Decoding meditation mechanisms underlying brain preservation and psycho-affective health in older expert meditators and older meditation-naive participants.

ABSTRACT: Meditation is a mental training approach that can improve mental health and well-being in aging. Yet the underlying mechanisms remain unknown. The Medit-Ageing model stipulates that three mechanisms - attentional, constructive, and deconstructive - upregulate positive psycho-affective factors and downregulate negative ones. To test this hypothesis, we measured brain structural MRI and perfusion, negative and positive psycho-affective composite scores, and meditation mechanisms in 27 older expert meditators and 135 meditation-naive older controls. We identified brain and psycho-affective differences and performed mediation analyses to assess whether and which meditation mechanisms mediate their links.Meditators showed significantly higher volume in fronto-parietal areas and perfusion in tem

SUBMITTER: Haudry S 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11603193 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature