Mindful Aging: The Effects of Regular Brief Mindfulness Practice on Electrophysiological Markers of Cognitive and Affective Processing in Older Adults

There is growing interest in the potential benefits of mindfulness meditation practices in terms of counteracting some of the cognitive effects associated with aging. Pursuing this question, the aim of the present study was to investigate the influence of mindfulness training on executive control and emotion regulation in older adults, by means of studying behavioral and electrophysiological changes. Participants, 55 to 75 years of age, were randomly allocated to an 8-week mindful breath awareness training group or an active control group engaging in brain training exercises. Before and after the training period, participants completed an emotional-counting Stroop task, designed to measure attentional control and emotion regulation processes. Concurrently, their brain activity was measured by means of 64-channel electroencephalography. The results show that engaging in just over 10 min of mindfulness practice five times per week resulted in significant improvements in behavioral (response latency) and electrophysiological (N2 event-related potential) measures related to general task performance. Analyses of the underlying cortical sources (Variable Resolution Electromagnetic Tomography, VARETA) indicate that this N2-related effect is primarily associated with changes in the right angular gyrus and other areas of the dorsal attention network. However, the study did not find the expected specific improvements in executive control and emotion regulation, which may be due to the training instructions or the relative brevity of the intervention. Overall, the results indicate that engaging in mindfulness meditation training improves the maintenance of goal-directed visuospatial attention and may be a useful strategy for counteracting cognitive decline associated with aging

Pre-clinical imaging of transgenic mouse models of neuroblastoma using a dedicated 3-element solenoid coil on a clinical 3T platform.

Background The use of clinical MRI scanners to conduct pre-clinical research facilitates comparisons with clinical studies. Here the utility and sensitivity of anatomical and functional MRI data/biomarkers acquired from transgenic mouse models of neuroblastoma using a dedicated radiofrequency (RF) coil on a clinical 3T scanner was evaluated.Methods Multiparametric MRI of transgenic mice bearing abdominal neuroblastomas was performed at 3T, and data cross-referenced to that acquired from the same mice on a pre-clinical 7T MRI system. T2-weighted imaging, quantitation of the native longitudinal relaxation time (T1) and the transverse relaxation rate (R2*), and dynamic contrast-enhanced (DCE)-MRI, was used to assess tumour volume, phenotype and response to cyclophosphamide or cabozantinib.Results Excellent T2-weighted image contrast enabled clear tumour delineation at 3T. Significant correlations of tumour volume (R=0.98, P2* (R=0.87, P2* (Ptrans for each tumour (median Ktrans values of 0.202, 0.168 and 0.114 min-1). Cyclophosphamide elicited a significant reduction in both tumour burden (P1 (P<0.01), whereas cabozantinib induced significant (P<0.01) tumour growth delay.Conclusions Simultaneous multiparametric MRI of multiple tumour-bearing animals using this coil arrangement at 3T can provide high efficiency/throughput for both phenotypic characterisation and evaluation of novel therapeutics, and facilitate the introduction of functional MRI biomarkers into aligned imaging-embedded clinical trials