The Affective Neuroscience of Aging.
TL;DR: This review examines how age-related brain changes influence processes such as attending to and remembering emotional stimuli, regulating emotion, and recognizing emotional expressions, as well as empathy, risk taking, impulsivity, behavior change, and attentional focus.
Abstract: Although aging is associated with clear declines in physical and cognitive processes, emotional functioning fares relatively well. Consistent with this behavioral profile, two core emotional brain regions, the amygdala and ventromedial prefrontal cortex, show little structural and functional decline in aging, compared with other regions. However, emotional processes depend on interacting systems of neurotransmitters and brain regions that go beyond these structures. This review examines how age-related brain changes influence processes such as attending to and remembering emotional stimuli, regulating emotion, and recognizing emotional expressions, as well as empathy, risk taking, impulsivity, behavior change, and attentional focus.
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TL;DR: The results support the neurovisceral integration model and suggest that higher heart rate variability is associated with neural mechanisms that support successful emotional regulation across the adult lifespan.
167 citations
Cites background from "The Affective Neuroscience of Aging..."
...In addition, ventromedial PFC brain regions involved in emotion regulation are relatively preserved in normal aging, despite marked decline in dorsal and lateral regions (for reviews see Mather, 2012, 2016)....
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TL;DR: It is argued that the positivity effect reflects age-related changes in motivation that direct behavior and cognitive processing rather than neural or cognitive decline.
Abstract: Relative to younger adults, older adults attend to and remember positive information more than negative information. This shift from a negativity bias in younger age to a preference for positive information in later life is termed the ‘positivity effect.’ Based on nearly two decades of research and recent evidence from neuroscience, we argue that the effect reflects age-related changes in motivation that direct behavior and cognitive processing rather than neural or cognitive decline. Understanding the positivity effect, including conditions that reduce and enhance it, can inform effective public health and educational messages directed at older people.
159 citations
29 Aug 2017
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined whether age differences in risk seeking are more likely to emerge when choices include a certain option (a sure gain or a sure loss) and found that older adults exhibited more risk seeking in the domain of losses than younger adults.
Abstract: A prevalent stereotype is that people become less risk taking and more cautious as they get older. However, in laboratory studies, findings are mixed and often reveal no age differences. In the current series of experiments, we examined whether age differences in risk seeking are more likely to emerge when choices include a certain option (a sure gain or a sure loss). In four experiments, we found that age differences in risk preferences only emerged when participants were offered a choice between a risky and a certain gamble but not when offered two risky gambles. In particular, Experiments 1 and 2 included only gambles about potential gains. Here, compared with younger adults, older adults preferred a certain gain over a chance to win a larger gain and thus, exhibited more risk aversion in the domain of gains. But in Experiments 3 and 4, when offered the chance to take a small sure loss rather than risking a larger loss, older adults exhibited more risk seeking in the domain of losses than younger adults. Both their greater preference for sure gains and greater avoidance of sure losses suggest that older adults weigh certainty more heavily than younger adults. Experiment 4 also indicates that older adults focus more on positive emotions than younger adults do when considering their options, and that this emotional shift can at least partially account for age differences in how much people are swayed by certainty in their choices.
151 citations
University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign1, Birkbeck, University of London2, Maastricht University3, University of Greifswald4, Ghent University5, University of Pittsburgh6, University of Haifa7, University of Queensland8, University College London9, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven10, University of Potsdam11
TL;DR: This work analyzed the language used to describe attention-related aspects of emotion, and highlighted terms related to domains such as conscious awareness, motivational effects of attention, social attention, and emotion regulation within a broader review of available evidence regarding the neural correlates of emotion-attention interactions.
103 citations
Cites background from "The Affective Neuroscience of Aging..."
...pay greater attention, process, and remember more positive information, and (b) show reduced processing of negative information compared to young adults (Mather, 2016; Reed & Carstensen, 2012)....
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TL;DR: Emerging evidence from brain imaging investigations demonstrates that emotion- and memory-related medial temporal lobe brain regions (amygdala and hippocampus, respectively), together with prefrontal cortical regions, play a pivotal role during both encoding and retrieval of emotional episodic memories.
Abstract: Building upon the existing literature on emotional memory, the present review examines emerging evidence from brain imaging investigations regarding four research directions: (1) Social Emotional Memory, (2) The Role of Emotion Regulation in the Impact of Emotion on Memory, (3) The Impact of Emotion on Associative or Relational Memory, and (4) The Role of Individual Differences in Emotional Memory. Across these four domains, available evidence demonstrates that emotion- and memory-related medial temporal lobe brain regions (amygdala and hippocampus, respectively), together with prefrontal cortical regions, play a pivotal role during both encoding and retrieval of emotional episodic memories. This evidence sheds light on the neural mechanisms of emotional memories in healthy functioning, and has important implications for understanding clinical conditions that are associated with negative affective biases in encoding and retrieving emotional memories.
92 citations
Cites background from "The Affective Neuroscience of Aging..."
...These are reflected in the so-called age-related positivity effect – i.e., the tendency to enhance positive emotions and reduce negative emotions (Mather, 2016)....
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...The present discussion focuses on personality, sex, and age differences (e.g., Drabant et al., 2009; Mak et al., 2009; Canli et al., 2002b; Domes et al., 2010; Mather, 2016; Katsumi et al., 2017)....
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References
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TL;DR: Global grey matter volume decreased linearly with age, with a significantly steeper decline in males, and local areas of accelerated loss were observed bilaterally in the insula, superior parietal gyri, central sulci, and cingulate sulci.
4,341 citations
TL;DR: It is suggested that this framework provides a parsimonious account of insula function in neurotypical adults, and may provide novel insights into the neural basis of disorders of affective and social cognition.
Abstract: The insula is a brain structure implicated in disparate cognitive, affective, and regulatory functions, including interoceptive awareness, emotional responses, and empathic processes. While classically considered a limbic region, recent evidence from network analysis suggests a critical role for the insula, particularly the anterior division, in high-level cognitive control and attentional processes. The crucial insight and view we present here is of the anterior insula as an integral hub in mediating dynamic interactions between other large-scale brain networks involved in externally oriented attention and internally oriented or self-related cognition. The model we present postulates that the insula is sensitive to salient events, and that its core function is to mark such events for additional processing and initiate appropriate control signals. The anterior insula and the anterior cingulate cortex form a “salience network” that functions to segregate the most relevant among internal and extrapersonal stimuli in order to guide behavior. Within the framework of our network model, the disparate functions ascribed to the insula can be conceptualized by a few basic mechanisms: (1) bottom–up detection of salient events, (2) switching between other large-scale networks to facilitate access to attention and working memory resources when a salient event is detected, (3) interaction of the anterior and posterior insula to modulate autonomic reactivity to salient stimuli, and (4) strong functional coupling with the anterior cingulate cortex that facilitates rapid access to the motor system. In this manner, with the insula as its integral hub, the salience network assists target brain regions in the generation of appropriate behavioral responses to salient stimuli. We suggest that this framework provides a parsimonious account of insula function in neurotypical adults, and may provide novel insights into the neural basis of disorders of affective and social cognition.
4,322 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the locus coeruleus-norepinephrine (LC-NE) system plays a more complex and specific role in the control of behavior than investigators previously thought.
Abstract: Historically, the locus coeruleus-norepinephrine (LC-NE) system has been implicated in arousal, but recent findings suggest that this system plays a more complex and specific role in the control of behavior than investigators previously thought. We review neurophysiological and modeling studies in monkey that support a new theory of LC-NE function. LC neurons exhibit two modes of activity, phasic and tonic. Phasic LC activation is driven by the outcome of task-related decision processes and is proposed to facilitate ensuing behaviors and to help optimize task performance (exploitation). When utility in the task wanes, LC neurons exhibit a tonic activity mode, associated with disengagement from the current task and a search for alternative behaviors (exploration). Monkey LC receives prominent, direct inputs from the anterior cingulate (ACC) and orbitofrontal cortices (OFC), both of which are thought to monitor task-related utility. We propose that these frontal areas produce the above patterns of LC activity to optimize utility on both short and long timescales.
3,441 citations
TL;DR: The frontal lobe hypothesis of cognitive aging is found to perform well, with the exception of an inability to account for age-related declines in item recall and recognition memory, possibly a result of age- related declines in medial temporal function.
Abstract: The purpose of this review is to extend the existing application of the frontal lobe hypothesis of cognitive aging beyond the limited work on inhibitory control (F. N. Dempster, 1992) to include memory processes supported by the prefrontal cortex. To establish a background for this analysis, I review existing models of prefrontal cortex function and present a synthesized model that includes a general function of temporal integration, supported by 4 specific processes: prospective memory, retrospective memory, interference control, and inhibition of prepotent responses. I found the frontal lobe hypothesis to perform well, with the exception of an inability to account for age-related declines in item recall and recognition memory, possibly a result of age-related declines in medial temporal function.
1,979 citations
Additional excerpts
...Aging 34:2287–92 West RL. 1996....
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...29:15223–31 Fjell AM, Westlye LT, Amlien I, Espeseth T, Reinvang I, et al. 2009b. High consistency of regional cortical thinning in aging across multiple samples....
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...Cortex 19:2001–12 Fjell AM, Westlye LT, Grydeland H, Amlien I, Espeseth T, et al. 2013b. Critical ages in the life course of the adult brain: nonlinear subcortical aging....
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...Psychiatry 70:131–37 Braver TS, Krug MK, Chiew KS, Kool W, Westbrook JA, et al. 2014....
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...In the 1990s, a frontal theory of aging emerged, accounting for older adults’ cognitive deficits by the greater decline in prefrontal than in other brain regions in aging (West 1996)....
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TL;DR: In this paper, a theory is proposed that emotions are cognitively based states which co-ordinate quasi-autonomous processes in the nervous system, and that complex emotions are derived from a small number of basic emotions and arise at junctures of social plans.
Abstract: A theory is proposed that emotions are cognitively based states which co-ordinate quasi-autonomous processes in the nervous system. Emotions provide a biological solution to certain problems of transition between plans, in systems with multiple goals. Their function is to accomplish and maintain these transitions, and to communicate them to ourselves and others. Transitions occur at significant junctures of plans when the evaluation of success in a plan changes. Complex emotions are derived from a small number of basic emotions and arise at junctures of social plans.
1,728 citations
"The Affective Neuroscience of Aging..." refers background in this paper
...One overarching potential function of emotions is to trigger behavior change (Frijda & Parrott 2011, Oatley & Johnson-Laird 1987)....
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