Alzheimer s & Dementia Translational Research & Clinical Interventions
January 1, 2018
Géraldine Poisnel, Eider M. Arenaza‐Urquijo, Fabienne Collette et al.
103 citations
The Age-Well clinical trial examines whether an 18-month meditation-based intervention can improve mental health and well-being in older adults by targeting attentional and emotional aspects of aging. The trial randomly assigns 137 cognitively unimpaired older adults to the meditation program, a foreign language training program matched for structure and duration, or a passive control group. The study measures cognitive, behavioral, biological, neuroimaging, and sleep outcomes to assess the intervention's impact and underlying mechanisms. This is the first long-term nonpharmacological trial to address both emotional and cognitive dimensions of aging with such comprehensive assessments.
JAMA Neurology
October 10, 2022
Gaël Chételat, Antoine Lutz, Olga Klimecki et al.
45 citations
An 18-month randomized trial of meditation training versus non-native language training or no intervention in cognitively unimpaired adults aged 65 and older found no significant changes in brain volume or perfusion of the anterior cingulate cortex or insula from meditation. Meditation did produce superior improvements in a composite score of attention regulation, socioemotional capacities, and self-knowledge compared with language training. The findings confirm the feasibility of both meditation and language training in older adults, with high adherence and low dropout, but the positive behavioral effects of meditation were not accompanied by measurable changes in the targeted brain structures.
Alzheimer s & Dementia Translational Research & Clinical Interventions
January 1, 2018
Antoine Lutz, Olga Klimecki, Fabienne Collette et al.
18 citations
Long-term meditation expertise may protect against age-related decline. The Age-Well study compares 30 cognitively healthy older adults (65+) with at least 10,000 hours of mindfulness and compassion meditation to nonmeditator controls, using brain imaging, sleep, and biological measures sensitive to aging and Alzheimer's disease. Results are expected to clarify how meditation expertise affects aging and the mechanisms behind meditation-based interventions, informing future prevention trials for older populations.
Sci Rep
November 27, 2024
Sacha Haudry, Anne-Laure Turpin, Brigitte Landeau et al.
3 citations
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.
Scientific Reports
October 28, 2025
Sacha Haudry, Natacha Lambert, Christian Gaser et al.
Older adults with more than 20 years of meditation experience have a younger predicted brain age compared to cognitively unimpaired older adults without such expertise, as measured by a machine learning model trained on brain structure and metabolism data. The difference in brain age was linked to total meditation hours, mental imagery, and prosocialness. However, an 18-month meditation training program did not produce a significant effect on brain age, suggesting that long-term, sustained practice may be necessary to support healthy brain aging.
Journal of sleep research
July 29, 2025
Pierre Champetier, Anaïs Hamel, Claire André et al.
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.
Imaging Neuroscience
January 1, 2025
Sacha Haudry, Sophie Dautricourt, Julie Gonneaud et al.
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.