NCT02977819

Study in Cognitively Intact Seniors Aiming to Assess the Effects of Meditation Training

Interventional Study in Cognitively Intact Seniors Aiming to Assess the Effects of Meditation Training and Foreign Language Learning on Behavioral, Biological and Neuroimaging Measures

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 137 (actual)
• Sponsor: Institut National de la Santé Et de la Recherche Médicale, France · Other Government
• Sex: All
• Age: 65 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Accepted

Summary

As the number of older people in Europe grows, increasing healthy life years is a priority. As people live longer, ensuring good mental as well as physical health into later years is becoming ever more important. Cognitive decline, dementia (e.g. Alzheimer's Disease, AD), sleep disturbances and depression, all related to psychological distress and anxiety, are significant drivers of reduced quality of life in older adults. This project builds on evidence that meditation practice have the potential to downregulate these adverse factors and positively impact mental and neurological conditions including AD.

Detailed description

Understanding of the neurocognitive mechanisms of meditation is still limited. Meditation can be conceptualized as "a set of complex emotional and attentional regulation strategies developed for a variety of purposes including the development of emotional well-being and balance". Affective (emotional) and cognitive (attentional) control are therefore the most likely mechanisms by which meditation could impact aging and AD. Specifically, meditation could enhance the controlling role of mid-brain structures and the executive network over structures involved in memory, emotions, and regulation of the immune system. This would lead to better emotional and cognitive control which in turn would be associated with improved mental and physical health.

Conditions

• Cognitive Aging

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Meditation practice	18 months
OTHER	Learning English as a foreign language	18 months

Timeline

• Start date: 2016-11-24
• Primary completion: 2019-12-31
• Completion: 2023-12-09
• First posted: 2016-11-30
• Last updated: 2025-02-10

Locations

1 site across 1 country: France