Youth faces anxiety, depression and loneliness while older adults show better mental well-being

The young and old could learn a thing or two from each other, at least when it comes to mental health and cognition. Researchers from the University of California San Diego School of Medicine discovered that healthy older persons exhibit higher mental well-being but lower cognitive function than younger adults in a recent study, which was published on September 12, 2022 in Psychology and Aging. The underlying neurological mechanisms might be the source of fresh approaches to support wholesome brain function. “We wanted to better understand the interplay between cognition and mental health across aging, and whether they rely on activation of similar or different brain areas,” said senior author Jyoti Mishra, PhD, director of the NEATLabs and associate professor of psychiatry at UC San Diego School of Medicine. In the study, 54 healthy older persons over the age of 60 and 62 healthy younger adults in their 20s were sampled. Researchers assessed the mental well-being of individuals by asking about their anxiety, depression, loneliness, and other symptoms. In addition, participants engaged in a number of cognitively taxing tasks while electroencephalography was used to track their brain activity (EEG). The findings revealed that young people had much worse symptoms of anxiety, despair, and loneliness, whereas older adults had better mental health. However, older persons performed much worse on cognitive tasks. EEG recordings revealed that during the tasks, older adults showed greater activity in anterior portions of the brain’s default mode network. This group of brain areas is typically active when an individual is ruminating, daydreaming or mind-wandering, and is usually suppressed during goal-oriented tasks. “The default mode network is useful in other contexts, helping us process the past and imagine the future, but it’s distracting when you’re trying to focus on the present to tackle a demanding task with speed and accuracy,” said Mishra.