Overview: Symptoms of depression, anxiety, and loneliness were more prominent in younger people, whereas older people had better mental health. .
sauce: UCSD
Young and old can learn a thing or two from each other, at least when it comes to mental health and cognition.
A new study published on September 12, 2022 found that psychology and agingresearchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine, have found that healthy older adults have better mental health but lower cognitive performance than younger adults. It may stimulate new interventions to promote function.
Senior author Jyoti Mishra, PhD, Director of NEATLabs and Associate Professor of Psychiatry at UC San, said: Diego Medical College.
The study sampled 62 healthy young adults in their 20s and 54 healthy older adults 60 years and older. Participants also performed several cognitively demanding tasks while brain activity was measured using electroencephalography (EEG).
The results showed that anxiety, depression, and loneliness symptoms were significantly worse in young people, and that mental health was better in older adults. However, when it comes to cognition, task performance was significantly lower in the elderly.
Electroencephalogram recordings revealed that older adults exhibited greater activity in the front of the brain’s default mode network during the task. It is active when you are resting, daydreaming, or wandering, and is usually suppressed during goal-oriented tasks.
“Default mode networks help us process the past and imagine the future, but they get distracted when trying to focus on the present to tackle demanding tasks quickly and accurately,” says Mishra. said.
The default mode network appeared to impede cognition, but several other brain regions appeared to improve it. was associated with greater activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex.
However, in older adults, those with better cognitive performance instead showed greater activity in the inferior frontal cortex, an area that helps direct attention and avoid distraction.
Because the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex is known to decline with age, researchers suggest that increased activity in the inferior frontal lobe may be a way for older adults to compensate during these tasks. suggests.
The team is currently investigating therapeutic interventions to strengthen these frontal lobe networks, such as brain stimulation techniques, while suppressing default mode networks through mindfulness meditation and other practices that orient individuals to the present.
“These findings may provide new neurological markers to help monitor and mitigate age-related cognitive decline while maintaining well-being,” Mishra said.
“We tend to think of people in their 20s as being at the peak of their cognitive abilities, but they are very much in their twenties in life.” It’s also a stressful time, so there may be lessons to be learned from older adults when it comes to mental health…and their brains,” Mishra said.
Co-authors on this study include Gillian Grennan, Pragathi Priyadharsini Balasubramani, Nasim Vahidi, Dhakshin Ramanathan, and Dilip V. Jeste from the University of California, San Diego.
Funding: Funding for this study was partially provided by the National Institute of Mental Health (grant T32-MH019934), a NeuroAIDS Interdisciplinary Research Fellowship (grant R25MH081482), the Stein Institute for Aging Research at the University of California, San Diego, and Brain Behavior Research. Got it. Fund, Kavli Foundation, Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award for Medical Scientists, Sanford Institute for Empathy and Compassy.
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About this Cognitive, Psychological and Aging Research News
author: Scott La Fie
contact: UCSD
sauce: Scott La Fie – UCSD
image: image is public domain
Original research: closed access.
“Separable neural mechanisms of cognition and well-being in youth and healthy agingby Glennan, G et al. psychology and aging
Overview
Separable neural mechanisms of cognition and well-being in youth and healthy aging
Mental health, cognition, and their underlying neural processes in healthy aging are rarely studied simultaneously. Here, a sample of healthy young people (n = 62) or more (n = 54) compared subjective mental health and objective global cognition across several key cognitive domains using simultaneous electroencephalography (EEG) in adults.
Younger people had significantly greater symptoms of anxiety, depression, and loneliness, while older people, in contrast, had better mental health. Yet, overall performance across core cognitive domains was significantly worse in older adults. showed a reduction in suppression of activity in the default mode network (DMN) region.
Overall cognitive performance efficiency was predicted by greater activity in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex in young adults and, by contrast, greater activity in the right inferior frontal cortex in older adults. Furthermore, improved mental health in older adults was associated with decreased global task-induced activity in the posterior DMN.
Altogether, these results suggest dissociated neural mechanisms underlying global cognition and mental well-being in young people versus healthy aging.
