Picture 16. (Left).
Project RA Stephen Aichele (now a UC Davis graduate student) and Postdoctoral Scholar Tonya
Jacobs applying active EEG electrodes at the start of an experimental session. This system allows high quality
recordings of EEG to be made without a shielded room.
(Right).
Project RA David Bridwell (now a postdoctoral
research at MIND Institute, Albuquerque, NM) and Dr. Jacobs collecting data during the emotion potentiated startle
task. Leftmost screen monitors 88 channel EEG and ANS physiology. Facial EMG electrodes pick up eye-blink startles
in response to loud sounds presented while viewing emotional images such as the hungry and suffering people shown
at the upper right. Photos by author.
Picture 17.
A local phlebotomist collected blood samples on site the morning after participants finished assessments.
We built a blood laboratory adjacent to the EEG labs.
(Left).
Project RA David Bridwell extracts peripheral blood
mononuclear cells (PBMCs) in preparation for counting as part of the telomerase assay protocol.
(Right).
Stephen
Aichele prepares to count PBMCs under a microscope loaned to us by a participant physican. Dry ice cooled freezer (-
78°C) is visible to the left of the table. Temperature controlled centrifuge is at the right. Photos by author.
In
you can see the positive relationship between these two measures in the retreat group
but no such relationship in the control group, suggesting that it is the meditation training experience
that is facilitating such a change. These data, prepared by project Postdoctoral Scholar Tonya
Jacobs in close collaboration with Elissa Epel, Elizabeth Blackburn (a winner of the 2009 Nobel
Prize in physiology/medicine for her role in the discovery of telomeres and telomerase) and Jue Lin
at UCSF, are published
I am not saying that meditation will make you live longer. I am not saying that meditation alone
raises your telomerase levels or results in longer telomeres. The testing of that claim is for future
work, but this kind of finding will motivate that work. It does look like activities that foster
meaningful positive psychological change, such as meditation, positively impact cellular aging.
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