A week of daily mindfulness meditation with slow breathing lowered blood levels of amyloid beta, a protein linked to Alzheimer's disease, while the same practice with normal breathing raised those levels. A control group that did not meditate showed no change. The results suggest that slow breathing may be a mechanism through which meditation influences biological pathways relevant to Alzheimer's disease.
Thirty days of guided mindfulness meditation using a mobile app improved the speed of saccadic eye movements (overt orienting of attention) in adults, but did not reduce distractibility or enhance goal-directed attentional control beyond repeated task practice. The benefits were similar across young, middle-aged, and older adults, and no changes appeared in self-report mindfulness questionnaires. The findings suggest that short-term mindfulness practice can modulate cognition in ways detectable by eye tracking but not by self-report, and that age does not moderate these effects.