Secret to successful aging: How 'positivity effect' works in brain

July 14, 2011

Science Daily/Elsevier

Whether we choose to accept or fight it, the fact is that we will all age, but will we do so successfully? Aging successfully has been linked with the “positivity effect”, a biased tendency towards and preference for positive, emotionally gratifying experiences. New research published in Biological Psychiatry now explains how and when this effect works in the brain.

German neuroscientists studied this effect by using neuroimaging to evaluate brain engagement in young and old adults while they performed a specialized cognitive task that included supposedly irrelevant pictures of either neutral, happy, sad or fearful faces. During parts of the task when they didn't have to pay as much attention, the elderly subjects were significantly more distracted by the happy faces. When this occurred, they had increased engagement in the part of the brain that helps control emotions and this stronger signal in the brain was correlated with those who showed the greatest emotional stability.

"Integrating our findings with the assumptions of life span theories we suggest that motivational goal-shifting in healthy aging leads to a self-regulated engagement in positive emotions even when this is not required by the setting," explained author Dr. Stefanie Brassen. "In addition, our finding of a relationship between rostral anterior cingulate cortex activity and emotional stability further strengthens the hypothesis that this increased emotional control in aging enhances emotional well being."

"The lessons of healthy aging seem to be similar to those of resilience, throughout life. As recently summarized in other work by Drs. Dennis Charney and Steven Southwick, when coping with extremely stressful life challenges, it is critical to realistically appraise the situation but also to approach it with a positive attitude," noted Dr. John H. Krystal, the Editor of Biological Psychiatry.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110714072903.htm

Day-to-day experiences affect awareness of aging, mood

July 20, 2017

Science Daily/North Carolina State University

A study of older adults finds an individual's awareness of aging is not as static as previously thought, and that day-to-day experiences and one's attitude toward aging can affect an individual's awareness of age-related change -- and how that awareness affects one's mood.

"People tend to have an overall attitude toward aging, good or bad, but we wanted to know whether their awareness of their own aging -- or AARC -- fluctuated over time in response to their everyday experiences," says Shevaun Neupert, an associate professor of psychology at North Carolina State University and lead author of a paper on the study.

For the study, researchers enrolled 116 participants between the ages of 60 and 90. Each participant took a survey to establish baseline attitudes toward aging. For the following eight days, participants kept a log of daily stressors (such as having an argument), completed a daily evaluation of age-related experiences (such as "I am becoming wiser" or "I am more slow in my thinking"), and reported on their affect, or mood.

"We found that people's AARC, as reflected in their daily evaluations, varied significantly from day to day," says Jennifer Bellingtier, a recent Ph.D. graduate from NC State and co-author of the paper. "We also found that people whose baseline attitudes toward aging were positive also tended to report more positive affect, or better moods."

"People with positive attitudes toward aging were also less likely to report 'losses,' or negative experiences, in their daily aging evaluations," Neupert says.

"However, when people with positive attitudes did report losses, it had a much more significant impact on their affect that day," Neupert says. "In other words, negative aging experiences had a bigger adverse impact on mood for people who normally had a positive attitude about aging."

The study expands on previous work that found having a positive attitude about aging makes older adults more resilient when faced with stressful situations.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/07/170720103137.htm