Meditation helps participants feel calmer, lessening perceived stress and the risk of Alzheimer's. Meditation reduces the stress hormone cortisol, which has been known to increase the risk of developing dementia. Meditation increases cortical thickness and grey matter which slows the aging rate of the brain.

Can meditation cause memory loss?

It is a far cry from falsely remembering a single word to falsely remembering key details of an event. However, these results suggest that practitioners of mindfulness meditation may have trouble with source memory in the period of time following a meditation session and so they may create false memories.

Does IQ affect dementia?

While there seems to be no significant effect of higher intelligence on cognitive decline, there might be an association with lower dementia risk. One explanation for this finding is that more intelligent people start at a higher cognitive ability level and decline at the same speed as other people.