There’s some good information here, about the scientific examination of various types of meditation and the results. Some of their personal adventures doing research are entertaining, and they honestly criticize mistakes they made as young researchers. But while many important scientific principles are spelled out, the authors also continually bring up tiny un-replicated studies with a few dozen participants as if the results are meaningful. Kind of inconsistent. The whole thing was also a little dumbed-down for my taste. ( )

After taking a course about meditation and science I was interested in reading about more scientific evidence on the usefulness of meditation. This book cites many studies and points out studies that were done without rigorous application of the scientific method whose results may be suspect. Balanced and well written. ( )

Quarenta anos atrás, Daniel Goleman e Richard Davidson, amigos e colaboradores na Universidade Harvard, eram dois dos poucos cientistas que defendiam os benefícios da meditação para o cérebro. Hoje, ela passou a ser estudada em diversos laboratórios. Com base nas mais recentes pesquisas, os autores desconstroem concepções equivocadas e revelam o que podemos aprender sobre a meditação a partir de um surpreendente conjunto de dados. Eles compartilham pela primeira vez descobertas que mostram como essa prática pode mudar de forma extremamente positiva nossa maneira de pensar, sentir e agir. O treinamento mental constante cultiva qualidades como desprendimento, amor e compaixão, redesenhando de forma duradoura nosso circuito neural. A ciência da meditação é um daqueles raros livros que têm o poder de fazer grandes transformações.

In the last twenty years, meditation and mindfulness have gone from being kind of cool to becoming an omnipresent Band-Aid for fixing everything from your weight to your relationship to your achievement level. Unveiling here the kind of cutting-edge research that has made them giants in their fields, Daniel Goleman and Richard Davidson show us the truth about what meditation can really do for us, as well as exactly how to get the most out of it.

Sweeping away common misconceptions and neuromythology to open readers' eyes to the ways data has been distorted to sell mind-training methods, the authors demonstrate that beyond the pleasant states mental exercises can produce, the real payoffs are the lasting personality traits that can result. But short daily doses will not get us to the highest level of lasting positive change--even if we continue for years--without specific additions. More than sheer hours, we need smart practice, including crucial ingredients such as targeted feedback from a master teacher and a more spacious, less attached view of the self, all of which are missing in widespread versions of mind training. The authors also reveal the latest data from Davidson's own lab that point to a new methodology for developing a broader array of mind-training methods with larger implications for how we can derive the greatest benefits from the practice.

Exciting, compelling, and grounded in new research, this is one of those rare books that has the power to change us at the deepest level.

While I found the book highly informative and authoritative, considering the authors first-hand experience with both research on meditation and meditation as such, I simply cannot force myself to rate it higher then 3/5 stars because of the form.

Its a common habit of many authors of popular science books today to puff up ideas worth 100 pages to 300 pages by various means of repetition, useless anecdotes and interviews and what not instead of filling the book with more information / coming up with their unique views etc. This book unfortunately follows the same pattern - about 100 pages is really good, informative, you learn a lot about state of research on meditation, issues with devising experiments in a highly subjective field, various kinds of meditation and benefits that science could prove, but the rest 200 is simply.. dispensable.

Its possible that many readers will not agree with me and I guess that really depends on expectation - I have personally expected more focus on raw information and less / no focus on stuff like personal paths of authors, their meetings with various monks and dalai lama, their dying friend etc. and I am sure that if not 100/200 split then it is at least 150/150 split between those two sides.

Even though my review is rather harsh, I still recommend this book to all readers interested in meditation who would like to get a clear picture of what it actually is about and what benefits it can provide - its just that you will often feel like speed reading certain parts or even skipping them.
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