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Seeing life on the bright side could reduce the occurrence of degenerative diseases and dementia, according to a new study.
It would be better not to be anxious or stressed in everyday life, according to a new study published in the journal Nature Aging. Negative emotions would indeed contribute to the deterioration of our mental health.
Negative emotions damage the brain
Neuroscientists from the University of Geneva (UNIGE) wanted to observe the brain activity of young and old people confronted with the psychological suffering of others.
“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 relating the suffering of others to their own emotional memories.“, specifies the author of the study, Sebastian Baez Lugo.
To do this, they recruited 27 seniors aged over 65 and 29 people around 25 years old.
All the candidates had to watch short extracts from “neutral” television reports or showing people in emotional pain – during a natural disaster or a distress situation for example.
The same experiment was then reproduced with 127 elderly people.
Two areas of the brain were affected
Result ? Two areas of the brain seemed to be particularly affected by prolonged negative emotions: the posterior cingulate cortex and the amygdala.
However, these two areas play an essential role in the regulation of emotions and autobiographical memory (all personal memories).
Another key point of the study: the most anxious individuals “would not have or no longer have the capacity for emotional distancing“, note the researchers.
Their brain would remain, so to speak, “anchored” in this toxic emotional state, which would increase their risk of developing various anxiety disorders – such as depression – or memory problems.
Finally, if older people tended to regulate their emotions better than younger people, they nevertheless seemed to be more affected by negative emotions, due to cerebral modifications between the posterior cingulate cortex and the amygdala.
However, 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.
Good in your body, good in your head!
Meditation to regulate emotions
Scientists now hope to find effective treatments to regulate these harmful emotions. The research team is currently conducting an 18-month interventional study to assess the effects of learning a foreign language, on the one hand, and practicing meditation, on the other. .
“In order to refine our results, we are also going to compare the effects of two types of meditation: mindfulness, which consists of anchoring oneself in the present to focus on one’s own feelings, and so-called “compassionate” meditation, which aims actively increase positive emotions towards others“, concludes the main author of the study.