A recent study has delved into this question and has made interesting findings in this regard.
The research has been carried out by a team made up of, among others, Olga Klimecki, Sebastian Baez-Lugo and Patrik Vuilleumier, all three from the University of Geneva in Switzerland.
For some time, it has been suspected that the ability to quickly exchange negative emotions for positive ones is beneficial to a person’s mental health. Conversely, people who are unable to regulate their negative emotions and stay in the same emotional state for a long time have a higher risk of depression. It has also been assumed that the persistence of negative emotions, anxiety and depression favor the appearance of neurodegenerative diseases and dementia.
The authors of the new study observed the activation of the brains of young adults and older adults when faced with the suffering of others.
The authors of the new study showed the volunteers short TV clips showing people in a state of emotional distress (during a natural disaster or other distressing situation), as well as videos of neutral emotional content, in order to observe their brain activity using functional magnetic resonance imaging. The team compared a group of 27 people over the age of 65 with another group of 29 people in their 25s.
In general, older people show a different pattern of brain activity and connectivity than young people. This is particularly noticeable at the level of activation of the “default neural network,” a brain network that is highly activated in the resting state. Its activity is frequently altered by depression or anxiety, suggesting that it is involved in emotion regulation. In the elderly, part of this network, specifically the posterior cingulate cortex, which processes autobiographical memories, shows increased connections to the amygdala, which processes important emotional stimuli. These connections are stronger in subjects with high levels of anxiety, or with a marked tendency to ruminate obsessively on issues that worry them, or with a strong presence of negative thoughts.
The difference in brain activations between a group of 27 older adults and a group of 29 young adults during rest periods just after viewing High Emotional (Post High Emotion) and Low Emotional (Post High Emotion) videos. Low Emotion) in one of the experiments. (Image: © adapted from: Baez-Lugo et al., 2023, Nature Aging)
In general, older people tend to regulate their emotions better than younger people and focus more easily on positive details, even during a negative event. However, changes in connectivity between the posterior cingulate cortex and the amygdala in people who show more anxiety, brooding, and negative emotions could indicate an upward deviation from the normal progression of aging.
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.
“Is it poor emotional regulation and anxiety that increase the risk of dementia or the other way around? We still don’t know,” acknowledges Báez Lugo. “Our hypothesis is that the most anxious people would have little or no capacity for emotional distancing.”
Would it be possible to prevent dementia by acting on the mechanism of emotional inertia? The research team is currently conducting an 18-month intervention study to assess the effects of learning foreign languages, on the one hand, and practicing meditation, on the other.
The study is titled “Exposure to negative socio-emotional events induces sustained alteration of resting-state brain networks in older adults”, and has been published in the academic journal Nature Aging. (Fountain: NCYT de Amazings)