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Knowing What To Overlook

Older people who are good at regulating their emotions have distinctly different patterns of brain activity, according to functional brain imaging studies by neuroscientist Richard Davidson. (ref-12) Areas of the prefrontal cortex, the brain's center for executive control and impulse inhibition, were more active. In poor regulators of emotion, the dominant brain activity was in the amygdala, the brain region that processes emotion. It's as if the prefrontal cortex of the older people was working harder to exert control over the amygdala.