Positive Mood in Older Adults Suggests Better Brain Function

The U.S. National Institute on Aging partly funded an observational study in the American Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry indicating that a positive outlook may help maintain healthy brain function in older adults. The integrity of the brain's white matter and stable executive function appear to play an important role in maintaining healthy mood states in late life. The authors looked at 716 community-dwelling adults who were assessed to have normal cognitive and neurological function, with mood measured using the Geriatric Depression Scale (GDS). The assessment covered executive function, memory, and processing speed, while a subset of 327 participants also received brain magnetic resonance imaging within six months of completing the GDS and neuropsychological evaluations. Mood improved with increasing age until around the early 70s, at which point the positive effect of age on mood leveled out and eventually reversed. Stable white matter integrity, along with stable executive function and processing speed, appeared to protect against the reversal.