EMOTIONAL HEALTH, MEMORY, ATTENTION AND SLEEP PATTERN

1. EMOTIONAL HEALTH, MEMORY, ATTENTION AND SLEEP PATTERN THEORETICAL PART

2. INTRODUCTION Relationships between emotional health, cognitive function and rest Emotions and health Memory and attention Sleep pattern and rest

3. TABLE OF CONTENTS • Emotions and Health • Emotional Health and its importance • Objectives of Emotional Health • Emotional control and coping strategies • Patterns and recommendations • Memory • Functions of Memory • Stages of the memorising process • Attention • Influence of attention on memory • Individual characteristics of attention • Factors impacting on attention • Types of attention • Benefits of increased attention • Sleep and rest in healthy aging

4. Relationships btw… MIND EMOTIONAL HEALTH EMOTIONS AND HEALTH Immune System Endocrine System Nervous System FOUNDATIONS ► Emotional inhibition provokes disorders and diseases. ► Anxiety is an element which aggravates disease. ► Optimism increases the response of the immune system. ► Anger (retained or expressed) (Permanent hostility) as a heart risk element. ► Depression after a heart attack multiplies the risk of complications in the following year. ► Connection between stress (feeling of impotence/helplessness) and risk of developing high-blood pressure. ► Cicatrisation speed decreases in stressful situations. ► Depression in young individuals is a risk factor for later hypertension. ► Sadness and anxiety affect the immune system. ► Social support in seropositive patients improves their vital signs. EMOTIONS EXERT AN INFLUENCE ON BIOCHEMICAL REGULATION

5. How to achieve it They feel well with themselves Training Living experience EMOTIONAL HEALTH Their thoughts Their feelings Their behaviours The people who are EMOTIONALLY healthy have control over… LEARNING They have good interpersonal relationships I. PERCEPTION, EXPRESSION AND ASSESSMENT OF EMOTIONS II. EMOTIONS AT THE SERVICE OF THINKING III. UNDERSTANDING OF EMOTIONS EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE IV. REGULATION – MANAGEMENT OF EMOTIONS

6. ► FLOW ►HUMOUR ►INTELLIGENT OPTIMISM ►RESILIENCE ► ‘GAUDIBILITY’ (ENJOYMENT) ►…. EMOTIONAL HEALTH SUBJECTIVE WELL-BEING What for? POSITIVE EMOTIONAL STATES Physical health improvement Prevention of disease risks Greater Quality of Life Protection against depression Handling anxiety Strengthening the self-immune system

7. EMOTIONAL HEALTH OBJECTIVES • Perceiving emotional health as a lifestyle that can be developed through knowledge and coping strategies. • Identifying the basic emotional phenomena (emotions, feelings and states of mind). • Developing healthy emotional habits. • Applying the knowledge acquired to a healthy daily life (in the intra- and interpersonal context).

8. EMOTIONAL CONTROL: TO PREVAIL PSYCHOPATHOLOGICAL ALTERATIONS People with more emotional intelligence (EI) have a better well-being. Capacities and strategies to develop Anxiety and depression are reduced in people with more EI. (Davis,Stankov y Roberts 1998) 1) Perceiving, feeling and being aware of our emotional state, without being overwhelmed or threatened by it. 2) Selecting the emotional thoughts to which attention is going to be paid with a view to act rationally. 3) Controlling the start of emotional alterations. 4) Tolerating frustration. 5) Showing serene attitudes before stress-inducing situations. 6) Ensuring self-motivation to achieve feasible objectives, regulating the state of mind

9. POSITIVE EMOTIONAL COPING STRATEGIES • Search for alternatives • Emotional control • Positive re-evaluation • Search for social support • Search for professional support • Humour • Suppression of distracting activities • Personal development • Religion • Emotional expression • Positive visualisation • Emotional writing • Behavioral avoidance • Cognitive avoidance • Holding back coping • Waiting • Mental disconnection Characteristics of coping strategies Behavioural answers Cognitive answers Psyco-physiological answers

10. IMPORTANCE OF MAINTAINING A GOOD COGNITIVE FUNCTION FOR HEALTHY AGEING • Some capacities suffer a continuous decline in the old age (Cabeza, 2001; Corral and Pardo, 2007) • The basic cognitive capacities which form the basis of most types of learning can be modified (Flavell, 1976; Feuerstein, 1980 and 1991). • Slowing down the deterioration of seniors’ cognitive capacities is a learning-for-health task that influences emotional well-being and favours health and quality of life among seniors. • Memory and attention are essential for everyday life. • Encouraging rest and refreshing sleep are key factors in this task.

11. MEMORY • Definition: Memory is the human capacity to store and retrieve information. • Functions of memory: Without it, we would be unable to cope in daily life because it takes care of: • Seeing • Hearing • Thinking • Speaking • What else can be done?

12. STAGES OF THE MEMORISING PROCESS • RECORDING STAGE • When information enters the brain; it is the entrance door through which information accesses our conscience. • The intervening processes are: • Attention • Concentration • Perception

13. STAGES OF THE MEMORISING PROCESS • CONSOLIDATION STAGE • We set in motion processes meant to consolidate or store information. • The intervening processes are: • Association of new/old information • Categorisation • Integration into previous information • Memory is emotionally charged • etc….

14. STAGES OF THE MEMORISING PROCESS • RECALL STAGE • When the stored information is retrieved • The intervening processes are: • Situational references • Evocation • Retrieval keys • etc…

15. ATTENTION • Definition: “A system of limited capacity which performs information selection operations, the availability or alert state of which fluctuates considerably” (De Vega, 1993). “Study of an individual’s capacities and limitations for the selection and processing of sensorial information about the environment” (Jahnke and Nowaczyk, 1998) “It is a conscious attitude aimed at the observation of a thing” (Diccionario de Psicología, F Dorsch)

16. ATTENTION • The importance of memory processes: • It especially influences the recording stage. Therefore, it is one of the determining factors in the memory process. • Lack of attention prevents information from being registered, thus hindering consolidation and recall.

17. ATTENTION • Individual characteristics of attention: • Capacity: Extent to which the organism can pay attention to several tasks or processes simultaneously. • Attention-Conscience Connection: The extent to which the information to which we pay attention gets to our conscience. • Attentional filters: Ability to fix our attention before a number of predetermined stimuli.

18. ATTENTION • Factors impacting on attention: • Overall psychological condition: it defines our state of mind (worried, anxious, depressed…). • Activation level: how we are physically speaking (tired, awake...). • Environment: it defines the place where we find ourselves (there is a lot of noise or very little noise). • Motivation: it determines the degree of involvement in focalisation. • Habituation and fatigue: With the passing of time, attention decreases naturally. We cannot pay attention to something constantly without getting tired.

19. ATTENTION • Types of attention: • Selective attention: a process which gives priority to some piece of information over another. • Sustained attention: Persistence over time in the priority of observation for a piece of information. • Orientation reflex: Interest in the new information that is presented to us.

20. ATTENTION • Benefits of increased attention for our daily activities: • An increase in our capacity to remember, which implies an improved self-esteem and self-efficacy levels because we have more confidence in our memory. • An increase in the arrival of information from the world that surrounds us, which implies a stronger commitment to life because individuals are more aware of it.

21. REST AND SLEEP WITHIN THE HEALTHY AGEING STRATEGY • Sleep: it is the state of uniform rest of an organism as opposed to the state of wakefulness. • Insomnia: Chronic absence of the ability required to be able to start or maintain sleep. SLEEP PHASES REM Wakefulness W a k e f u l n e s s Phase I Phase II Phase III Phase IV Hour

22. REST AND SLEEP WITHIN THE HEALTHY AGEING STRATEGY • Sleep serves to refresh organisms after the wear suffered during the wakefulness period. • Its main objective is neurone restoration through the system of neurotrophins which promote neurone survival and restoration. • Sleep maintains and reorganises neural circuits, including the neuroformation of synapses that permit to modify the existing neural networks due to the effect of experience. • All this gives rise to adequate brain functioning and environmnental adaptation. (Montes Rodríguez et al., Revista de Neurología. 2006)

23. CORTISOL CONNECTION • There is a relationship between the subjective quality of sleep and cortisol levels. A low quality correlates with high cortisol rates. (Maldonado et al.C.Med.Psicosom.2004) CORTISOL

24. REST AND SLEEP WITHIN THE HEALTHY AGEING STRATEGY • An abnormal cortisol secretion can lead the brain to increase its activity in two relevant areas: • The hippocampus and the amygdala. • In the case of the hippocampus, it can cause atrophy and permanent damage. • The hippocampus and the amygdala are crucial not only in stressful situations (fear, emotions, immunity) but also for their influence on superior functions of the brain such as memory. (Fraser. 2007)

25. HIPPOCAMPUS AND MEMORY • The hippocampus seems to be involved in the formation of memory, not in its storage. • It seems to play an essential role in the formation of new memories associated to autobiographical experience or memory. HIPPOCAMPUS IN 3D

26. HIPPOCAMPUS AND MEMORY Angle circumvolution • The hippocampus forms part of a more complex system, that of the medial temporal lobe which grasps declarative memory (different memories which can be invoked explicitly, like semantic memory, characterised by the storage of specific data such as proper names) Callused body Third ventricle Lateral ventricles Hippocampus Cerebellum Fourth ventricle

27. HIPPOCAMPUS AND MEMORY • The hippocampus stops having a crucial role in the passage from the memory formation period to the memory consolidation period. • Damaging the hippocampus causes difficulties in the formation of new memories and the processing of spatial information. (O´Kane et al. Hippocampus. 2004)

28. SLEEP: HIPPOCAMPUS-CEREBRAL CORTEX CONNECTION Basic movements CONSOLIDATION Precise movements Central fissure Formix Formix Emotions, conduct Motor cortex Knowledge, memory Hippocampus Frontal lobe Parietal lobe Somatosensorial cortex Visual recognition Language (Broca’s area) Occipital lobe Hearing Vision NEURAL NETWORKS Smell Amygdala Muscle and balance coordination Lateral fissure Amygdalae Hippocampus Temporal lobe LATERAL VENTRAL Language (Wernicke’s area)

29. HIPPOCAMPUS AND EMOTIONS • Emotional memories can be formed instantaneously, partly because the hippocampus acts comparing the outer world as it is collected by sensorial systems with the representation that the brain has of that same world. • A sudden change in a situation causes the hippocampus and amygdala to start working together to build conscious memories of the events. (Fraser. 2007)

30. CORTISOL INCREASE AND MEMORY GLUCOCORTICOID CASCADE CEREBRAL CORTEX • The glucocorticoid cascade hypothesis suggests a significant relationship between the cumulative exposure to high levels of these substances (such as cortisol) and the deterioration in the functioning of memory due to atrophy of the hippocampus, an area that is essential for explicit memory as a conscious or voluntary recollection of previous information. (Csernansky et al. Am.J. Psy.2006) HYPOTHALAMUS HYPOPHYSIS ADRENAL GLAND GLUCOCORTICOIDS (CORTISOL)

31. REST AND SLEEP WITHIN THE HEALTHY AGEING STRATEGY • Both the increase in the activity of the hypothalamus adrenal hypophysary axis and the lack of sleep cause the same effect through the glucocorticoid cascade. • Therefore, lack of sleep, the same as emotional tension, impacts similarly on cognitive deterioration with effects such as the loss of certain types of memory and emotional health problems (among others). (Lupien et al. Psychoneuroendocrinology.2005)

32. CORTISOL CONNECTION IN SENIORS In elderly people, cognitive deterioration is produced both by the long-term exposure to cortisol values and by current high levels, thus confirming the hypotheses of memory deterioration due to chronic exposure to these glucocorticoid rates.

33. REST AND SLEEP WITHIN THE HEALTHY AGEING STRATEGY • Montes Rodríguez, C.M.; Rueda Orozco, P.E.; Arteaga Urías, E.; Aguilar Roblero, R.; Prospero García, O. : De la restauración neuronal a la reorganización de los circuitos neuronales: una aproximación a las funciones del sueño. Revista de neurología, ISSN 0210-0010. Vol. 43, No. 7, pp. 409-415. 2006 • Maldonado, E.F.; Carranque, G. C. Med. Psicosom. No. 69/70. pp. 9-13. 2004 • Lupien S.; Fiocco A.; Wan N. et al. Stress Hormones and Human Memory Function across the lifespan. Psychoneuroendocrinology 30(3): 225-242. 2005 • Carskadon M. A;Brown E. D;Dement WC Sleep fragmentation in the elderly: relationship to daytime sleep tendency .Neurobiol.Aging. 321-7. 1982 • Soler A. (2008) Una perspectiva psicosociobiológica aplicada a la Geriatría preventiva: salud, calidad de vida y edad biológica. Doctoral Thesis. 455-493 • Greene G. (2008). Review of “Insomniac”. N.Engl.J.Med 359:13.1412-13 September 2008.

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