A new research developed by a team of researchers from theUCL showed that self-reflection is positively associated with cognition in later life as well as with glucose metabolism, an indicator of brain health. Scientists working on the new study said older people who engage in self-reflection may have a decreased risk of dementia.
The results of the Research have been published in the scientific journal Neurology.
Self-reflection connected to an improvement in cognition in old age
The lead author, the researcher Harriet Demnitz-King (UCL Psychiatry), said: “There is a growing body of evidence that positive psychological factors, such as purpose in life and conscientiousness, can reduce the risk of dementia. Finding more ways to reduce the risk of dementia is an urgent priority, so we hope that as self-reflection skills can be improved, it could be a useful tool to help people stay cognitively healthy as they age. “
“Anyone can engage in self-reflection and potentially increase their self-reflection, as it is not dependent on physical health or socioeconomic factors,” she added. The study used cross-sectional data (rather than reporting the results of the study interventions) from two clinical trials, Age-Well And SCD-Wellwhich involved a total of 259 participants with an average age of 69 and 73 years. Volunteers recruited for the studies answered questions about reflection, measuring how often they think and try to understand their thoughts and feelings.
The research team stated that the volunteers who participated in the research and demonstrated a greater predisposition to self-reflection, had better cognition and improved glucose metabolism, as shown by brain imaging. The team of scientists found no association with amyloid deposition, the buildup of harmful brain proteins linked to Alzheimer’s disease.
Previous studies have shown that self-reflection skills can be improved with a recently tested psychological intervention, and scholars have stated that such a program could be useful for people at risk for dementia. Harriet Demnitz-King explained that: “Other studies have found that a self-reflexive thinking style leads to a more adaptive stress response, with evidence also showing improvements in inflammatory responses to stress and better cardiovascular health, so this may be how the ‘self-reflection could improve our resilience against cognitive decline “.
The researchers specified that while their findings suggest that engaging in self-reflection helps preserve cognition, they cannot rule out that it could instead be that people with better cognition are also better able to self-reflect and added that further longitudinal research is needed to determine the direction of causality.
The senior author, the Doctor Natalie Marchant (UCL Psychiatry), says: “With no disease-modifying treatments still available, it is important to find ways to prevent dementia; by discovering which factors make dementia or cognitive decline more or less likely, we may be able to develop ways to address these factors and reduce the risk of dementia.
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“Self-reflection has also been associated with other benefits, such as recovery from depression and better cardiovascular health, so while we can’t confirm exactly how it might affect cognitive decline, there is other evidence showing its overall benefits.”
Previous research by Dr. Marchant has revealed that repetitive negative thinking can increase the risk of Alzheimer’s, while mindfulness can help improve cognition in older adults. The Dr. Richard Oakley, Associate Director of Research at the Alzheimer’s Society commented that: “In this study, researchers showed for the first time that self-reflection, reflecting on one’s thoughts, feelings and behaviors, was linked to improved brain function in areas of the brain known to have dementia ”.
“While more research is needed to fully understand the implications of this finding, if self-reflection appears to have a positive effect on brain function, there is a possibility that we may someday reduce the risk of dementia with psychological treatments that help people to build healthy thinking patterns. The number of people with dementia in the UK is set to rise to 1.6 million by 2040: the government pledging to double funding for dementia research will ensure that researchers can explore every way to reduce the risk ” concluded Marchant.
As for Italy, Mario Possenti, General Secretary of the Alzheimer Italy Federation, he declared: “We arrive late in Italy: to understand, there are not even specific funding or grants, neither regional nor national, on the Dementia Plan. There is a lack of supports and assumptions. Added to this is a low recognition of dementia as a public health priority ”.
“It is necessary to intervene on two fronts: in the communities, first of all, with strategies capable of creating contexts that are” Dementia friendly “, therefore ready to welcome sick people, and help them to preserve their residual abilities, but also to work on families, to avoid isolation. There is a strong stigma towards these pathologies, which must be undermined if we want to think of integrated and prepared communities ”.
“The initiative of“ The rediscovered country ”is moving precisely in this direction. Often even the family-caregiver feels abandoned, sometimes feels ashamed, and so the house becomes a sort of ghetto, when the patient is managed at home. Structures such as that of Monza remove the institutionalization of these people, their entry into the RSA, to find new forms of life instead. In addition to care “.
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