The Age‐Well randomized controlled trial of the Medit‐Ageing European project: Effect of meditation or foreign language training on brain and mental health in older adults

Abstract

IntroductionThe Age-Well clinical trial is an ongoing monocentric, randomized, controlled trial aiming to assess an 18-month preventive meditation-based intervention directly targeting the attentional and emotional dimensions of aging to promote mental health and well-being in elderly people.MethodsOne hundred thirty-seven cognitively unimpaired older adults are randomized to either an 18-month meditation-based intervention, a structurally matched foreign language training, or a passive control arm. The impact of the intervention and underlying mechanisms are assessed with detailed cognitive, behavioral, biological, neuroimaging and sleep examinations.ResultsRecruitment began in late 2016 and ended in May 2018. The interventions are ongoing and will be completed by early 2020.DiscussionThis is the first trial addressing the emotional and cognitive dimension of aging with a long-term nonpharmacological approach and using comprehensive assessments to investigate the mechanisms. Results are expected to foster the development of preventive strategies reducing the negative impact of mental conditions and disorders.

The impact of meditation on healthy ageing — the current state of knowledge and a roadmap to future directions

“…The inclusion of active control groups is particularly important, as older adults are particularly responsive to the effects of social activity [56], and mindfulness based interventions are often not superior to active control groups when it comes to psychological health and well-being [41,57]. Furthermore, it will be important for future studies to reduce risks in biases that may for instance stem from not blinding composed of three studies with older adults: i) the Age-Well observational study, a cross-sectional study comparing expert meditators to non meditators [58], ii) the Age-Well clinical trial, a longitudinal study in which an 18-month meditation intervention is compared to an active control group (English training) and a passive control group [59], and iii) the SCD-Well clinical trial [60], a longitudinal study in which participants with subjective cognitive decline, a known risk factor for dementia [61], are assigned to a 2-month meditation intervention (with 4-month follow-up) or a health education intervention [23,62]. To reduce the risk of bias, the longitudinal studies are clinical randomized controlled trials in which experimenters are blinded to the condition of the participants and in which data analyses of the primary endpoints are analysed externally.…”

Exposure to negative socio-emotional events induces sustained alteration of resting-state brain networks in the elderly

“…A total of 135 healthy elderly participants with corrected-to-normal vision and no history of neurological or psychiatric disorders, aged between 65 and 83 years, took part in our study. This session was part of the baseline visit of the Age-Well randomized clinical trial within the Medit-Ageing Project 49 . Detailed inclusion criteria of the Age-Well randomized clinical trial are provided in Supplementary Table 1.…”

“…All scores were in the normative range. For a full list of tasks and measures used in the Age-Well trial, please refer to Poisnel and colleagues 49 .…”

Repetitive Negative Thinking is associated with Subjective Cognitive Decline in older adults: a cross-sectional study

“…Given the lack of effective interventions for curing or treating dementia, increasing importance has been given to dementia prevention (7). This shift in research orientation has led to a growing interest in (i) refining risk factor profiles for dementia and early presentations of potential dementia (e.g., SCD, mild cognitive impairment) (1, 7), and (ii) developing preventative intervention approaches (8)(9)(10)(11). Alongside well-established cardiovascular risk factors such as hypertension, obesity, physical inactivity, and smoking (7,13), psychological risk factors, such as depression and anxiety, are emerging as promising intervention targets (14)(15)(16).…”