Reduced Age-related Gray Matter Atrophy in Long-term Meditators within the Medial Occipital Lobe

Abstract

Event Abstract Back to Event Reduced Age-related Gray Matter Atrophy in Long-term Meditators within the Medial Occipital Lobe Eileen Luders1* and Florian Kurth1 1 University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Neurology, United States Life expectancy around the world has risen dramatically, with more than ten years of life gained since 1970. After the age of forty, however, the human brain decreases by approximately five percent every decade. Thus, techniques that can diminish the negative impact of aging on the brain are desirable, especially if they are easily accessible, as well as cost and time efficient. The practice of meditation meets these criteria but studies exploring the brain-preserving effects of meditation are still sparse. To further expand this field of research, we examined the link between age and cerebral gray matter in a large sample of 50 long-term meditators and 50 control subjects. Both groups were matched for sex (28 M / 22 F) and for age (mean±SD: 51±12 years), which ranged from 24 to 77 years. Meditation experience ranged between 4 and 46 years (mean±SD: 19.8±11.4 years). T1-weighted images were processed using SPM8 and the VBM8 toolbox. This resulted in normalized, modulated, and smoothed gray matter segments. First, we tested for significant group-by-age interactions at thousands of gray matter voxels, while statistically correcting for multiple comparisons. Then, we extracted the gray matter from the significance cluster and calculated the age-related correlations separately within meditators and controls. We observed a significant group-by-age interaction in the right medial occipital lobe, spanning the anterior lingual gyrus. Correlating the resulting cluster-specific gray matter with age, we detected negative correlations in both groups, suggesting less gray matter in older subjects. However, the slopes of the regression lines were steeper in controls than in meditators. In addition, the negative link between age and gray matter was stronger in controls (r=-0.56; p<0.001) than in meditators (r=-0.14; p=0.32). These findings suggest less age-related gray matter atrophy within the aforementioned cluster of the medial occipital lobe in meditation practitioners. Keywords: Aging, Meditation, mindfulness, structural MRI, gray matter Conference: XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII), Brisbane, Queensland, Australia, 27 Jul - 31 Jul, 2014. Presentation Type: Poster Topic: Attention Citation: Luders E and Kurth F (2015). Reduced Age-related Gray Matter Atrophy in Long-term Meditators within the Medial Occipital Lobe. Conference Abstract: XII International Conference on Cognitive Neuroscience (ICON-XII). doi: 10.3389/conf.fnhum.2015.217.00304 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 19 Feb 2015; Published Online: 24 Apr 2015. * Correspondence: Prof. Eileen Luders, University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), Neurology, Los Angeles, United States, eileen.luders@ucla.edu Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Eileen Luders Florian Kurth Google Eileen Luders Florian Kurth Google Scholar Eileen Luders Florian Kurth PubMed Eileen Luders Florian Kurth Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.