Impact of mindfulness training on in-the-moment attentional control and emotion dysregulation in older adults: secondary analysis of a pilot, placebo-controlled randomized controlled trial

Effects of Mindfulness Based Interventions in Adults and Older Adults Caregivers of Patients with Early Stage Alzheimer's Disease: A Randomized Pilot Study

Background

Many studies have highlighted the effect of training with mindfulness-based interventions (MBIs) on the psycho-physical rebalancing of patients suffering from various pathologies, and their families.

Objective

In this study, the effect of a training with mindfulness-based stress reduction (MBSR) on quality of life and emotion regulation (depression) was verified in caregivers (CGs) of patients affected by Alzheimer's disease at early stage (AD-P).

Methods

In this randomized controlled study, 22 CGs (age≥60 years) were treated with MBIs, in particular MBSR, and 22 CGs had no treatment. Tests (T0-T1 six months) included: SF 36-Quality of Life (QoL); Caregiver Burden Inventory (CBI); FACIT-Spiritual-Well-Being; Beck Depression Inventory (BDI); Everyday Cognition scales; and Mini-Mental State Examination (for AD-P).

Results

Significant differences emerged between T0 and T1 for CGs with MBSR in the following dimensions: Depression-BDI (p > 0.001), Burden CBI-Total (0.001), CBI-Time dependent burden (p < 0.001), CBI-Developmental burden (p < 0.001), CBI-Physical burden (p < 0.001); and pain (p = 0.002) all decreased; while CBI-Social burden (p = 0.004), QoL-Health Role Limitation (p < 0.000), QoL-Role-Limitation-Emotional-Problem (p < 0.000), QoL-Energy-fatigue (p < 0.000), QoL-Emotional Well-Being (p < 0.001), QoL-Social Well Being (p = 0.010), and QoL-General Health (p = 0.004) increased. The control group of untreated CG showed a significant worsening in the dimensions of Physical functioning (p = 0.036) and pain (p = 0.047).

Conclusions

AD-CGs treated with MBI reduced their burden and depression and experienced an improvement in all the dimensions of quality of life.

Using connectome-based models of working memory to predict emotion regulation in older adults

Older adulthood is characterized by enhanced emotional well-being potentially resulting from greater reliance on adaptive emotion regulation strategies. However, not all older adults demonstrate an increase in emotional well-being and instead rely on maladaptive emotion regulation strategies. An important moderator of age-related shifts in strategy preferences is working memory (WM) and its underlying neural circuitry. As such, individual differences in the neural integrity underlying WM may predict older adults' emotion regulation strategy preferences. Our study used whole-brain WM networks-derived from young adults using connectome-based predictive modeling-to predict WM performance and acceptance strategy use in healthy older adults. Older adults (N = 110) completed baseline assessments as part of a randomized controlled trial examining the impact of mind-body interventions on healthy aging. Our results revealed that the WM networks predicted WM accuracy but not acceptance use or difficulties in emotion regulation in older adults. Individual differences in WM performance, but not WM networks, moderated relationships between image intensity and acceptance use. These findings highlight that robust neural markers of WM generalize to an independent sample of healthy older adults but may not generalize beyond cognitive domains to predict emotion-based behaviors.