UCLA. US: Since 1970, life expectancy around the world has risen dramatically,
with people living more than 10 years longer. That’s the good news. The bad news is that starting when people are in their
mid-to-late-20s, the brain begins to wither — its volume and weight
begin to decrease. As this occurs, the brain can begin to lose some of
its functional abilities. So although people might be living longer, the years they gain often
come with increased risks for mental illness and neurodegenerative
disease. Fortunately, a new study shows meditation could be one way to
minimize those risks.
Building on their earlier work
that suggested people who meditate have less age-related atrophy in the
brain’s white matter, a new study by UCLA researchers found that
meditation appeared to help preserve the brain’s gray matter, the tissue
that contains neurons.
The scientists looked specifically at the association between age and
gray matter. They compared 50 people who had mediated for years and 50
who didn’t. People in both groups showed a loss of gray matter as they
aged. But the researchers found among those who meditated, the volume of
gray matter did not decline as much as it did among those who didn’t.
The article appears in the current online edition of the journal Frontiers in Psychology.
Dr. Florian Kurth, a co-author of the study and postdoctoral fellow at the UCLA Brain Mapping Center, said the researchers were surprised by the magnitude of the difference.
“We expected rather small and distinct effects located in some of the
regions that had previously been associated with meditating,” he said.
“Instead, what we actually observed was a widespread effect of
meditation that encompassed regions throughout the entire brain.”
As baby boomers have aged and the elderly population has grown, the
incidence of cognitive decline and dementia has increased substantially
as the brain ages.
“In that light, it seems essential that longer life expectancies do
not come at the cost of a reduced quality of life,” said Dr. Eileen
Luders, first author and assistant professor of neurology
at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA. “While much research
has focused on identifying factors that increase the risk of mental
illness and neurodegenerative decline, relatively less attention has
been turned to approaches aimed at enhancing cerebral health.”
Each group in the study was made up of 28 men and 22 women ranging in
age from 24 to 77. Those who meditated had been doing so for four to 46
years, with an average of 20 years.
The participants’ brains were scanned using high-resolution magnetic
resonance imaging. Although the researchers found a negative correlation
between gray matter and age in both groups of people — suggesting a
loss of brain tissue with increasing age — they also found that large
parts of the gray matter in the brains of those who meditated seemed to
be better preserved, Kurth said.
The researchers cautioned that they cannot draw a direct, causal
connection between meditation and preserving gray matter in the brain.
Too many other factors may come into play, including lifestyle choices,
personality traits, and genetic brain differences.
“Still, our results are promising,” Luders said. “Hopefully they will
stimulate other studies exploring the potential of meditation to better
preserve our aging brains and minds. Accumulating scientific evidence
that meditation has brain-altering capabilities might ultimately allow
for an effective translation from research to practice, not only in the
framework of healthy aging but also pathological aging.”
The research was supported by the Brain Mapping Medical Research
Organization, the Robson Family and Northstar Fund, the Brain Mapping
Support Foundation, the Pierson‐Lovelace Foundation, the Ahmanson
Foundation, the Tamkin Foundation, the William M. and Linda R. Dietel
Philanthropic Fund at the Northern Piedmont Community Foundation, the
Jennifer Jones‐Simon Foundation, the Capital Group Companies Foundation
and an Australian Research Council fellowship (120100227). Nicolas
Cherbuin of the Australian National University was also an author of the
study.