Stress, anxiety, negative thoughts… A new study shows that better management of emotions could help limit the development of neurodegenerative disease. Explanation.
- Daily stress is known to promote the development of Alzheimer’s disease. Among other things, it accelerates the appearance of amyloid plaques and aggravates cognitive disorders.
- In a new study, researchers assess the effects of learning a foreign language and practicing meditation on brain aging. They compare two types of meditation: mindfulness (grounding yourself in the present to focus on your feelings) and compassionate meditation (actively increasing positive emotions towards others).
Numerous studies have shown that stress and depression increase the risk of neurodegenerative diseases. To better understand the phenomenon, neuroscientists from the University of Geneva have decided to study the activation of the brains of young adults and elderly people faced with the psychological suffering of others. They discovered that managing one’s emotions well would help reduce the risk of dementia.
Brain: different activations depending on the emotions
Scientists showed volunteers short videos revealing people in a state of emotional suffering during a natural disaster, for example. They also broadcast clips with neutral emotional content. The brain activity of the participants was measured using a functional MRI. First, the team compared a group of 27 people over the age of 65 with a group of 29 individuals around the age of 25. The same experiment was then repeated with 127 seniors.
“Older people typically show a different pattern of brain activity and connectivity than younger people”explains Sebastian Baez Lugo, researcher at the Department of Fundamental Neurosciences of the Faculty of Medicine and at the Swiss Center for Affective Sciences at the University of Geneva.
”This is particularly visible in the activation of the ‘default mode’ network, a brain network that is highly activated in the resting state. Its activity is frequently disturbed by depression or anxiety, suggesting that it is involved in the regulation of emotions. In older people, part of this network – the posterior cingulate cortex – which processes autobiographical memory, shows increased connections to the amygdala, which processes important emotional stimuli. These connections are stronger in subjects with high anxiety scores, with ruminations or with negative thoughts.says the expert.
Dementia: we must not remain “frozen” in a negative state
According to work published in Nature Aging, older people tend to regulate their emotions better than younger people and focus more easily on the positive details, even during a negative event. However, the researchers add that with age, negative emotions such as anxiety and depression excessively and over a long period alter the activity of the posterior cingulate cortex and the amygdala. This suggests, they say, that these moods could increase the risk of neurodegenerative disease.
Scientist Sebastian Baez Lugo adds: ”Our hypothesis is that more anxious people would have no or less capacity for emotional distancing. 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 linking the suffering of others to their own emotional memories. For the researcher and his team, better management of negative emotions – through meditation for example – could help limit neurodegeneration.
