The impact of meditation on healthy ageing — the current state of knowledge and a roadmap to future directions

• Published in: Current opinion in psychology Vol. 28; pp. 223 - 228
• Main Authors: Klimecki, Olga, Marchant, Natalie L, Lutz, Antoine, Poisnel, Géraldine, Chételat, Gaël, Collette, Fabienne
• Format: Journal Article Web Resource
• Language: English
• Published: Netherlands Elsevier Ltd 01.08.2019; Elsevier
• Subjects: Life Sciences; Neurons and Cognition; Neurosciences & behavior; Neurosciences & comportement; Sciences sociales & comportementales, psychologie; Social & behavioral sciences, psychology
• ISSN: 2352-250X; 2352-2518; 2352-2518; 2352-250X
• DOI: 10.1016/j.copsyc.2019.01.006

•Meditation practice may promote healthy ageing and delay the onset of dementia.•Expert meditators have more preserved brain structures than age-matched controls.•Meditation practice improves cognitive functions, including attention.•Meditation reduces anxiety, depression, and stress and promotes positive emotions.•More rigorous studies are needed to substantiate these effects in elderly. There is increasing evidence that meditation-based training promotes healthy ageing across many dimensions. This review summarizes the existing knowledge on the effects of meditation training on healthy ageing in the domains of emotions, cognition (with a special emphasis on attentional processes), and the preservation of related brain structures. Although evidence so far is promising, more rigorous randomized controlled studies with active control groups and long-term follow-up in older people are needed. We outline how these challenges can be addressed in future studies using the example of an ongoing project, Medit-Ageing (public name: Silver Santé Study), including two independent randomized controlled trials (RCT) as well as one cross-sectional study with meditation experts.