Add to ORKGEmerging fields such as the social- and contemplative neurosciences have focused on the questions of how people relate to and understand each other. Hereby, the ability for cognitive perspective taking is differentiated from concepts of emotion contagion, empathy, and compassion; the former represents a cognitive route to the understanding of others, the latter a motivational and affective route. Recently, neuroscientists have started to investigate the plasticity of the social brain, that is the trainability of capacities such as empathy, compassion or perspective taking through meditation-based mental training and describe its effects on changes in brain functions, subjective well-being, pro-social behavior, and health. One of these studi...