Aging typically shrinks brain volume and lowers glucose metabolism, with stress and poor sleep accelerating these changes. In a pilot study comparing 6 elderly expert meditators with 67 elderly controls, the meditators showed greater gray matter volume and/or FDG metabolism in several brain regions: the ventromedial prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortex, insula, temporo-parietal junction, and posterior cingulate cortex/precuneus. These same regions were most affected by age in a larger control group of 186 people aged 20 to 87. The differences persisted after adjusting for lifestyle factors and education. The findings suggest that lifelong meditation might reduce age-related brain decline, but larger and longitudinal studies are needed.
An 18-month randomized trial of meditation training versus non-native language training or no intervention in cognitively unimpaired adults aged 65 and older found no significant changes in brain volume or perfusion of the anterior cingulate cortex or insula from meditation. Meditation did produce superior improvements in a composite score of attention regulation, socioemotional capacities, and self-knowledge compared with language training. The findings confirm the feasibility of both meditation and language training in older adults, with high adherence and low dropout, but the positive behavioral effects of meditation were not accompanied by measurable changes in the targeted brain structures.
Expert meditators show preserved brain structure and better psycho-affective health compared to meditation-naive older adults, suggesting that long-term meditation practice may protect against age-related decline. The study examined older expert meditators and older meditation-naive participants, finding that the expert group had greater brain preservation and more favorable psycho-affective profiles. These results indicate that meditation could be a protective factor for brain and mental health in aging.
An 18-month meditation training in healthy older adults altered resting-state brain dynamics. Participants who meditated showed more frequent transitions between different brain connectivity states and spent less time in a weakly connected state and more time in a strongly connected state, patterns associated with lower and higher dementia risk, respectively. However, only the increase in transitions was significantly different from a non-native language training group. The small effect sizes and lack of group differences for time spent in states limit the conclusions.