A promising connection between dementia and meditation

With an estimated 50 million people living with dementia around the world, the recent connection between dementia and meditation shows promise for using mindfulness as an effective practice to delay brain and cognitive changes. Current studies are exploring the benefits of instilling this practice for patients with an early form of dementia called mild cognitive impairment (MCI). 

The most common cause of dementia is Alzheimer’s disease, which is characterized by the death of brain cells and loss of brain tissue. One of the cellular pathologies associated with Alzheimer’s is the formation of amyloid beta plaques, preventing communication between neurons and ultimately leading to cell death. Patients with Alzheimer’s disease have trouble memorizing, thinking, multitasking, and making judgements and decisions. However, most of the current meditation studies only include participants with mild cognitive impairment or subjective cognitive decline (SCD). These diseases are considered precursors for dementia and are characterized by milder symptoms including forgetfulness and judgement impairment beyond that of normal aging. 

Most of the current meditation studies only include participants with mild cognitive impairment or subjective cognitive decline (SCD).

Mindfulness meditation is the practice of focusing an individual’s attention on a single target, such as the breath or a sound in the environment. Anytime their attention drifts away, they gently refocus it back to the target. Two innovative pilot studies show the promise of meditation in delaying the loss of cognitive abilities in patients with cognitive decline. 

In 2013, a study by Dr. Rebecca Wells et al. at Harvard Medical School recruited participants with MCI and observed how mindfulness affected the connections and overall health of the brain. In comparison to the control group, meditation participants showed increased neural pathways between the hippocampus, a brain structure important for memory, and the default mode network, a collection of brain regions involved in self-thought. Additionally, participants that meditated displayed less brain tissue loss compared to the control group. Although this was a preliminary study, it shows promising results that for patients with MCI, meditation has the potential to preserve tissue density and strengthen connectivity in regions important for memory and cognitive processing.

A follow up study by Wells et al. compared the cognitive functioning of the participants with MCI before and after meditation. The participants who underwent meditation displayed improved cognitive test scores whereas the control group’s scores worsened. Meditation participants also reported subjective improvements in well-being and decreased stress response. These findings suggest that meditation may delay onset of cognitive decline as well as improve the wellbeing of patients with MCI.

The participants who underwent meditation displayed improved cognitive test scores whereas the control group’s scores worsened. Meditation participants also reported subjective improvements in well-being and decreased stress response.

In 2018, a study at West Virginia University recruited participants with SCD, where they attended a music listening class or a meditation class. Their cognitive functioning and blood biomarkers for cellular aging were measured before and after the intervention. One of the biomarkers evaluated was their amyloid beta level, which is positively associated with Alzheimer’s disease. 

Contrary to the previous study by Wells et al., both groups showed improvement in their memory performances on tests in this study. However, the meditation group showed greater improvements in well-being. This suggests that meditation can be implemented into someone’s routine for the low-risk potential of improved cognitive functioning and well-being. For the meditation group, researchers found that higher amyloid beta levels in the blood after the intervention class correlated with an improvement in participant’s memory skills. It was suggested that higher levels of amyloid beta in the blood meant more plaques were cleared from the brain, reducing neuronal death. This finding shows that meditation may somehow alleviate amyloid-beta burden in the brain, which is linked to improvements in cognition. Subsequent research is now being conducted in order to further examine the association between blood biomarkers, cognitive function, and meditation. 

Because of the novelty of this research, researchers cannot conclusively say that meditation delays the process of cognitive decline, but the findings so far provide evidence that it may be able to make neural changes to the brain and improve cognitive ability for those with MCI. Because of some inconsistencies, follow up research is needed, but given the lack of success in finding treatments and preventative measures for dementia, meditation may be a worthwhile alternative for people with cognitive impairment.

Neurosci Lett (2013). DOI: 10.1016/j.neulet.2013.10.001

J Am Geriatr Soc (2013). DOI: 10.1111/jgs.12179

J Alzheimers Dis (2018). DOI: 10.3233/JAD-180164

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