditation research did not become popular or good until recently (they even say that they don't consider their own early research to be very well-conducted). They decided to write this book in 2017 when there was finally enough good evidence, in their opinion, to start making some more conclusive statements about the effects of meditation. They also introduce the concept that although we talk about meditation popularly like it is one thing, meditation is actually a huge family of practices --- sort of akin to saying, "what are the effects of sports." The next part of the book is organized around the traits that are the goals of different meditation practices, and each chapter summarizes the science around those traits.
The first science chapter talks about targeting the trait of an "undisturbed mind," which is mostly about staying calm during times of stress. A major paradigm called Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction or MBSR has been introduced in medicine and clinical psychology throughout the United States now. Doing MBSR for about 30 hours of practice significantly dampens activity in the amygdala, which is involved in the brain's stress response. These reductions in activity occur both during stressful states, but also at baseline, which the author's interpret as a trait change. Experienced meditation practitioners can withstand more pain and recover faster from the stressor.
The next chapter is about compassion meditation and increasing compassion. Practicing loving-kindness or compassion meditation seems to increase helping behaviors, whereas being primed with learning about compassion or feeling empathy does not actually translate to helpful behaviors. Loving-kindness meditation acts super quickly, which is interesting. In as little as 8-16 hours of practice, people observe decreases in unconscious bias and increased behavioral tendencies toward compassion.
The next chapter was about enhancing attention. Attention is multi-faceted, and so different kinds of meditation train different aspects of attention. Many meditation practices strengthen selective attention, which shows up as increased vigilance and the ability to sustain attention. Vipassana and mindfulness meditation lessened the attentional blink phenomenon. The attentional changes seem continuous, where there are transitory effects on concentration and mind wandering and the attentional blink after small amounts of attention that become greater the more someone meditates.
After that the book discussed the trait of lessening our focus on the "self." Meditation practices that reduce our ongoing narrative of ourselves tend to decrease activity in the brain's default mode network. Quieting the default mode network is a state effect, observed during and immediately after meditation in novice meditators, and becomes an enduring trait in long-term practitioners.
Then after these sections the book goes into a discussion of applications of meditation in Western medicine. Mindfulness training, through MBSR and similar methods, produces decreases in inflammation, which seems to have a continuous dose-response relationship. However, long-term meditators have lower levels of inflammation at rest. The use of meditation in illness can decrease severe depression, anxiety, and pain to similar levels as medications. Combining mindfulness meditation with cognitive behavioral therapy has been the most well-validated mental health intervention using mindfulness. The authors also bring up that in traditional meditative practices, there are negative side-effects ("dark nights") that aren't discussed much in the usual Western conversation.
The last part of the book discusses the fascinating changes that are seen in the brains and behaviors of expert meditators. The authors discuss studies on the monk, Mingyur Rinpoche, who had 62,000 hours of practice at the time. He could have immediate huge surges of gamma activity in his EEG - 700 to 800% compared to rest. The gamma oscillations of expert meditators are also synchronous over huge areas of the brain, a phenomenon not really observed in normal individuals. They also demonstrate little neural activity to place their attention on a chosen object and little to no effort to hold it there.
Summary table of timeframe for meditation effects
Days
Some state differences are observable
Weeks
States emerge that dissipate soon after practice
Months-Years (~1000 hours) Traits begin to emerge
Lifetime (~27,000 hours) Traits clearly exist - effects at rest are similar to those seen during meditation in less experienced meditators
Stress and health
Less amygdala reactivity
Lowered reactivity to stress
Decreased inflammation
Lower cortisol
Strengthening of prefrontal circuits for managing distress
Slower breath rate
Brains show reduced signs of aging
Short but intense reactions during pain and then rapid recovery
Resting brain states are similar to those seen in meditation in less experienced meditators
Attention
Better focus, less mind-wandering, improved working memory
Stronger selective attention
Decreased attentional blink
Greater ease in sustaining attention
Less mind-wandering
Large gamma waves in synchrony among distant brain regions with reports of "spaciousness and vastness of experience"
Extremely refined control of attention corresponding with reduce neural activity and reports of "effortless" attention
Compassion
Circuits used in parental love of a child used become involved in empathy
Boosts good relaxed feelings and social connection.
Increased likelihood to donate to charity
Enhanced likelihood of helping those who suffer
Strong increase of amygdala activation to distress compared to controls
Discussion Questions:
- Do you think that we should incorporate meditation into child education?
- The main theme in the book to me was that novice meditators can reach beneficial altered states that are transient and expert meditators have truly altered traits that are more meaningful. When I read about the highly advanced meditators, I kept thinking that the world probably couldn't function if everyone became a monk and devoted the amount of time needed to develop that level of expertise. What do you think about that? Would you recommend this level of meditation on a large-scale?
- The authors strongly frame things like extreme compassion as obviously good. I wonder if anyone would push back on the extreme changes that the expert meditators are striving for? I felt like extreme compassion will likely leave someone impoverished and possibly in conflict with their family. Extreme equanimity may lead people to accept harmful or toxic people in their lives. Fundamentally altering the default mode and attention in the brain might lead to very different ways of interacting with the world. Are these traits that we should definitely be striving for? Would these traits work in normal family, social, and professional life, or do they only work practically if you are a monk?
- I thought that I detected some bias in the authors’ criticism of mindfulness questionnaire validity. They found that binge drinking related to a mindfulness questionnaire, and they interpreted that as something wrong and obviously making the measure invalid without any supporting arguments about why alcohol couldn't be used to enhance mindfulness.
Another example, was when they found that mindfulness meditation training didn't change trait mindfulness more than a basic health program, and so it didn't have validity. This seemed bold to me again, because I don't know why a health program necessarily couldn't increase trait mindfulness. Do you agree with the authors that we ought to look specifically for mindfulness questionnaires that correlate only with mindfulness meditation practice?
- I found it interesting that training attention through focused meditation actually led to more concentration after the meditation rather than less. I've heard others describe attention as a limited resource. Therefore, I would expect that practicing a difficult attentional task, like meditation, would reduce attentional resources afterwards instead of benefiting them. What do you think is happening?