Publications by authors named "Harriet Demnitz‐King"

Article Synopsis
  • This study aimed to explore the effects of an 18-month meditation program on cardiovascular health in older adults aged 65 and above.
  • The results showed no significant difference in overall cardiovascular risk (measured by the Framingham Risk Score) between those who practiced meditation and those in control groups.
  • However, meditation did lead to a notable reduction in diastolic blood pressure among participants at higher cardiovascular risk, suggesting potential benefits for specific at-risk groups.
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Article Synopsis
  • Emerging research indicates that repetitive negative thinking (RNT), such as worry and rumination, is linked to biomarkers of Alzheimer's disease, highlighting a potential concern for brain health.
  • The study focused on 134 cognitively healthy older adults, examining whether worry and brooding are associated with neurodegeneration and if these effects differ between men and women.
  • Results showed that higher levels of brooding correlated with increased neurofilament light chain (NfL) levels, a marker of neurodegeneration, particularly in women, suggesting that RNT may negatively impact brain health, especially in females.
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Introduction: Mental health conditions are associated with cognition and physical function in older adults. We examined whether worry and ruminative brooding, key symptoms of certain mental health conditions, are related to subjective and/or objective measures of cognitive and physical (cardiovascular) health.

Methods: We used baseline data from 282 participants from the SCD-Well and Age-Well trials (178 female; age = 71.

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Aging is associated with cognitive changes, even in the absence of brain pathology. This study aimed to determine if meditation training, by comparison to active and passive control groups, is linked to changes in the perception of cognitive functioning in older adults. One hundred thirty-four healthy older participants from the Age-Well Randomized Clinical Trial were included: 45 followed a meditation training, 45 a non-native language training and 44 had no intervention.

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Objective: Poor sleep and high levels of repetitive negative thinking (RNT), including future-directed (ie, worry) and past-directed (ie, brooding) negative thoughts, have been associated with markers of dementia risk. The relationship between RNT and sleep health in older adults is unknown. This study aimed to investigate this association and its specificities including multiple dimensions of objective and subjective sleep.

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Objectives: Older adults with subjective cognitive decline (SCD) recruited from memory clinics have an increased risk of developing dementia and regularly experience reduced psychological well-being related to memory concerns and fear of dementia. Research on improving well-being in SCD is limited and lacks non-pharmacological approaches. We investigated whether mindfulness-based and health education interventions can enhance well-being in SCD.

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Importance: Nonpharmacological interventions are a potential strategy to maintain or promote cognitive functioning in older adults.

Objective: To investigate the effects of 18 months' meditation training and 18 months' non-native language training on cognition in older adults.

Design, Setting, And Participants: This study was a secondary analysis of the Age-Well trial, an 18-month, observer-masked, randomized clinical trial with 3 parallel arms.

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Persistent fatigue constitutes a prevalent and debilitating symptom in several diseases. The symptom is not effectively alleviated by pharmaceutical treatments, and meditation has been proposed as a non-pharmacological intervention. Indeed, meditation has been shown to reduce inflammatory/immune problems, pain, stress, anxiety and depression which are associated with pathological fatigue.

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Article Synopsis
  • The study aimed to explore the relationship between anxiety symptoms and key markers of Alzheimer's disease (AD) neuropathology, specifically amyloid-beta (Aβ) and tau proteins.
  • After reviewing 27 studies, the meta-analysis found no significant link between self-reported anxiety and either Aβ or tau levels in cognitively healthy adults.
  • The authors stress the need for larger and longer-term studies to investigate the impact of anxiety onset, severity, and chronicity on AD neuropathology, as well as to explore other potential neurobiological factors.
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Background: Older individuals with subjective cognitive decline (SCD) perceive that their cognition has declined but do not show objective impairment on neuropsychological tests. Individuals with SCD are at elevated risk of objective cognitive decline and incident dementia. Non-pharmacological interventions (including mindfulness-based and health self-management approaches) are a potential strategy to maintain or improve cognition in SCD, which may ultimately reduce dementia risk.

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Background And Objectives: Self-reflection (the active evaluation of ones thoughts, feelings, and behaviors) can confer protection against adverse health outcomes. Its effect on markers sensitive to Alzheimer disease (AD), however, is unknown. The primary objective of this cross-sectional study was to examine the association between self-reflection and AD-sensitive markers.

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The Lifetime of Experiences Questionnaire (LEQ) assesses complex mental activity across the life-course and has been associated with brain and cognitive health. The different education systems and occupation classifications across countries represent a challenge for international comparisons. The objectives of this study were four-fold: to adapt and harmonise the LEQ across four European countries, assess its validity across countries, explore its association with brain and cognition and begin to investigate between-country differences in life-course mental activities.

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Repetitive negative thinking (RNT) is a cognitive process characterised by intrusive, repetitive, and difficult-to-disengage-from negative thoughts. Heightened RNT levels are prevalent across clinical disorders and have been associated with ill-health (e.g.

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Mindfulness-based programs (MBPs) are increasingly utilized to improve mental health. Interest in the putative effects of MBPs on cognitive function is also growing. This is the first meta-analysis of objective cognitive outcomes across multiple domains from randomized MBP studies of adults.

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Introduction: Older adults experiencing subjective cognitive decline (SCD) have a heightened risk of developing dementia and frequently experience subclinical anxiety, which is itself associated with dementia risk.

Objective: To understand whether subclinical anxiety symptoms in SCD can be reduced through behavioral interventions.

Methods: SCD-Well is a randomized controlled trial designed to determine whether an 8-week mindfulness-based intervention (caring mindfulness-based approach for seniors; CMBAS) is superior to a structurally matched health self-management program (HSMP) in reducing subclinical anxiety.

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Background: In the absence of a cure or effective treatment for dementia, attention has shifted towards identifying risk factors for prevention. Subjective Cognitive Decline (SCD) describes self-perceived worsening of cognition despite unimpaired performance on neuropsychological tests. SCD has been associated with an increased dementia risk and steeper memory decline.

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Visuo-spatial context and emotional valence are powerful cues to episodic retrieval, but the contribution of these inputs to semantic cognition has not been widely investigated. We examined the impact of visuo-spatial, facial emotion and prosody cues and miscues on the retrieval of dominant and subordinate meanings of ambiguous words. Cue photographs provided relevant visuo-spatial or emotional information, consistent with the interpretation of the ambiguous word being probed, while miscues were consistent with an alternative interpretation.

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