A new report says that aging produces changes in the emotional brain, allowing individuals to better control their emotions.

First author Leanne Williams, PhD, of the Brain Dynamics Centre, Westmead Millenium Institute and University of Sydney, and her colleagues show that from adolescence to the late 70s, people become less neurotic and more able to control their emotions as they age, which corresponds with a shift in the medial prefrontal brain networks that help adjust responses to positive and negative emotional input. Brain scans showed that older subjects recognized negative emotions less than positive ones, and their medial prefrontal brain areas were more active when processing negative emotions than positive ones, indicating better control over brain responses to negative emotions.

The findings were published in the Journal of Neuroscience, June 2006.

The Mellow Years