Expert meditators show preserved brain structure and better psycho-affective health compared to meditation-naive older adults, suggesting that long-term meditation practice may protect against age-related decline. The study examined older expert meditators and older meditation-naive participants, finding that the expert group had greater brain preservation and more favorable psycho-affective profiles. These results indicate that meditation could be a protective factor for brain and mental health in aging.
Long-term meditation practice in older adults is linked to more preserved brain activity during rest and sleep, and to EEG features that suggest higher cognitive states during NREM sleep. Expert meditators (mean age 70.7 years) slept longer, had less stage N1 sleep, and more stage N2 sleep than controls. During NREM sleep, they showed reduced delta power, increased alpha power, and greater theta permutation entropy. During REM sleep, they tended to have greater theta power. Self-reported sleep quality did not differ between groups. Greater meditation expertise was associated with less stage N1 sleep and tended to correlate with more stage N2 and REM theta power.
An 18-month meditation training in healthy older adults altered resting-state brain dynamics. Participants who meditated showed more frequent transitions between different brain connectivity states and spent less time in a weakly connected state and more time in a strongly connected state, patterns associated with lower and higher dementia risk, respectively. However, only the increase in transitions was significantly different from a non-native language training group. The small effect sizes and lack of group differences for time spent in states limit the conclusions.