Diminished Age-Related Decline of the Amygdala in Long-Term Meditation Practitioners
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 19309535 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Eileen Luders (0000-0001-8273-7177, University of Auckland, corresponding author), Felipe A Jain (0000-0002-1683-8241), Florian Kurth (0000-0002-3807-473X) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 83 |
| Issue | 6 |
| Pages | 650-654 |
| Publication date | 2021-07-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Psychosomatic Medicine (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0033-3174 • E-ISSN: 1534-7796 |
| Publisher | Ovid Technologies (Wolters Kluwer Health) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1097/psy.0000000000000913 |
| PMID | 33856149 |
| OpenAlex | W3124993788 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 47 |
OBJECTIVE: A growing body of scientific evidence suggests that meditation may slow brain aging. The amygdala-a heterogenous brain region known to decrease in volume with increasing age-seems to be involved in meditation and affected by meditation. Thus, we hypothesized that the age-related decline of the amygdala is diminished in meditation practitioners. METHODS: We investigated whether correlations between age and gray matter volumes of the amygdala are significantly reduced in 50 long-term meditators compared with 50 sex- and age-matched healthy controls. Both the meditator and control groups included 44% women. The age of the participants ranged between 24 and 77 years, with mean (standard deviation) ages of 50.4 (±11.8) years in meditators and 51.4 (±12.8) years in controls. In addition to studying the amygdala as a whole, we investigated its centromedial, laterobasal, and superficial subregions using a well-validated approach combining imaging-based signal intensities and cytoarchitectonically defined probabilities. RESULTS: We detected significant group-by-age interactions for the whole amygdala and for its subregions. Follow-up analyses indicated negative age-related correlations in both meditators and controls (the older the participants, the smaller the volumes) but with significantly steeper aging trajectories in controls. CONCLUSIONS: Altogether, these findings suggest that the age-related volume loss of the amygdala is less pronounced in long-term meditators. This effect was particularly evident for the laterobasal subregion, which has been functionally linked to aspects of self-focused reflection
Amygdala · Audiology · Brain aging · Cognition · Meditation · Action Observation and Synchronization · Clinical Psychology · Medicine · Mindfulness and Compassion Interventions · Neuroscience · Psychology · Sport Psychology and Performance
| Highly cited | No |
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