For the book, the authors conducted a literature review of over 6,000 scientific studies on meditation, and selected the 60 that they believed met the highest methodological standards.

[3]: 207 [4] The next chapter recounts how Davidson's lab, with the help of French Buddhist monk Matthieu Ricard, recruited yogis including Mingyur Rinpoche in order to study the neurological effects of high-level meditation, and—in a much-cited study—found substantial surges in both electrical activity (using EEG) and activity in the brain's circuits for empathy (using fMRI) when Mingyur meditated on compassion.

[3]: 228 [5] The authors write that experienced yogis have much higher levels of gamma waves, that they show little anticipation of pain and a very fast recovery from it, and that they can re-focus and hold their attention with little effort.

It describes Altered Traits as "a highly readable book that helps readers separate the wheat from the chaff of mindfulness science" and which makes "a cogent argument that meditation, in various forms, has the power to transform us not only in the moment, but in more profound, lasting ways."

However, in a concluding note it cautions: "From an academic point of view, even this book and the research shared adds up to a set of questionable empirical evidence that at times clearly lacks impartiality.

[9] An article on Mindful.org comments that "when you weed out the studies that don’t meet the highest scientific standards, as Goleman and Davidson have done in their book, a clear picture emerges of what we know about the science of meditation—and what we still need to learn.