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 Research & Giving News Article  In a study recently published in the journal Neurobiology of Aging, Florin Dolcos, Ph.D., assistant professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the University of Alberta, and colleagues, used functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI, to identify brain patterns that help healthy older people regulate and control emotion better than their younger counterparts. The study identified two regions in the brain -- the amygdala and the anterior cingulate cortex -- that showed increased activity when participants over the age of 60 were shown standardized pictures of emotionally challenging situations. “Previous studies have provided evidence that healthy older individuals have a positivity bias -- they can actually manage how much attention they give to negative situations so they're less upset by them,” said Dr. Dolcos, a member of the Alberta Cognitive Neuroscience Group, which brings together researchers from the University of Alberta to explore how the brain works in human thought, including issues like perception, attention, learning, memory, language, decision-making, emotion and development. “We didn't understand how the brain worked to give seniors this sense of perspective until now.” During the study, younger and older participants were asked to rate the emotional content of standardized images as positive, neutral or negative, while their brain activity was monitored with an fMRI machine. The older participants rated the images as less negative than the younger participants. Compared to young adults, the fMRI revealed that older adults had greater functional connectivity between the right amygdala and ventral anterior cingulate cortex, “possibly reflecting increased emotional regulation,” the researchers said. At the same time, older adults showed decreased functional connectivity with posterior brain regions, “likely reflecting decreased perceptual processing,” they added. Thus, emotional differences between old and young might not only reflect the engagement of control processes that inhibit the response to negative emotion but also decreased perceptual processing of these stimuli. According to Dr. Dolcos, “These findings indicate that emotional control improves with aging, and that it's the increased interaction between these two brain regions that allows healthy seniors to control their emotional response so that they are less affected by upsetting situations.” The research could one day have clinical implications. “If we can better understand how the brain works to create a positivity bias in older people,” said Dr. Dolcos, “then we can apply this knowledge to better understand and treat mental health issues with a negativity bias, such as depression and anxiety disorders, in which patients have difficulty coping with emotionally challenging situations.” This story was adapted by NARSAD with permission of the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry at the University of Alberta. |
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