This pilot study identified exploratory associations between changes in retinal neurovascular and mitochondrial function and changes in cognitive performance following a yoga intervention in healthy older adults, though none survived false discovery rate correction.
Changes in Flanker Test performance were nominally associated with changes in retinal blood flow following a 24-week yoga intervention.
Changes in Flanker Test performance were nominally associated with changes in retinal capillary function following the yoga intervention.
Changes in Total Recall on the Hopkins Verbal Learning Test were nominally associated with changes in retinal tissue perfusion and capillary function.
Changes in List Sorting performance were nominally associated with changes in optic nerve head flavoprotein fluorescence, a marker of mitochondrial function.
None of the observed associations between retinal measures and cognitive performance changes were statistically significant after correction for multiple comparisons.
The study enrolled 30 healthy older adults who participated in 60-minute yoga sessions three times per week for 24 weeks.
This research suggests that certain measurements taken from the retina — the light-sensitive tissue at the back of the eye — may be related to changes in thinking and memory abilities in older adults who practiced yoga for six months. The study looked at 30 healthy adults with an average age of 72, who did either YogaCue or Hatha yoga three times a week. The researchers measured retinal blood flow, blood vessel density, and mitochondrial (cellular energy) function in the eye before and after the intervention, along with various tests of cognitive ability including attention, memory, and mental processing speed. Several connections were found between retinal changes and cognitive changes. For example, people whose retinal blood flow improved more tended to show greater improvements on an attention task (the Flanker Test), and those with greater improvements in a measure of eye mitochondrial function tended to show better performance on a memory-ordering task (List Sorting). However, when the researchers applied a statistical correction to account for the many comparisons they were making, none of these connections held up as formally statistically significant. This means the findings could have occurred by chance. This research suggests that the retina may serve as a 'window' into brain health changes associated with exercise like yoga, since the retina shares many characteristics with brain tissue. However, because this was a small pilot study and the results did not survive rigorous statistical correction, these findings should be considered preliminary and exploratory. Larger studies with more participants would be needed to determine whether these retinal measures could reliably track cognitive changes resulting from mind-body exercise programs in older adults.
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Upload Your LabsMoarefi M, Martinez K, Gameiro G, Hoover A, Fitzgerald B, Rich C, et al.. (2026). Retinal neurovascular and mitochondrial function signatures related to cognition improvement following yoga exercise in older adults.. PloS one. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0357464