Altered Traits: Science Reveals How Meditation Changes Your Mind, Brain, and Body

by Daniel Goleman

While Amishi was on faculty at the University of Pennsylvania, Richie came to lecture. During his talk he never mentioned meditation, but he did show fMRI images of two brains—one in the depths of depression, the other happy. Amishi asked him, “How do you get a brain to change from one to the other?” “Meditation,” Richie answered.

Scientists refer to brain activity reflecting our conscious mind and its mental doings as “top-down.” “Bottom-up” refers to what goes on in the mind largely outside awareness, in what technically is the “cognitive unconscious.” A surprising amount of what we think is from the top down is actually from the bottom up. We seem to impose a top-down gloss on our awareness, where the thin slice of the cognitive unconscious that comes to our attention creates the illusion of being the entirety of mind.19