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The growing interest in mindfulness interventions for use in aging samples has been met with promising evidence of cognitive, emotional, and physiological benefits. The purpose of this review is to provide an overview of the impact of mindfulness training on three areas of functioning in older adults: behavioral and neural correlates of attentional performance, psychological well-being, and systemic inflammation. We have previously proposed that mindfulness training is uniquely suited as a rehabilitative tool for conferring both cognitive and emotional benefits for older adults. Specifically, mindfulness training’s promotion of focused attention may mitigate the decline of attentional control abilities across late development and allow older adults to capitalize on their preserved emotion regulation abilities. Existing evidence points to some improvements in facets of attentional control in older adults, although some studies have shown no benefits in performance. Further, there is evidence of enhancements in both psychological and physical aspects of well-being, and accompanying improvements in systemic inflammation, following mindfulness training. The scientific investigation of mindfulness training is still relatively nascent, with only a limited number of studies, particularly randomized controlled trials utilizing active comparison conditions. It will be important for future research to incorporate placebo-controlled comparison groups to clearly establish the causal role of mindfulness practices in promoting holistic health in older adults.

There has been a proliferation of cognitive training studies investigating the efficacy of various cognitive training paradigms as well as strategies for improving cognitive control in the elderly. While some have found support for the transfer of training, the majority of training studies show modest to no transfer effects. When transfer effects have been observed, the mechanisms contributing to enhanced functioning have been difficult to dissociate. In this review, we provide a theoretical rationale for the study of mindfulness in older adults as a particular type of training program designed to improve cognitive control by capitalizing on older adults' acquired behavioral orientation toward higher socioemotional goals. Given the synergistic relationship between emotional and cognitive control processes, the paradoxical divergence in older adults' functional trajectory in these respective domains, and the harmonious interplay of cognitive and emotional control embedded in the practice of mindfulness, we propose mindfulness training as an opportunistic approach to cultivating cognitive benefits in older adults. The study of mindfulness within aging, we argue, capitalizes on a fundamental finding of the socioemotional aging literature, namely the preferential change in motivational goals of older adults from ones involving future-oriented wants and desires to present-focused emotion regulation and gratification.

Research has shown the human brain is organized into separable functional networks during rest and varied states of cognition, and that aging is associated with specific network dysfunctions. The present study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine low-frequency (.008