Minding your business with brain based science

Business owners, especially solopreneurs, often experience symptoms of overwhelm. This often feels like not enough time, energy drain, being pulled in several directions at once, and an inability to focus. Overwhelm feels debilitating and stressful.

If you feeling like you're "spinning your wheels" perhaps the following analogy will help. Winter driving can sometimes involve getting stuck, and if you accelerate while your vehicle is stuck in the snow, you only dig yourself in deeper! The same is true for your business; the harder you work, the more effort you expend, the more stuck you end up feeling. If you are working harder and spending longer hours on your business while continuing to feel stuck, the overwhelm comes with trying to balance everything while wanting to move your business forward, and as your focus and energy diminish, your sense of overwhelm increases.

The solution? Evaluate your work, your habits, and your willingness to make positive changes. Here are some brain science-based suggestions to help business owners move out of overwhelm - or avoid it completely:

1. Develop a plan. This may seem obvious, but many solopreneurs operate spontaneously according to external demands. This is particularly true of creatives; however, it's important to have a business plan that keeps you grounded and operating from that level.

In order to create a workable plan, you'll need to harness the power of your will to make changes in your business. The brain is capable of forging new connections to hone skills and modify old habits, but also likes to conserve energy by resisting new neuronal connections, so you'll need to ignite your will to change by forming a clear purpose. Ask yourself what might happen if you don't create change. What opportunities might be lost? What benefits will come with your proposed plan and changes? What will it be like when your changes become a habit?

2. Operate from priorities. Once you have a plan in place it's important to work from focused priorities, which helps to keep your energy focused. Without priorities it's easy to be in reactive mode. If your priorities are clear, you can stay task-focused, which will help you to be calmer and more focused energetically.

If you want to experience enhanced clarity and focus in your business, you'll need to develop neural pathways in your brain. One way to do this is to ask yourself: How does a clear and focused person sound when speaking, laughing, acting questions? How does a clear and focused person listen, walk, sit, gesture? What does a clear and focused think about?

3. Develop systems for your business. Create systems and a process that works for you and your business. You might try using a journal to record your creative impulses so that you can stay task-focused. This way you'll be taking action, but still staying focused on your current task.

If you become distracted from your stated direction by feelings of anger, annoyance, confusion, jealousy, or other such feelings, brain research provides a way to deal with your distraction - by labeling the feeling. Neuroscience calls this "labeling the affect", and as we do so, the part of the brain feeling the emotion is calmed, so that we can return to clarity and purpose. Practice making mental notes throughout the day such as "I am eating" or "I am pleased" or "I am thinking about the proposal." As your facility with this practice increases, you will find yourself able to remain calm in the eye of the storm.

4. Estimate realistic time-lines for your business goals and projects. The timelines allow you to feel as though your business development is unfolding at the proper pace, without feeling pressured to have everything done at this moment. If you mentally rehearse how you will feel once your goals and project timelines are complete, your skill levels improve and your brain is changed. Mental rehearsal is an effective tool for self-leadership.

5. Give yourself the gift of support. Successful business owners are willing to accept outside support and create systems of accountability. Without support your unproductive habits (those that are your 'default') and "inner" obstacles will continue to create bottlenecks in your business. A mentor or coach can give you an invaluable and objective perspective, assisting you to change the course of your direction by managing your inner resources, attaining optimal living strategies and expanding your influence, leveraging your time - and working less - to contribute and achieve more.

Contribution by Sue Stebbins

Changing Your Brain By Changing Your Mind

Contribution by Melanie A. Greenberg

When it comes to managing stress, the Eastern traditions may be especially effective. The Western health model is based on diagnosing the underlying cause of a problem and then finding an active medical or behavioral intervention to remove it. People with chronic illness are often urged to "stay strong," or to have "a fighting spirit." Eastern medicine has a more holistic view of disease as indicating a lack of balance or an energy blockage. The solution is to bring the body and mind back into balance using gentle, noninvasive techniques such as herbs, manipulative techniques, movement, or meditation.

How the Brain Processes Emotion

Our lower brain centers, such as the amygdala or hypothalamus, were made to detect and respond to threats, such as a tiger about to eat us. They generate an immediate "fight ot flight" response to increase the odds of survival, but they can become hypersensitive, interfering with our ability to experience the present moment in an open and relaxed way. Daily meditation practice can help to correct this imbalance and allow us to retrain our minds so we are less likely to overreact with intense anger or fear to psychological threats, such as rejection. Being less chronically stressed can also help our immune systems function more efficiently to fight off disease.

Mindfulness Meditation

Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction Therapy (MBSR) is a meditation program developed by John Kabat-Zinn and researchers at Harvard Medical School to help people living with chronic pain. Central to this form of meditation is a focus on the breath to bring the mind back to the present moment when it wanders off. Over time, this leads to greater conscious control over attentional focus, such that more primitive alarm responses are less able to control our thoughts and behaviors.The final goal of the meditation training is to integrate present-moment awareness into every aspect of daily life.

Research over the past 10 years or so has begun to show how meditation may change the brain and improve mental and physical wellbeing.

Improved Immune Response

A 2003 study by Richard Davidson and colleagues, with healthy employees, showed that 8 weeks of meditation practice changed the pattern of electrical activity in the brain. There was greater activation in the left hemisphere among meditators than people assessed at the same time who did not have meditation training (control group). The researchers also looked at immune response to an influenza vaccine and found that the meditator group had more antibody titers to the vaccine than the control group, indicating better immune functioning. These benefits lasted for months after the intervention.

Changes in the Brain's Grey Matter

A more recent controlled study showed that meditation was associated with increased grey matter in the hippocampus, which is responsible for learning and memory, and decreased grey matter in the amygdala, which is the initiator of the brain's pre-cortical alarm system. These physiological changes parallel the theory that meditation increases conscious control over emotional, behavioral, and attentional response to threat.

Reduced Pain Sensitivity

Researchers are also beginning to show that meditation can change the way we experience pain. Chris Brown and colleagues at the University of Manchester showed that a Mindfulness Meditation course led to less unusual activity in areas of the prefrontal cortex when subjects expected to receive a painful stimulus (such as a small elecric shock or contact with a hot object). Those who meditated reported finding the pain less unpleasant as well.

Shift From Negative to Positive Affect

Patients in another mindfulness study demonstrated significantly greater changes in brain electrical activity from activation in the right to the left cortical hemisphere, from before to immediately following meditation and several months later, compared to a control group. This pattern of brain activity is associated with a shift away from negative and towards more positive emotional experience. In other words, mindfulness meditation regimen appeared to help people to experience more positive emotions such as love, compassion, or contentment.

Does a Briefer Intervention Work?

One reason why people resist meditating is the time it takes. The original protocol involved eight weeks of mindfulness training sessions plus 45 minutes a day of at-home practice. At the beginning, many people find it difficult to sustain attention on the breath for that length of time. Logistical and time considerations make patients more hesitant to sign up or result in dropout. A briefer intervention that could be used more widely in hospital, employee wellness, and outpatient mental health settings might be more cost-effective and palatable to patients.

A very recent study published in the journal Psychological Science shows that a briefer meditation protocol cal produce similar changes in cortical activity. Researcher Christopher Moyer and his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Stout assigned subjects at random to either a 5-week Mindfulness Meditation group or to a group put on a waiting list for services. Data showed people in the meditation group practiced at home a couple of times a week for about 25 minutes each time, on average. These meditation subjects showed the same changes in cortical activity as those who got the full intervention in earlier studies; that is, a significant increase in left hemisphere cortical activation. The waiting list group did not demonstrate these changes. This is an exciting finding, since it suggests even shorter meditation periods can significantly increase positive emotional experience in the brain.

For the Reader:

Below are some instructions for a basic breath awareness meditation. Do this once or twice a day for 2 weeks and observe what happens. There is no right or wrong way to do it. Try to accept whatever your individual experience is.

Simple Breath Awareness Meditation Instructions

Pick a comfortable, quiet place where you will not be disturbed
Sit with the spine upright on a cushion on the floor or a chair. If you use a chair, make sure your feet are touching the ground.
Begin to notice your breathing. Try to maintain an open and curious attitude. Notice where the breath goes when it enters and leaves your body.
Do not try to change the breath in any way. It may change naturally as you observe it.
If your mind wanders away, note what it is doing, than gently bring your attention back to the breath.
6. Continue observing the breath for 15-20 minutes.
Reference

Moyer, C. A. et al. (2011). Frontal Electroencephalographic Asymmetry Associated With Positive Emotion Is Produced by Very Brief Meditation Training. Psychological Science

Why living in the moment is impossible.

Contribution by WiSci

The sought-after equanimity of “living in the moment” may be impossible, according to neuroscientists who’ve pinpointed a brain area responsible for using past decisions and outcomes to guide future behavior.

The study, based on research conducted at the University of Pittsburgh and published August 9 in the professional journal Neuron, is the first of its kind to analyze signals associated with metacognition — a person’s ability to monitor and control cognition (a term cleverly described by researchers as “thinking about thinking.”)

“The brain has to keep track of decisions and the outcomes they produce,” said Marc Sommer, who did his research for the study as a University of Pittsburgh neuroscience faculty member and is now on the faculty at Duke University. “You need that continuity of thought,” Sommer continued. “We are constantly keeping decisions in mind as we move through life, thinking about other things. We guessed it was analogous to working memory, which would point toward the prefrontal cortex.”

Sommer predicted that neuronal correlates of metacognition resided in the same brain areas responsible for cognition, including the frontal cortex — a part of the brain linked with personality expression, decision making, and social behavior. Sommer worked with Paul G. Middlebrooks, who did his research for the study at Pitt before he received his Pitt PhD in neuroscience in 2011; Middlebrooks is now a postdoctoral fellow at Vanderbilt University. The research team studied single neurons in vivo in three frontal cortical regions of the brain: the frontal eye field (associated with visual attention and eye movements), the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (responsible for motor planning, organization, and regulation), and the supplementary eye field (SEF) involved in the planning and control of saccadic eye movements, which are the extremely fast movements of the eye that allow it to continually refocus on an object.

To learn where metacognition occurs in the brain, subjects performed a visual decision-making task that involved random flashing lights and a dominant light on a cardboard square. Participants were asked to remember and pinpoint where the dominant light appeared, guessing whether they were correct. The researchers found that while neural activity correlated with decisions and guesses in all three brain areas, the putative metacognitive activity that linked decisions to bets resided exclusively in the SEF.

“The SEF is a complex area [of the brain] linked with motivational aspects of behavior,” said Sommer. “If we think we’re going to receive something good, neuronal activity tends to be high in SEF. People want good things in life, and to keep getting those good things, they have to compare what’s going on now versus the decisions made in the past.”

Sommer noted that defining such concepts related to metacognition, like consciousness, has been difficult for decades. He sees his research and future work related to studying metacognition as one step in a systematic process of working toward a better understanding of consciousness. By studying metacognition, he says, he reduces the big problem of studying a “train of thought” into a simpler component: examining how one cognitive process influences another.

“Why aren’t our thoughts independent of each other? Why don’t we just live in the moment? For a healthy person, it’s impossible to live in the moment. It’s a nice thing to say in terms of seizing the day and enjoying life, but our inner lives and experiences are much richer than that.”

So far, patients with mental disorders have not been tested on these tasks, but Sommer is interested to see how SEF and other brain areas might be disrupted in these disorders.

“With schizophrenia and Alzheimer’s disease, there is a fracturing of the thought process. It is constantly disrupted, and despite trying to keep a thought going, one is distracted very easily,” Sommers said. “Patients with these disorders have trouble sustaining a memory of past decisions to guide later behavior, suggesting a problem with metacognition.”

Funding for this research was provided by the University of Pittsburgh, the joint University of Pittsburgh-Carnegie Mellon University Center for the Neural Basis of Cognition, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

The above story is reprinted from materials provided by University of Pittsburgh.

Journal Reference:
1.Paul G. Middlebrooks, Marc A. Sommer. Neuronal Correlates of Metacognition in Primate Frontal Cortex. Neuron, 2012; 75 (3): 517 DOI: 10.1016/j.neuron.2012.05.028

Can depression and stress hurt the brain?

Major depression or chronic stress can cause the loss of brain volume, a condition that contributes to both emotional and cognitive impairment. Now a team of researchers led by Yale scientists has discovered one reason why this occurs — a single genetic switch that triggers loss of brain connections in humans and depression in animal models.

The findings, reported in the Aug. 12 issue of the journal Nature Medicine, show that the genetic switch known as a transcription factor represses the expression of several genes that are necessary for the formation of synaptic connections between brain cells, which in turn could contribute to loss of brain mass in the prefrontal cortex.

“We wanted to test the idea that stress causes a loss of brain synapses in humans,” said senior author Ronald Duman, the Elizabeth Mears and House Jameson Professor of Psychiatry and professor of neurobiology and of pharmacology.

“We show that circuits normally involved in emotion, as well as cognition, are disrupted when this single transcription factor is activated.”

The research team analyzed tissue of depressed and non-depressed patients donated from a brain bank and looked for different patterns of gene activation. The brains of patients who had been depressed exhibited lower levels of expression in genes that are required for the function and structure of brain synapses. Lead author and postdoctoral researcher H.J. Kang discovered that at least five of these genes could be regulated by a single transcription factor called GATA1. When the transcription factor was activated, rodents exhibited depressive-like symptoms, suggesting GATA1 plays a role not only in the loss of connections between neurons but also in symptoms of depression.

Duman theorizes that genetic variations in GATA1 may one day help identify people at high risk for major depression or sensitivity to stress.

“We hope that by enhancing synaptic connections, either with novel medications or behavioral therapy, we can develop more effective antidepressant therapies,” Duman

Migraines hurt your head and not your brain.

Contribution by ScienceDaily (Aug. 10, 2012)

Migraines currently affect about 20 percent of the female population, and while these headaches are common, there are many unanswered questions surrounding this complex disease. Previous studies have linked this disorder to an increased risk of stroke and structural brain lesions, but it has remained unclear whether migraines had other negative consequences such as dementia or cognitive decline. According to new research from Brigham and Women's Hospital (BWH), migraines are not associated with cognitive decline.

This study is published online by the British Medical Journal (BMJ) on August 8, 2012. "Previous studies on migraines and cognitive decline were small and unable to identify a link between the two. Our study was large enough to draw the conclusion that migraines, while painful, are not strongly linked to cognitive decline," explained Pamela Rist ScD, a research fellow in the Division of Preventive Medicine at BWH, and lead author on this study.

The research team analyzed data from the Women's Health Study, a cohort of nearly 40,000 women, 45 years and older. In this study, researchers analyzed data from 6,349 women who provided information about migraine status at baseline and then participated in cognitive testing during follow-up. Participants were classified into four groups: no history of migraine, migraine with aura (transient neurology symptoms mostly of the visual field), migraine without aura, and past history of migraine. Cognitive testing was carried out in two year intervals up to three times.

"Compared with women with no history of migraine, those who experienced migraine with or without aura did not have significantly different rates of cognitive decline," explained Rist. "This is an important finding for both physicians and patients. Patients with migraine and their treating doctors should be reassured that migraine may not have long term consequences on cognitive function."

There is still a lot that is unknown about migraines. However this study offers promising evidence for patients and their treating physicians. More research needs to be done to understand the consequences of migraine on the brain and to establish strategies to influence the course of the disease in order to optimize treatment strategies.

This research was supported by The Women's Health Study is supported by grants from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (HL-043851, HL-080467, HL-099355) and the National Cancer Institute (CA-47988). The cognitive substudy of the Women's Health Study was supported by a grant from the National Institute of Aging (AG-15933). PMR was supported by a training grant from the National Institute of Aging (AG-00158). TK is supported in part by a Chair of Excellence grant of the French National Research Agency (Agence Nationale de la Recherche, R09177DD).

The Neuroscience of Running

Contributed by Prefrontal.org

Just over a year ago I began running as form of regular exercise. I was looking for an outdoor activity that I could do year-round in New Hampshire and found running to be enjoyable in both warm and cold weather. It took a few weeks to (literally) get up to speed, but I have been running an average of twice a week ever since. Over the last year I have begun to collect all of the fitness-related neuroscience articles that occasionally arrive at my inbox. I have been saving a few of them for a short review on the anniversary of my first run. That time has arrived, and so has the post – click to read more.


I. The impact on mood

Endurance training has been shown to have a positive impact on affective state. Runners have known anecdotally about this effect for quite some time, but it is only in the last few decades that the neural underpinnings of this effect have been investigated. One mechanism that seems to be associated with increased positive mood is neurogenesis, or the creation of new neurons.

In a review of 14 studies examining the relationship between exercise and major depression Lawlor and Hopkor (2001) found that the magnitude of the antidepressant effect of exercise is generally equal to that of cognitive therapy. Strawbridge et al. (2002) further found that those who engage in exercise are less likely to develop a depressive disorder to begin with. These antidepressant effects have been shown to persist for over 21 months after exercise has stopped (Singh, Clements, and Singh, 2001). What causes this antidepressant effect?

The common belief used to be that the human brain did not form new neurons after early childhood, but recent evidence has accumulated that certain structures, such as the hippocampus, do create neurons as an adult (Lledo, Alonso and Grubb, 2006). The hippocampus is a structure in the brain known to be involved in memory and learning. In mice voluntary running has been shown to increase neurogenesis in the hippocampus (Naylor et al., 2008; van Praag, Kempermann, and Gage, 1999). The increase in neurogenesis has then been associated with reductions in depressive mood and depressive severity in rats (Bjørnebekk, Mathe, and Stefan Brene, 2005).

Running has also been associated with a reduced response to stress and anxiety. It can not only reduce the effects of a current stressful situation, but acts to guard against future stress (Greenwood and Fleshner, 2008). One source of this effect is a change of activity in the dorsal raphe nucleus (DRN), a center for serotonin in the brain. Hyperactivity in the DRN during stress has been shown to alter the behavior of an animal, often leading to a state of learned helplessness and avoidance (Maier and Watkins, 2005). In rats six weeks of wheel running was shown to significantly reduce DRN activity during uncontrollable stress (Greenwood and Fleshner, 2008). It also reduced the helpless behavior of the rats.

As a society the United States shells out over 25 billion dollars a year on antidepressants. The efficacy of these drugs is generally not as substantial as effects seen after exercise. Exercise also seems to impact a wider array of neural systems, positively affecting everything from single neurons to whole neural systems. Putting all of the above information into perspective, if I could create a pill that would increase positive mood in the same way that running does I would be a billionaire – seriously.

II. The impact on cognition

Exercise has been shown to provide cognitive improvements to both humans and animals. Researchers have observed benefits to long-term memory, learning, attention, executive control, and a host of other cognitive abilities. The brain as a whole seems to thrive on exercise.

One source of cognitive benefit is purely cardiovascular. Exercise increases cerebral blood flow and provides for more efficient glucose utilization (McCloskey et al., 2001). Let’s be clear, the brain lives on glucose. Over 25% of the energy you take in is going to fuel that little three-pound mass in your skull. When you are really working on a tough problem that percentage only goes up as energy usage increases. If you can more efficiently get energy where it needs to go that would represent a major benefit to cognitive processing.

Another source of cognitive benefit has to do with neurons and the environment they inhabit. The same mechanisms of neurogenesis described in section I are known to contribute to cognitive benefits as well (van Praag et al., 1999). Enhancement also is due to an increased level of brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) present after exercise. BDNF is a protein that helps existing neurons to survive and grow. Elevated corticosterone levels caused by acute stress tend to reduce levels of BDNF in the cortex and hippocampus, while exercise can raise levels significantly above baseline (Adlard and Cotman, 2004; Neeper et al., 1996).

Changes in the regional anatomy of the brain have also been observed after exercise. Grey matter differences in the frontal and temporal lobes were observed in association with individuals who exercise more frequently (Kemppainen et al., 2005). This may be related to the results of Colcombe et al (2004), who found that older adults with better fitness showed significantly higher activity in lateral frontal and superior parietal regions when engaged in an attention task.

Individuals suffering from cognitive deficits show benefits after beginning a new fitness regime. Exercise has been shown to improve the condition of Alzheimer’s patients (Teri et al., 2003) and stroke victims (Shepherd, 2001). While the effects are not gigantic, any improvement in the cognitive outcome of these disorders can greatly help a patient. Further, exercise reduces the risk of cognitive impariment, Alzheimer’s disease, and dementia to begin with (Lautenschlager, 2008; Friedland et al., 2001). This seems to be especially true if you have a genetic predisposition to these disorders.

As an aside, the PsyBlog has a great mini-review of typical cognitive enhancers and finds that between brain training, nutritional supplements, drugs, meditation and exercise that exercise is currently the best-bet for improving your cognitive ability. I tend to agree.

Much like the effect on mood, exercise affects a wide array of neural functions critical to cognition. Not only is there a boost in energy efficiency, but overall there is more energy available to burn. Further, the impact of events that seem to cause the most harm to our brain, such as acute stress, are marginalized and protected against. Together these factors help create a positive neural environment that supports cognitive improvement.

III. High as a kite

I would be remiss not to comment on the “runner’s high” that many people experience after extended exertion. This is often described as a state of euphoria or pleasure that occurs late into a long run. Recent evidence suggests that this state of euphoria is the direct result of engaging the brain’s endogenous opiate system. Boecker et al. (2008) found that strenuous running induced significant opiate binding in orbitofrontal, anterior cingulate, insula, and temporoparietal cortex in addition to multiple limbic and paralimbic subcortical areas. These are brain areas involved in the mapping of body state to emotional state. Their results are bolstered by other studies showing that naloxone, an opiate binding inhibitor, blocks the runner’s high from taking place (Janal et al, 1984).

It makes sense that our brain is providing this opiate system to us, otherwise running would be a pretty miserable experience. Still, opiates can be very addictive. Most of us might have already encountered opiates as medication in the form of morphine or codeine. Heroin is an illegal drug that is chemically similar to morphine and every bit as addictive. I have to wonder what role the opiate system plays in people getting addicted to running. We know that there are varying levels of susceptibility to drug addiction – two people can take the same amount of drug and only one will go on to become an addict. Is the same true of highly trained runners?

IV. Conclusions

This is perhaps less of a blog post and more a collection of interesting tidbits related to running that I have come across. Still, it helps that there is a big-picture view that goes along with all of the above. The view is this: exercise is nothing short of magic when it comes to your brain. The cognitive and emotional benefits you get from strenuous exercise are virtually unmatched when compared to prescription drugs or therapy. While this post has focused primarily on the neuroscience of exercise and running, you cannot ignore the other health benefits of exercise. Heart disease is the #1 killer of men and women in America. If you don’t get up and run for your brain, then (really) do it for your heart.

The Neuroscience of Regret

Contributing blog by Melanie A. Greenberg, Ph.D.

A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams. ~John Barrymore

We often associate regret with old age – the tragic image of an elderly person feeling regretful over opportunities forever missed. Now, groundbreaking new brain research shows how this stereotype may be true, at least for a portion of the elderly who are depressed. On the other hand, healthy aging may involve the ability to regulate regret in the brain, and move on emotionally when there is nothing more that can be done. If we can teach depressed, older people to think like their more optimistic peers, we may be able to help them let go of regret. Read on to find out how the human brain processes regret.

How Our Brains Process Regret

Studies have used functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to scan the brain in real time while participants performed computer tasks that asked them to choose between different options for investing money. When participants were shown how they could have done better with alternative strategies (to prime regret), there was decreased activity in the ventral striatum, an area associated with processing rewards. There was also increased activity in the amygdala, part of the brain’s limbic system that generates immediate emotional response to threat. Interestingly, when the experiment was done with a computer making all the choices, these regret patterns were not found, suggesting that a sense of personal accountability is necessary for regret.

Do Age and Depression Affect Regret?

A new study conducted by researchers at the University Medical Center – Hamburg, in Germany provides an exciting demonstration of how healthy older people may actively disengage from regret when nothing can be done. Young people, who, presumably have more life opportunities for change and depressed elderly, who, presumably, have a deficit in emotional processing, were more regretful when confronted with missed chances for financial gain.

These researchers scanned the brains of three groups of subjects using fMRI technology: Young people with average age 25, healthy older people with average age 66, and depressed older people, also 66 on average. All participants worked on a computer game during the brain scan in which they had to decide whether to keep opening boxes or rest. Each box could contain an amount of money or could contain a devil emblem that meant they lost all their money and ended that round of the game. To prime regret, researchers showed people after each round how far they could have gone to earn more money.

There were substantial differences in brain functioning between the healthy elderly and the other groups. On both appearance of the devil and being shown lost opportunities, the young and depressed elderly showed decreased neural activity in the ventral striatum, the area associated with reward processing. The healthy elderly did not, however, show this regretful pattern when they were shown how far they could have gone; only when they actually lost all their money. Instead, when faced with their missed alternatives, this group actually showed increased neural firing in the Anterior Cingulate Cortex, an area involved in emotional regulation and control. This is a new discovery, and suggests that their brains were actively working to successfully regulate the pain of regret

Behavioral strategies differed between the groups in a way that was consistent with the brain findings. Whereas the young and depressed elderly took more risks on subsequent rounds, the healthy elderly did not change their strategies across 80 rounds on average. When participants’ physiological functioning was assessed in another similar study using the same conditions, the healthy elderly showed less increase in blood pressure and skin conductance (a measure of sweating) than the other groups. Overall, the riskier strategy did not lead to more money, suggesting that the young and depressed elderly took on extra stress for no gain.

Can Our Brains Actually Improve Their Emotional Processing With Age?

An exciting implication of this study is that brain functioning does not merely deteriorate in old age, but that aging can result in better emotion-regulation and stress management. This is consistent with other research showing old people have less intense negative emotions and are happier than middle-aged people on average.

Can Mindfulness Help?

The researchers are now working on developing interventions to help depressed people regulate regret by showing them how much chance or outside factors played a role in their choices, versus their own actions. This should result in decreased self-blame and regret.

Research on Mindfulness has also shown that Mindfulness-based interventions can increase activity and even change brain structure in the Anterior Cingulate Cortex and other midbrain regions involved in emotional processing and regulation. Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy is one of the few treatments shown to be effective at treating chronic, intractable depression. Although the research has not yet been done, Mindfulness training emphasizing keeping one’s focus on the present moment and reducing self-judgment and reactivity may be an alternative and potentially even more effective way of helping depressed elderly let go of destructive and chronic regret.

Final Thoughts

In summary, regret is a negative emotion that may be adaptive if it motivates action to learn from mistakes and become a smarter or better person. However, getting stuck in regret where there is nothing that can be done to change the situation can be damaging to mind and body. For the elderly, the developmental task may be to learn to live with and accept the life they have had, focusing on the positive aspects and forgiving themselves both for mistakes made and opportunities not taken. Feeling that one has done the best one can, given the circumstances and letting go of regret can lead to self-compassion and peace.

Read my companion post about the Psychology of Regret and learn how to harness your regret to make better choices when things can be changed.

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-mindful-self-express/201205/the-psychology-regret