Scientific Reports
October 28, 2025
Sacha Haudry, Natacha Lambert, Christian Gaser et al.
Meditation is thought to promote healthy aging by improving mental health, preserving brain integrity and reducing Alzheimer's disease risk. We examined the impact of long-term meditation expertise and an 18-month meditation training on brain aging in older adults using machine learning. We included 25 Older Expert Meditators (OldExpMed) with > 20 years of practice and 135 Cognitively...
Journal of Psychiatric Research
April 1, 2024
Lena Vera Danyeli, Zümrüt Duygu Sen, Lejla Colic et al.
3 citations
Subanesthetic doses of ketamine induce an antidepressant effect within hours in individuals with treatment-resistant depression while it furthermore induces immediate but transient psychotomimetic effects. Among these psychotomimetic effects, an altered sense of self has specifically been associated with the antidepressant response to ketamine as well as psychedelics. However, there is plenty...
Frontiers in Psychiatry
2022
Otto Simonsson, José Carlos Bouso, Florian Kurth et al.
6 citations
Recent research suggests that ayahuasca and its alkaloid-containing ingredients may be helpful in the treatment and prevention of certain movement and neurodegenerative disorders. However, such research is still in its infancy and more studies in normative samples seem necessary to explore effects of ayahuasca on clinically relevant brain structures, such as the corpus callosum. The purpose of...
Frontiers in Aging Neuroscience
August 27, 2021
Gunes Sevinc, Johann Rusche, Bonnie Wong et al.
Maintaining optimal cognitive functioning throughout the lifespan is a public health priority. Evaluation of cognitive outcomes following interventions to promote and preserve brain structure and function in older adults, and associated neural mechanisms, are therefore of critical importance. In this randomized controlled trial, we examined the behavioral and neural outcomes following...
Neuroimage
July 1, 2016
Eileen Luders, Nicolas Cherbuin, Christian Gaser
Normal aging is known to be accompanied by loss of brain substance. The present study was designed to examine whether the practice of meditation is associated with a reduced brain age. Specific focus was directed at age fifty and beyond, as mid-life is a time when aging processes are known to become more prominent. We applied a recently developed machine learning algorithm trained to identify...
Frontiers in Psychology
2013
Eileen Luders, Florian Kurth, Arthur W Toga et al.
89 citations
Scientific studies addressing anatomical variations in meditators' brains have emerged rapidly over the last few years, where significant links are most frequently reported with respect to gray matter (GM). To advance prior work, this study examined GM characteristics in a large sample of 100 subjects (50 meditators, 50 controls), where meditators have been practicing close to 20 years, on...
Frontiers in Human Neuroscience
February 29, 2012
Eileen Luders, Florian Kurth, Emeran A Mayer et al.
Several cortical regions are reported to vary in meditation practitioners. However, prior analyses have focused primarily on examining gray matter or cortical thickness. Thus, additional effects with respect to other cortical features might have remained undetected. Gyrification (the pattern and degree of cortical folding) is an important cerebral characteristic related to the geometry of the...
Neuroimage
April 1, 2009
Eileen Luders, Arthur W Toga, Natasha Lepore et al.
Although the systematic study of meditation is still in its infancy, research has provided evidence for meditation-induced improvements in psychological and physiological well-being. Moreover, meditation practice has been shown not only to benefit higher-order cognitive functions but also to alter brain activity. Nevertheless, little is known about possible links to brain structure. Using...