The USC Davis School of Gerontology, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California 90089, USA.
Ann N Y Acad Sci. 2012 Mar;1251(1):33-49. doi: 10.1111/j.1749-6632.2012.06471.x. Epub 2012 Mar 12.
This paper reviews age differences in emotion processing and how they may relate to age-related changes in the brain. Compared with younger adults, older adults react less to negative situations, ignore irrelevant negative stimuli better, and remember relatively more positive than negative information. Older adults' ability to insulate their thoughts and emotional reactions from negative situations is likely due to a number of factors, such as being less influenced by interoceptive cues, selecting different emotion regulation strategies, having less age-related decline in prefrontal regions associated with emotional control than in other prefrontal regions, and engaging in emotion regulation strategies as a default mode in their everyday lives. Healthy older adults' avoidance of processing negative stimuli may contribute to their well-maintained emotional well-being. However, when cardiovascular disease leads to additional prefrontal white matter damage, older adults have fewer cognitive control mechanisms available to regulate their emotions, making them more vulnerable to depression. In general, although age-related changes in the brain help shape emotional experience, shifts in preferred strategies and goal priorities are also important influences.
本文回顾了情绪处理在年龄上的差异，以及这些差异如何与大脑的年龄相关变化有关。与年轻人相比，老年人对负面情况的反应较少，对不相关的负面刺激的忽视更好，并且相对记住更多的积极信息而不是消极信息。老年人使自己的想法和情绪反应不受负面情况影响的能力可能归因于许多因素，例如较少受到内感受线索的影响，选择不同的情绪调节策略，与其他前额叶区域相比，与情绪控制相关的前额叶区域的年龄相关性下降较少，并且将情绪调节策略作为日常生活中的默认模式。健康的老年人避免处理负面刺激可能有助于他们保持良好的情绪健康。但是，当心血管疾病导致额外的前额叶白质损伤时，老年人可以用来调节情绪的认知控制机制较少，使他们更容易受到抑郁的影响。总的来说，尽管大脑的年龄相关变化有助于塑造情绪体验，但偏好策略和目标优先级的转变也是重要的影响因素。
