After eight weeks of meditation training, healthy older adults rated both positive and negative affective images as more neutral, indicating a change in valence perception. This behavioral shift was linked to structural enlargements in a prefrontal network including the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, inferior frontal sulcus, and inferior frontal junction. An active control group that completed relaxation training showed no such brain changes. A path analysis suggests meditation may trigger a series of prefrontal neuroplastic changes related to how emotional valence is processed. These findings point to meditation as a potential intervention to promote healthy aging by counteracting affective dysregulations common in older people.
The mind and brain sciences began with consciousness as a central concern, but for much of the 20th century it was marginalized. Since the 1990s, consciousness science has regained legitimacy, now encompassing philosophical, theoretical, computational, experimental, and clinical perspectives, with neuroscience as its central discipline. Researchers have learned much about neural mechanisms underlying global states of consciousness, conscious versus unconscious perception, and self-consciousness. Further progress depends on specifying closer explanatory mappings between first-person phenomenological descriptions and third-person descriptions of embodied neuronal mechanisms. This will help reframe understanding of humanity's place in nature and accelerate clinical approaches to psychiatric and neurological disorders.