Diminished Age-Related Decline of the Amygdala in Long-Term Meditation Practitioners.
Journal
Psychosomatic medicine
ISSN: 1534-7796
Titre abrégé: Psychosom Med
Pays: United States
ID NLM: 0376505
Informations de publication
Date de publication:
Historique:
pubmed:
16
4
2021
medline:
26
10
2021
entrez:
15
4
2021
Statut:
ppublish
Résumé
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. 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. 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. 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.
Identifiants
pubmed: 33856149
pii: 00006842-202107000-00017
doi: 10.1097/PSY.0000000000000913
doi:
Types de publication
Journal Article
Langues
eng
Sous-ensembles de citation
IM
Pagination
650-654Informations de copyright
Copyright © 2021 by the American Psychosomatic Society.
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