Look on the bright side of life if you want to feel young, say researchers

Scientists say those who age best have a light-hearted, optimistic outlook on life.

The findings offer a new theory on why some people with good genes have a sunnier outlook and sharper mind in old age, with exercise and even completing crosswords previously cited as ways of keeping your brain young.

However, scientists at the University of Hamburg in Germany discovered that simply focusing your brain on positive thoughts, and living for the moment, rather than looking too far into the future, can help maintain good mental health.

Dr Stefanie Brassen, the study’s author, said that successful ageing came down to “the positivity effect”.

She said this was “a biased tendency towards and preference for positive, emotionally gratifying experiences”.

To prove this, Dr Brassen and her team conducted an experiment which saw young and elderly adults presented with pictures of happy, sad, fearful or neutral faces.
During certain parts of the task when participants were told they could relax, researchers noted that the elderly subjects were much more engaged by the sight of a happy face.
By scanning the brains of participants, they discovered increased activity in the rostral anterior cingulate cortex, the part of the brain that controls emotions. High levels of activity in this part of the brain are associated with good mental health.
Results of the study, published in the journal Biological Psychiatry, suggest that staying happy and focusing on life’s positives are key to people remaining mentally alert as they get older.
Dr John Krystal, the editor of Biological Psychiatry, said: “The lessons of healthy ageing seem to be similar to those of resilience throughout life.
“As recently summarised in other work by doctors Dennis Charney and Steven Southwick, when coping with extremely stressful life challenges, it is critical to appraise the situation realistically but also to approach it with a positive attitude.”