Meditation and Cognitive Ageing: the Role of Mindfulness Meditation in Building Cognitive Reserve

Abstract

Mindfulness-related meditation practices engage various cognitive skills including the ability to focus and sustain attention, which in itself requires several interacting attentional subfunctions. There is increasing behavioural and neuroscientific evidence that mindfulness meditation improves these functions and associated neural processes. More so than other cognitive training programmes, the effects of meditation appear to generalise to other cognitive tasks, thus demonstrating far transfer effects. As these attentional functions have been linked to age-related cognitive decline, there is growing interest in the question whether meditation can slowdown or even prevent such decline. The cognitive reserve hypothesis builds on evidence that various lifestyle factors can lead to better cognitive performance in older age than would be predicted by the existing degree of brain pathology. We argue that mindfulness meditation, as a combination of brain network and brain state training, may increase cognitive reserve capacity and may mitigate age-related declines in cognitive functions. We consider available direct and indirect evidence from the perspective of cognitive reserve theory. The limited available evidence suggests that MM may enhance cognitive reserve capacity directly through the repeated activation of attentional functions and of the multiple demand system and indirectly through the improvement of physiological mechanisms associated with stress and immune function. The article concludes with outlining research strategies for addressing underlying empirical questions in more substantial ways.

Can Adults with Mild Cognitive Impairment Build Cognitive Reserve and Learn Mindfulness Meditation? Qualitative Theme Analyses from a Small Pilot Study

“…The interviews revealed that participants were cognitively stimulated and emotionally boosted, potentially increasing resilience. These results are consistent with prior research showing that adults with MCI still have brain plasticity, [20] but the skills learned with mindfulness meditation may specifically build cognitive reserve [61] and enable participants to build resilience for the grim future they may face. In addition, an aspect of enhanced well-being that emerged from the interviews was an improved motivation for being engaged in a new activity and learning a new skill.…”

“…[85] In addition, since our original publications reporting our results of MBSR in adults with MCI [21,22], there has been significant interest in understanding the role mind-body programs play in adults with mild cognitive impairment, dementia, subjective cognitive decline, and in aging in general. [61,[86][87][88][89][90][91][92][93][94][95] A manual of a mindfulness program for adults with dementia has even been published. [96]…”

Terms of Engagement: Text, Technique and Experience in Scholarship on Theravada Meditation

“…The first two looked at identifying and exploring different types of meditation within Theravada, with the second specifically tackling the problem of identifying different techniques with manuscript collections. The third conference was inspired by the documentation of the benefits of mindfulness meditation on the preservation of cognitive reserve in ageing (Malinowski and Shalamanova 2017) and the traditional periods of meditation practice held in certain Theravada communities specifically for their senior generation (Eberhardt 2017; contributions by Khur-Yearn and Wharton to this volume). Versions of a number of the papers that follow were originally aired at one or another of these three events.…”

Cognitive Enhancement and the Threat of Inequality

“…Many cognitive enhancements, however, in fact the majority, are freely available. Malinowski and Shalamanova (2017) argue that research into meditation has shown that many cognitive capacities can be enhanced by meditation practices and even halt the effect of aging on the brain. These forms of cognitive enhancement seem to be entirely unproblematic.…”