ArticleFrontiers in human neuroscience2021
Effects of Meditation on Structural Changes of the Brain in Patients With Mild Cognitive Impairment or Alzheimer's Disease Dementia.
Article in Frontiers in human neuroscience, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 10 papers, 4 of them syntheses that pooled it.
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Who cites it
10 citing papers in PubMed, 4 syntheses or guidelines pooled it, 20 citations in OpenAlex.
- Meditation for subjective cognitive decline, mild cognitive impairment and Alzheimer's disease: a systematic review and meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials.Frontiers in public health · 2025Pooled it
- Effectiveness of neuro-feedback on Alzheimer's rehabilitation: a bibliometric analysis.Neurodegenerative disease management · 2024Pooled it
- Mindfulness-based randomized controlled trials led to brain structural changes: an anatomical likelihood meta-analysis.Scientific reports · 2023Pooled it
- Effects of Tai Chi and Qigong on cognitive and physical functions in older adults: systematic review, meta-analysis, and meta-regression of randomized clinical trials.BMC geriatrics · 2023Pooled it
- Effect of meditation on clinical symptoms and gray matter volume in chronic schizophrenia: a randomized controlled trial.European archives of psychiatry and clinical neuroscience · 2026Trial
- Filling in the gap: Hippocampal CA1 neuronal counts and volumes in female cognitive controls.Neurobiology of disease · 2025Article
- Alzheimer's disease: where do we stand now and what are the strategic interventions?Frontiers in cellular neuroscience · 2025Review
- Associations between cortical thickness and parasympathetic nervous system functioning during middle childhood.Psychophysiology · 2023Article
- Early Detection of Alzheimer's Disease in Postmenopausal Women Using Thalamic Subnuclear Volumetry.Journal of clinical medicine · 2023Article
- Eliciting brain waves of people with cognitive impairment during meditation exercises using portable electroencephalography in a smart-home environment: a pilot study.Frontiers in aging neuroscience · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
10 authors at 5 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Previous cross-sectional studies reported positive effects of meditation on the brain areas related to attention and executive function in the healthy elderly population. Effects of long-term regular meditation in persons with mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer's disease dementia (AD) have rarely been studied. In this study, we explored changes in cortical thickness and gray matter volume in meditation-naïve persons with MCI or mild AD after long-term meditation intervention. MCI or mild AD patients underwent detailed clinical and neuropsychological assessment and were assigned into meditation or non-meditation groups. High resolution T1-weighted magnetic resonance images (MRI) were acquired at baseline and after 6 months. Longitudinal symmetrized percentage changes (SPC) in cortical thickness and gray matter volume were estimated. Left caudal middle frontal, left rostral middle frontal, left superior parietal, right lateral orbitofrontal, and right superior frontal cortices showed changes in both cortical thickness and gray matter volume; the left paracentral cortex showed changes in cortical thickness; the left lateral occipital, left superior frontal, left banks of the superior temporal sulcus (bankssts), and left medial orbitofrontal cortices showed changes in gray matter volume. All these areas exhibited significantly higher SPC values in meditators as compared to non-meditators. Conversely, the left lateral occipital, and right posterior cingulate cortices showed significantly lower SPC values for cortical thickness in the meditators. In hippocampal subfields analysis, we observed significantly higher SPC in gray matter volume of the left CA1, molecular layer HP, and CA3 with a trend for increased gray matter volume in most other areas. No significant changes were found for the hippocampal subfields in the right hemisphere. Analysis of the subcortical structures revealed significantly increased volume in the right thalamus in the meditation group. The results of the study point out that long-term meditation practice in persons with MCI or mild AD leads to salutary changes in cortical thickness and gray matter volumes. Most of these changes were observed in the brain areas related to executive control and memory that are prominently at risk in neurodegenerative diseases.
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