New research shows how the aging brain brings a healthy dose of perspective
June 17, 2008 - Edmonton - A University of Alberta researcher has proven that wisdom really does come with age, at least when it comes to your emotions.
A study conducted by Florin Dolcos, assistant professor of psychiatry and neuroscience in the Faculty of Medicine & Dentistry-and in collaboration with researchers from Duke University-identified brain patterns that help healthy older people regulate and control emotions better than their younger counterparts. The study identified two regions in the brain 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 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 a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine, a high-tech device that uses a large magnet to take pictures inside the brain.
The older participants rated the images as less negative than the younger participants, which Dolcos says is "statistically significant."
The fMRI scans helped researchers observe this reaction in the older participants and showed increased interactions between the amygdala, a brain region involved in emotion detection, and the anterior cingulate cortex, an area involved in emotion control.
"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," said Dolcos.
The study, published online in May and in an upcoming issue of the journal, Neurobiology of Aging, was performed under the co-ordination of Roberto Cabeza and in collaboration with Peggy St. Jacques, both of Duke University, where Dolcos received his training in brain imaging research.
Dolcos has high hopes for the clinical implications of his research, which is funded by grants from the Canadian Psychiatric Research Foundation, the U.S.-based National Alliance for Research on Schizophrenia and Depression, the University Hospital Foundation in Edmonton and the University of Alberta.
"If we can better understand how the brain works to create a positivity bias in older people, then we can apply this knowledge to better understand and treat clinical health issues that have a negativity bias, such as depression and anxiety disorders, in which patients have difficulty coping with emotionally challenging situations," Dolcos said.
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