Abstract BackgroundIn the United States, the prevalence of Alzheimer disease (AD) is projected to double over the next 30 years, with associated familial and societal costs estimated at US $1 trillion annually if current trends continue. Although pharmacological treatments of AD are showing promise, the adoption of healthy lifestyle behaviors, particularly during the preclinical phase of AD,...
Older adults exhibit age-related declines in processes of attentional control, demonstrating an emergent need to identify mind-body interventions that support healthy cognitive aging. Mindfulness training is a promising intervention for improving attentional control processes, but relatively few methodologically rigorous studies have examined whether these effects extend to older adults. This...
Mindfulness meditation is a form of mind-body intervention that has increasing scientific support for its ability to reduce age-related declines in cognitive functioning, improve affective health, and strengthen the neural circuitry supporting improved cognitive and affective health. However, the majority of existent studies have been pilot investigations with small sample sizes, limited...
Abstract While mindfulness is commonly viewed as a skill to be cultivated through practice, untrained individuals can also vary widely in dispositional mindfulness. Prior research has identified static neural connectivity correlates of this trait. Here, we use dynamic functional connectivity (DFC) analysis of resting-state fMRI to study time-varying connectivity patterns associated with...
Mindfulness based training (MBT) is becoming increasingly popular as a means to improve general wellbeing through developing enhanced control over metacognitive processes. In this preliminary study, we tested a cohort of 36 nurses (mean age = 30.3, SD = 8.52; 2 male) who participated in an 8-week MBT intervention to examine the improvements in sustained attention and its energetic costs that...