Venue: Centre Broca
Gaël Chételat
Inserm, GIP Cyceron, Caen
http://www.chetelat-lab.fr/
Invited by Aurore Jouvencel (PhD student, INCIA)
Title
Meditation in aging populations: impact on the brain and potential for the prevention of neurodegenerative diseases
Abstract
Depression, anxiety, and Alzheimer’s disease (AD) are closely related in ageing, but the brain mechanisms underlying their links are still unclear. Thus, depression for instance is one of the main modifiable risk factor for AD in individuals older than 60 years old, and, conversely, depression is often an early symptom of the disease. In the framework of cognitive and brain reserve, our lab is particularly interested in contributing to our understanding of the impact of several lifestyle factors on aging, including cognitive, physical and social activity, sleep quality and diet, but also anxiety, stress and depression (www.neuropresage.fr). Notably, with the growing awareness of the relevance of these psycho-affective risk factors in aging populations, efforts to reduce their presence, degree or impact, are developing more intensively. Among them, meditation training has been proposed as a promising non-pharmaceutical mental training approach in aging populations for maintaining or improving mental health. The Medit-Ageing (public name: Silver Santé Study) European project www.silversantestudy.eu ; www.silversantestudy.fr) is the largest to date to tackle this issue with two large clinical trials, in patients with subjective clinical decline (SCD-Well study) and in cognitively unimpaired individuals older than 65 years (Age-Well study). The first results of these two clinical trials will be presented and discussed in the more general framework of non-pharmaceutical interventions and lifestyle-based preventive approaches.
PhD seminars are organized by the NBA, Bordeaux Neurocampus, and the Bordeaux Neurocampus Graduate Program