Areas of the brain affected by aging (shown in red) are fewer and less wide-spread in meditators. (Credit: Eileen Luders/UCLA Brain Mapping Center)

Provided by Mark Wheeler, University ofCalifornia, Los Angeles (UCLA)

Since 1970, life expectancy around the world has risen dramatically, with people living more than 10 years longer. Thats the good news.

The bad news is that starting when people are in their mid-to-late-20s, the brain begins to wither its volume and weight begin to decrease. As this occurs, the brain can begin to lose some of its functional abilities.

So although people might be living longer, the years they gain often come with increased risks for mental illness and neurodegenerative disease. Fortunately, a new study shows meditation could be one way to minimize those risks.

Building on their earlier work that suggested people who meditate have less age-related atrophy in the brains white matter, a new study by UCLA researchers found that meditation appeared to help preserve the brains gray matter, the tissue that contains neurons.

The scientists looked specifically at the association between age and gray matter. They compared 50 people who had mediated for years and 50 who didnt. People in both groups showed a loss of gray matter as they aged. But the researchers found among those who meditated, the volume of gray matter did not decline as much as it did among those who didnt.

The article appears in the current online edition of the journal Frontiers in Psychology.

Dr. Florian Kurth, a co-author of the study and postdoctoral fellow at the UCLA Brain Mapping Center, said the researchers were surprised by the magnitude of the difference.

We expected rather small and distinct effects located in some of the regions that had previously been associated with meditating, he said. Instead, what we actually observed was a widespread effect of meditation that encompassed regions throughout the entire brain.

Excerpt from:
Meditation may slow brain aging, study says