Mind Your Emotions to Hold Back Age-Related Brain Changes

Changing the impact of negative emotions on the brain of the elderly and pathological aging, may help delay the damage in brain cells.

The better management of negative emotions could help limit neurodegeneration, according to study results published in Nature Aging. The study indicates that negative emotions modify cells in two brain regions involved in the management of emotions and memory.

Negative emotions, anxiety, and depression are thought to promote the onset of neurodegenerative diseases and dementia. But what is their impact on the brain and can their deleterious effects be limited? Neuroscientists at the University of Geneva (UNIGE) have the answers.

For the past 20 years, neuroscientists have been looking at how the brain reacts to emotions. Now, they are beginning to understand what happens at the moment of perception of an emotional stimulus.

Previous studies have shown that the ability to change emotions quickly is beneficial for mental health. Conversely, people who are unable to regulate their emotions and remain in the same emotional state for a long time are at higher risk of depression.

Now, researchers explored what happens after the viewing of emotional scenes, to evaluate the brain’s reaction, and, above all, its recovery mechanisms. They mainly focused on older adults, to identify possible differences between normal and pathological aging.

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‘Managing negative emotions with help of meditation techniques could limit neurodegeneration in older people.’

Not All Brains are Created Equal

They showed volunteers short television clips showing people in a state of emotional suffering - during a natural disaster or distress situation to observe their brain activity using functional MRI.

First, the team compared a group of 27 people over 65 years of age with a group of 29 people aged around 25 years. This was done to observe the activation of the brains of young and older adults when confronted with the psychological suffering of others.

Older people generally show a different pattern of brain activity and connectivity from younger people. This is particularly noticeable in the level of activation of the default mode network, a brain network that is highly activated in a resting state.

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Empathy and Ageing: Complex Connection in Neurodegenerative Disease

However, older people tend to regulate their emotions better than younger people and focus more easily on positive details, even during a negative event.

But changes in connectivity between the brain areas could indicate a deviation from the normal aging phenomenon, accentuated in people who show more anxiety, rumination, and negative emotions.

The posterior cingulate cortex is one of the regions most affected by dementia, suggesting that the presence of these symptoms could increase the risk of neurodegenerative disease.

The mechanism of emotional inertia in the context of aging would then be explained by the fact that the brain of these people remains frozen in a negative state by relating the suffering of others to their emotional memories.

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Anti-Ageing Solution for Brain

The research team is currently conducting an 18-month interventional study to evaluate the effects of foreign language learning on the one hand and meditation practice on the other.

To further refine the results, they will also compare the effects of two types of meditation: mindfulness, which consists of anchoring oneself in the present to concentrate on one’s feelings, and compassionate meditation, which aims to actively increase positive emotions towards others.

These studies are part of a large European study, MEDIT-AGEING, which aims to evaluate the impact of non-pharmacological interventions for better aging.

Source-Eurekalert

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