What's New

The Emotional Life of Your Brain by Richard J. Davidson and Sharon Begley. Davidson's account of his neuroscientific research on affective style provides the most rigorous available treatment of resilience as a measurable neural dimension of psychological difference. His documentation of the left prefrontal activation asymmetry as a predictor of recovery speed from negative events — and the evidence from his contemplative practice research that this asymmetry shifts with sustained mindfulness training — gives the Hölzel structural resilience argument its full neurological depth. Davidson's affective style framework identifies resilience as one of six dimensions of emotional style, each with a distinct neural circuit, and each modifiable through targeted practice. For the entrepreneur who wants the mechanism-level account of why mindfulness practice produces resilience rather than the assertion that it does, this book provides the research basis — written by the researcher who did the foundational work, with the scientific rigour that the question deserves and the accessibility that makes it usable outside a laboratory.