Researchers from the University of Geneva have found out how bad emotions can affect a person’s brain activity even as they get older.
Scientists from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) wanted to see how emotions like anxiety, depression and negative feelings can affect our brains. To learn more about this, they looked at both young and older people’s brain activity when they heard stories about other people feeling upset.
As people get older, their brain connection starts to struggle with controlling emotions. This mainly happens in the back part of the brain called the posterior cingulate cortex and in the area responsible for memories called the amygdala. According to a study published in Nature Aging, if these emotions can be looked after properly through meditation, it could help limit any mental decline.
For the last 20 years, scientists studying the brain have been observing how it responds to feelings and emotions. Dr. Olga Klimecki from two different centers has made some major discoveries about how people sense emotional issues. This knowledge was discovered as part of a research project created in Europe by Dr. Klimecki and her team at the University of Geneva.
‘‘But afterwards, it’s a big question mark. How does the brain move from feeling one emotion to another? How does it go back to how it felt before? Does that change as you get older? What are the effects on the brain when you don’t manage your emotions well?’’
It’s good to be able to switch between emotions quickly. But if you stay in the same emotional state for too long, you’re more likely to become depressed.
We tried to figure out what happened in our brains when we watched emotional scenes, how our brain reacted and recovered. We wanted to compare normal aging with unhealthy aging so we studied adults for this. These were the goals of this project according to Professor Patrik Vuilleumier from the Department of Basic Neurosciences at the Faculty of Medicine and at the Swiss Centre for Affective Sciences at the UNIGE who was part of this research.
Surprising Discovery
To observe the brain activity in people, scientists showed volunteers clips of people going through different emotions like sadness or distress on television. They also showed them some neutral and regular videos. Then, they compared two groups of people – 27 seniors who were over 65 and 29 who were around 25 year old – to take a note of their reactions. Lastly, they repeated this experiment with a bigger group of 127 elderly adults.
Sebastian Baez Lugo, a researcher working in Patrik Vuilleumier’s laboratory, has made an interesting discovery. He states that people who are older tend to have different patterns of brain activity and the way the brain is connected than younger people.
The default mode network in our brains is really active when we’re resting. When someone has problems like depression or anxiety, this network usually stops working right. The posterior cingulate cortex of the network is responsible for remembering special memories and it’s linked to another part called the amygdala that’s connected to emotions. These connections are stronger in people who feel anxious or have a lot of bad thoughts.
Evaluating the Pros and Cons
Making decisions can be difficult, especially when the choices are between two seemingly equal options. You may feel pressured to make a choice quickly or even do something that goes against your best judgement. Before you decide on a course of action, it’s important to take your time and weigh all the pros and cons of each option carefully. Once you’ve done that, then you can go ahead and pick what feels like the best decision for you.
Generally, older people are better at managing their emotions and focusing on the good aspects of a bad situation than younger people. However, having a connection between the posterior cingulate cortex and the amygdala could mean an elder person is going through an abnormal process which leads to anxiety, worrying or feeling sad more easily. This part of the brain is strongly connected with dementia which may increase its risk in those who show signs of sadness or anxiousness.
Sebastian Baez Lugo said that we don’t know yet if it’s high levels of anxiety and poor skills in controlling emotions that lead to an increased risk of getting dementia, or if it’s the other way around. He also proposed a hypothesis which suggests that more anxious people have difficulty separating their own feelings from how they perceive someone else’s suffering. This means that their brain could remain ‘locked’ in a negative emotional state as they get older because they connect bad memories with the feelings of others.
Uncovering the Effects of Dementia on Mental Health
Researchers are doing an experiment over 18 months to see if it’s possible to stop dementia by changing our behavior. They want to know what effects learning a new language and practicing meditation will have on people.
To help us better understand our results, we’re going to compare two different types of meditation: mindfulness and compassionate meditation. Mindfulness is focusing on your feelings in the moment, while compassionate meditation works to make you feel more positive towards other people.
A team of researchers from the Medit-Ageing Research Group found that if a person experiences negative events, it can change their brain’s activity in the long term. The research was written by Sebastian Baez-Lugo et al and published on 12th January 2023 in the journal Nature Aging with a DOI number 10.1038/s43587-022-00341-6.
