There’s no absolute secret to aging gracefully, but researchers may have discovered a method to keep our brains young. Researchers from the University of Wisconsin-Madison have been following the brain development of Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, a 41 years old Buddhist monk and meditation teacher for 14 years. The researchers scanned Mingyur Rinpoche’s brain four times using structural magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and used a machine learning tool called the Brain Age Gap Estimation (BrainAGE) framework to determine the age of the brain through its grey matter. The research found that Mingyur Rinpoche’s brain seemed to slow in its aging over a decade. Mingyur Rinpoche is the living example of the long-term effects of meditation on the human brain and indicates that meditation provides some sort of health benefit for the body.
