Disentangling functional connectivity effects of age and expertise in long-term meditators

The effects of intensive meditation practices on the functional and structural organization of the human brain have been addressed by a growing number of neuroscientific studies. However, the different modulations of meditation expertise and of ageing, in the underlying brain areas and networks, have not yet been fully elucidated. These effects should be distinguished in order to clarify how long-term meditation can modulate the connectivity between brain areas. To address this issue, we tested whether meditation expertise and age can be predicted from the multivariate pattern of functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging connectivity, in Theravada Buddhist monks with long-term practice in two different meditation forms: Focused Attention (FA) and Open Monitoring (OM). We found that functional connectivity patterns in both meditation forms can be used to predict expertise and age of long-term meditators. Our findings suggest that meditation expertise is associated with meditation-specific brain networks modulations, while age-related modifications are general and independent from the meditation type. Specifically, expertise modulated patterns during FA meditation include nodes and connections implicated in focusing, sustaining and monitoring attention, while the predictive patterns during OM meditation include nodes associated with cognitive and affective monitoring. Thus, the two forms of meditation may differentially contribute to counteract the effects of neurocognitive decline with ageing by neuroplasticity of brain networks.