Mindful Walking Neural Correlates of Executive Function in SC Older Adults at Risk of Dementias

Overview

Mindful walking is a promising and practical strategy because it combines two activities known to support healthy aging: walking and mindfulness. Unlike many structured exercise programs, mindful walking is low intensity, accessible, and easier to sustain in daily life. It may be especially useful for older adults at elevated risk for ADRD. However, most existing mindful walking studies have focused on mental health outcomes, such as stress reduction, rather than cognitive health. Little is known about whether mindful walking can support cognition or how it may influence brain function. To address this gap and strengthen a future R01 resubmission, the investigators propose a two-arm randomized controlled pilot trial using functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), a safe, non-invasive brain imaging method. fNIRS measures brain activity through sensors placed on the scalp and is well-suited for repeated assessments in older adults because it is quiet, portable, painless, and cost-effective. The investigators will recruit racially and ethnically diverse middle-aged and older adults from the Midlands of South Carolina who are at elevated risk for ADRD. Participants will be randomly assigned to one of two groups: mindful walking or walking-only control. Both groups will complete 8 staff-supervised individual sessions over 4 weeks. The mindful walking group will learn and practice simple mindfulness skills while walking in multiple settings, including lab-based, indoor, and outdoor environments, to support real-world use. Findings from this pilot study will provide important evidence on whether mindful walking can support brain and cognitive health in adults at elevated risk for ADRD. The results will also help establish a practical, scalable, and sustainable prevention strategy for underserved aging populations in South Carolina.

The number of older adults living with Alzheimer's disease and related dementias (ADRD) is escalating around the world, yet no effective treatment is currently available. Non-pharmacological early preventive strategies are urgently needed to mitigate the social and economic burden of ADRD and to sustain quality of life in the aging population, including the seniors living in South Carolina (SC). Mindful walking represents a promising prevention approach to sustain cognition, as it simultaneously practices mindfulness skills during physical activity (walking). However, existing mindful walking programs primarily focused on mental health outcomes (e.g., stress reduction) and overlooked the potential efficacy on cognition. This lower-intensity lifestyle physical activity may be a more viable and inclusive prevention strategy with greater scalability and long-term sustainability to serve ADRD at-risk aging populations. Our preliminary work in African American older adults around the Midlands of SC has established preliminary signals that mindful walking is feasible, acceptable, and it may sustain proximal cognitive function. However, the literature to date has not tested the neural-level correlates underlying mindful walking to infer the potential mechanism related to executive function enhancement. This is also a gap raised by a reviewer from our scored R01 in 2023 (not funded, 40th percentile). To address this knowledge gap and strengthen our R01 resubmission, our team proposes to conduct a two-arm randomized controlled pilot trial to determine the neural-level underpinning of mindful walking using the Functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS). fNIRS offers a non-invasive neuroimaging tool that uses source-detector channels placed on the scalp to measure event-evoked neural activities across the lifespan (e.g., engaged executive function while practicing mindfulness skills). fNIRS is a device that is well-suited for within-subjects repeated data collection in older adults because it is noiseless and compact, painless, and cost-effective, making it suitable to apply in a behavioral trial that requires multiple assessments. This randomized controlled trial will recruit race and ethnically diverse middle-aged and older adults who have elevated risk(s) for ADRD from the Midlands of SC. Participants will be randomly assigned to participate in 8 sessions of individual mindful walking or a walking-only control group supervised by the staff across 4 weeks. The mindful walking group will be instructed to practice simple but fundamental mindfulness skills in multiple settings to facilitate real-world skill translation (in lab, indoor, outdoor). This study will administer lab-based measures of cognitive assessments, including the fNIRS, MoCA, and NIH Toolbox Cognition Battery, to examine group differences in neural activations measured using fNIRS (Aim 1) and the concordance between executive function measured using fNIRS, MoCA, and NIH Toolbox (Aim 2). Findings from this study have the potential to provide a viable and achievable behavioral strategy that can be engaged in daily life to address cognitive health and reduce ADRD risk among underserved older populations in the Midlands of SC. It will also well-position our team to submit R01s in the following years to support this timely and critical research.