Yi-Yuan Tang, Yaxin Fan, Qilin Lu, Li-Hai Tan, Rongxiang Tang, Robert M Kaplan, Marco C Pinho, Binu P Thomas, Kewei Chen, Karl J Friston, Eric M Reiman
Previous studies have shown that physical exercise and mindfulness meditation can both lead to improvement in physical and mental health. However, it is unclear whether these two forms of training share the same underlying mechanisms. We compared two groups of older adults with 10 years of mindfulness meditation (integrative body-mind training, IBMT) or physical exercise (PE) experience to demonstrate their effects on brain, physiology and behavior. Healthy older adults were randomly selected from a large community health project and the groups were compared on measures of quality of life, autonomic activity (heart rate, heart rate variability, skin conductance response, respiratory amplitude/rate), immune function (secretory Immunoglobulin A, sIgA), stress hormone (cortisol) and brain imaging (resting state functional connectivity, structural differences)...
2020: Frontiers in Psychology