Effect of an 18-Month Meditation Training on Regional Brain Volume and Perfusion in Older Adults: The Age-Well Randomized Clinical Trial.

Importance: No lifestyle-based randomized clinical trial directly targets psychoaffective risk factors of dementia. Meditation practices recently emerged as a promising mental training exercise to foster brain health and reduce dementia risk.

Objective: To investigate the effects of meditation training on brain integrity in older adults.

Relationships between diabetes-related vascular risk factors and neurodegeneration biomarkers in healthy aging and Alzheimer's disease.

Vascular risk factors such as hyperglycemia and platelet hyperactivation play a significant role in type 2 diabetes (T2D), a risk factor for AD. We investigated the relationships between glycemia levels, platelet indices (platelet count; mean platelet volume (MPV)) and AD neuroimaging markers in 105 cognitively unimpaired adults, including 21 amyloid-negative older adults (Aβ-neg controls), and 45 amyloid-positive patients with mild cognitive impairment or dementia (Aβ-pos patients). We assessed between-group differences on the two T2D-related vascular risk factors, then the association between blood parameters and multimodal neuroimaging (structural MRI, F-fluorodeoxyglucose, and F-florbetapir-PET) in cognitively unimpaired adults and Aβ-pos patients using multiple regressions.

Role of Cardiovascular Risk Factors on the Association Between Physical Activity and Brain Integrity Markers in Older Adults.

Background And Objectives: Physical activity has been associated with a decreased risk for dementia, but the mechanisms underlying this association remain to be determined. Our objective was to assess whether cardiovascular risk factors mediate the association between physical activity and brain integrity markers in older adults.

Methods: At baseline, participants from the Age-Well study completed a physical activity questionnaire and underwent cardiovascular risk factors collection (systolic blood pressure, body mass index [BMI], current smoker status, and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol, total cholesterol, and insulin levels) and multimodal neuroimaging (structural MRI, diffusion MRI, FDG-PET, and florbetapir PET).

Association of quality of life with structural, functional and molecular brain imaging in community-dwelling older adults.

Background: As the population ages, maintaining mental health and well-being of older adults is a public health priority. Beyond objective measures of health, self-perceived quality of life (QoL) is a good indicator of successful aging. In older adults, it has been shown that QoL is related to structural brain changes.

White matter hyperintensities across the adult lifespan: relation to age, Aβ load, and cognition.

Background: White matter hyperintensities (WMH) are very frequent in older adults and associated with worse cognitive performance. Little is known about the links between WMH and vascular risk factors, cortical β-amyloid (Aβ) load, and cognition in cognitively unimpaired adults across the entire lifespan, especially in young and middle-aged adults.

Methods: One hundred and thirty-seven cognitively unimpaired adults from the community were enrolled (IMAP cohort).