Abstract
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 practice might reduce age-related brain changes by comparing structural MRI and FDG-PET data in 6 elderly expert meditators versus 67 elderly controls. We found increased gray matter volume and/or FDG metabolism in elderly expert meditators compared to controls in the bilateral ventromedial prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortex, insula, temporo-parietal junction, and posterior cingulate cortex /precuneus. Most of these regions were also those exhibiting the strongest effects of age when assessed in a cohort of 186 controls aged 20 to 87 years. Moreover, complementary analyses showed that these changes were still observed when adjusting for lifestyle factors or using a smaller group of controls matched for education. Pending replication in a larger cohort of elderly expert meditators and longitudinal studies, these findings suggest that meditation practice could reduce age-associated structural and functional brain changes.
Highlights
Aging is associated with progressive cerebral volume and glucose metabolism decreases
It is increasingly acknowledged that several lifestyle factors modulate brain aging and the development of dementia; around a third of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) cases may be attributable to potentially modifiable risk factors[7]
The mean w-score maps of the elderly expert meditators showed that w-score values were mainly positive for gray matter (GM) volume (Fig. 1B), and almost only positive for FDG metabolism (Fig. 2B), indicating that the elderly expert meditators tended to have higher values compared to elderly controls
Summary
Aging is associated with progressive cerebral volume and glucose metabolism decreases. We found increased gray matter volume and/or FDG metabolism in elderly expert meditators compared to controls in the bilateral ventromedial prefrontal and anterior cingulate cortex, insula, temporo-parietal junction, and posterior cingulate cortex /precuneus Most of these regions were those exhibiting the strongest effects of age when assessed in a cohort of 186 controls aged 20 to 87 years. Neuroimaging studies have allowed us to track age-related macroscopic, structural, functional and molecular brain changes They have shown substantial decreases with age in cerebral volume and glucose metabolism[1, 2]. Decreased gray matter (GM) brain volume (especially in the hippocampus and temporal neocortex), and glucose metabolism (in the posterior cingulate cortex and temporo-parietal region), and the presence of Aβ deposition, are known to be associated with increased risk for dementia, and for Alzheimer’s disease (AD). No study to date has explored changes in glucose metabolism associated with long-term meditation practice in young or elderly participants
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