Reviews in the Neurosciences
June 3, 2026
Thomas Le François, Charlotte E Hilberdink, Bérengère Guillery-Girard et al.
Mindfulness meditation has received growing interest in research over the past decades. Mindfulness meditation training (MMT) can be employed as a mental practice to improve cognitive skills such as attention and emotion regulation and may promote well-being. Neuroimaging studies have emerged to understand the effects of MMT on brain functioning. However, no review exists on the effects of MMT...
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 Sleep Research
July 29, 2025
Pierre Champetier, Anaïs Hamel, Claire André et al.
Meditation practice has been shown to impact resting-state EEG activity in expert meditators, but its benefits on sleep, which is particularly affected with age, are poorly understood. Our aim was to better understand the effects of long-term meditation practice on resting-state EEG and sleep in older adults. Twenty-seven elderly expert meditators (mean age ± SD: 70.7 ± 5.0 years) were compared...
Scientific Reports
May 15, 2025
Florence Requier, Hamed Mohammadi, Harriet Demnitz-King et al.
With aging, slight changes in some cognitive processes can be observed. Therefore, we aimed to assess if meditation expertise is associated with preserved cognition in key domains affected in aging. We used data from two older-adult samples of the Medit-Ageing Age-well Study: 135 non-meditators and 27 expert meditators. We examined group differences in four objective cognitive domains...
Biological psychiatry. Cognitive neuroscience and neuroimaging
April 1, 2025
Saampras Ganesan, Fernando A Barrios, Ishaan Batta et al.
6 citations
Meditation is a family of ancient and contemporary contemplative mind-body practices that can modulate psychological processes, awareness, and mental states. Over the last 40 years, clinical science has manualized meditation practices and designed various meditation interventions that have shown therapeutic efficacy for disorders including depression, pain, addiction, and anxiety. Over the past...
Neuropsychology, development, and cognition. Section B, Aging, neuropsychology and cognition
March 1, 2025
Florence Requier, Harriet Demnitz-King, Eric Frison et al.
Aging is associated with cognitive changes, even in the absence of brain pathology. This study aimed to determine if meditation training, by comparison to active and passive control groups, is linked to changes in the perception of cognitive functioning in older adults. One hundred thirty-four healthy older participants from the Age-Well Randomized Clinical Trial were included: 45 followed a...
Imaging Neuroscience
2025
Sacha Haudry, Sophie Dautricourt, Julie Gonneaud et al.
Meditation training in older adults has been proposed as a non-pharmacological intervention to promote healthy aging and lower the risks of developing Alzheimer's disease (AD). Resting-state dynamic functional network connectivity (dFNC) highlighted two brain states, the "strongly connected" and "default mode network (DMN)-negatively connected" states, associated with protective factors for...
Biological Psychiatry Global Open Science
2025
Perla Kaliman, María Jesús Álvarez-López, Asrar Lehodey et al.
Shorter telomeres are associated with increased risk of cognitive decline and age-related diseases. Developing interventions to promote healthy aging by preserving telomere integrity is of paramount importance. Here, we investigated the effect of an 18-month meditation intervention on telomere length (TL) measures in older people without cognitive impairment. A total of 137 adults age ≥65 years...
Sci Rep
November 27, 2024
Sacha Haudry, Anne-Laure Turpin, Brigitte Landeau et al.
3 citations
Decoding meditation mechanisms underlying brain preservation and psycho-affective health in older expert meditators and older meditation-naive participants.
Sci Rep
November 27, 2024
Sacha Haudry, Anne-Laure Turpin, Brigitte Landeau et al.
3 citations
Decoding meditation mechanisms underlying brain preservation and psycho-affective health in older expert meditators and older meditation-naive participants.
Scientific Reports
November 2, 2024
Marco Schlosser, Julie Gonneaud, Stefano Poletti et al.
2 citations
Understanding the factors that predict why some individuals perceive to respond more to meditation training than others could impact the development, efficacy, adherence levels, and implementation of meditation-based interventions. We investigated individual-level variables associated with self- and teacher-perceived responsiveness to longer-term meditation training. This study presents a...
Biological Psychiatry Global Open Science
November 1, 2024
Sébastien Czajko, Jelle Zorn, Loïc Daumail et al.
5 citations
Short mindfulness-based interventions have gained traction in research due to their positive impact on well-being, cognition, and clinical symptoms across various settings. However, these short-term trainings are viewed as preliminary steps within a more extensive transformative path, presumably leading to long-lasting trait changes. Despite this, little is still known about the brain...
PLoS One
2023
Marco Schlosser, Harriet Demnitz-King, Thorsten Barnhofer et al.
13 citations
Older adults with subjective cognitive decline (SCD) recruited from memory clinics have an increased risk of developing dementia and regularly experience reduced psychological well-being related to memory concerns and fear of dementia. Research on improving well-being in SCD is limited and lacks non-pharmacological approaches. We investigated whether mindfulness-based and health education...
PLoS One
2023
Marco Schlosser, Olga Klimecki, Fabienne Collette et al.
6 citations
As the world population is ageing, it is vital to understand how older adults can maintain and deepen their psychological well-being as they are confronted with the unique challenges of ageing in a complex world. Theoretical work has highlighted the promising role of intentional mental training such as meditation practice for enhancing human flourishing. However, meditation-based randomised...
October 31, 2022
Marco Schlosser, Olga Klimecki, Fabienne Collette et al.
Objectives: As the world population is ageing, it is vital to understand how older adults can maintain and deepen their psychological well-being as they are confronted with the unique challenges of ageing in a complex and vulnerable world. Theoretical work has highlighted the promising role of intentional mental training such as meditation practice for enhancing human flourishing. However,...
JAMA Neurology
October 10, 2022
Gaël Chételat, Antoine Lutz, Olga Klimecki et al.
45 citations
Importance: No lifestyle-based randomized clinical trial directly targets psychoaffective risk factors of dementia. Meditation practices recently emerged as a promising mental training exercise to foster brain health and reduce dementia risk. Objective: To investigate the effects of meditation training on brain integrity in older adults. Design, Setting, and Participants: Age-Well was a...
Ageing Research Reviews
October 1, 2021
Antoine Lutz, Gaël Chételat, Fabienne Collette et al.
Alzheimer's disease (AD) represents a major health and societal issue; there is no treatment to date and the pathophysiological mechanisms underlying this disease are not well understood. Yet, there is hope that AD risk factors and thus the number of AD cases can be significantly reduced by prevention measures based on lifestyle modifications as targeted by non-pharmacological preventive...
Neuropsychology Review
August 4, 2021
Tim Whitfield, Thorsten Barnhofer, Rebecca L. Acabchuk et al.
193 citations
Mindfulness-based programs (MBPs) are increasingly utilized to improve mental health. Interest in the putative effects of MBPs on cognitive function is also growing. This is the first meta-analysis of objective cognitive outcomes across multiple domains from randomized MBP studies of adults. Seven databases were systematically searched to January 2020. Fifty-six unique studies (n = 2,931) were...
April 13, 2021
Marco Schlosser, Thorsten Barnhofer, Florence Requier et al.
2 citations
Objectives: Deepening our understanding of the mechanisms by which meditation practices impact well-being and human flourishing is essential for advancing the science of meditation. The phenomenologically grounded classification system introduced by Dahl, Lutz, and Davidson (2015) distinguishes attentional, constructive, and deconstructive forms of meditation based on the psychological...
Alzheimer s & Dementia
December 1, 2020
Tim Whitfield, Thorsten Barnhofer, Rebecca L. Acabchuk et al.
6 citations
Abstract Background The primary focus of mindfulness‐based program (MBP) research to date has been on mental health. More recently, attention has turned to putative effects on cognition. An evidence synthesis is required to answer the key question of ‘Do MBPs confer cognitive benefit, and if so, for whom?’ A particularly crucial distinction is whether benefits differ according to individuals’...
Alzheimer s Research & Therapy
June 22, 2018
Gaël Chételat, Antoine Lutz, Eider M. Arenaza‐Urquijo et al.
106 citations
Psycho-affective states or traits such as stress, depression, anxiety and neuroticism are known to affect sleep, cognition and mental health and well-being in aging populations and to be associated with increased risk for Alzheimer's disease (AD). Mental training for stress reduction and emotional and attentional regulation through meditation practice might help reduce these adverse factors. So...
Alzheimer s & Dementia Translational Research & Clinical Interventions
2018
Géraldine Poisnel, Eider M. Arenaza‐Urquijo, Fabienne Collette et al.
103 citations
INTRODUCTION: The Age-Well clinical trial is an ongoing monocentric, randomized, controlled trial aiming to assess an 18-month preventive meditation-based intervention directly targeting the attentional and emotional dimensions of aging to promote mental health and well-being in elderly people. METHODS: One hundred thirty-seven cognitively unimpaired older adults are randomized to either an...
Alzheimer s & Dementia Translational Research & Clinical Interventions
2018
Antoine Lutz, Olga Klimecki, Fabienne Collette et al.
18 citations
INTRODUCTION: The Age-Well observational, cross-sectional study investigates the affective and cognitive mechanisms of meditation expertise with behavioral, neuroimaging, sleep, and biological measures sensitive to aging and Alzheimer's disease (AD). METHODS: Thirty cognitively unimpaired individuals aged 65 years or older with at least 10,000 hours of practice in mindfulness meditation (MM)...
Scientific Reports
August 25, 2017
Gaël Chételat, Florence Mezenge, Clémence Tomadesso et al.
67 citations
Aging is associated with progressive cerebral volume and glucose metabolism decreases. Conditions such as stress and sleep difficulties exacerbate these changes and are risk factors for Alzheimer's disease. Meditation practice, aiming towards stress reduction and emotion regulation, can downregulate these adverse factors. In this pilot study, we explored the possibility that lifelong meditation...