The underlying feeling of nostalgia is a longing for one’s homeland and a desire to return home. The condition was first described in 1688 by Swiss physician Johannes Hofer to refer to the strange behavior and malaise of soldiers in war. Among the symptoms suffered by the military were tachycardia, bouts of crying, insomnia, anxiety and fear. At the time, Hofer defined nostalgia as “a neurological disorder due to demonic causes.” Since then, it has been interpreted by researchers in various ways: as, for example, a “brain disease,” an “immigrant psychosis,” a pathological form of melancholy, or a mental disorder that causes intolerable sadness and impairs mental clarity. However, in 1979, American sociologist Fred Davis gave a new and broader definition of nostalgia – it is a sentimental longing for people, places or situations that made a person happy in the past. Since that time, researchers have sought to prove that nostalgia is not a disease or negative condition, but instead can provide invaluable benefits to a person’s health and well-being. Nostalgia “makes us more human,” says Dr. Constantine Sedikides, a professor at the University of Southampton (UK). Experts from different parts of the world, using the “Southampton Nostalgia Scale”, give the former “brain disease” an acquittal.

Modern neuroimaging techniques have helped answer this question. Japanese scientist Kentaro Oba and his team decided to test which areas of the brain would be activated if a person looked at childhood photos. As expected, at this time activated the hippocampus – the area of the brain that is responsible for storing memories. But, in addition, it turned out that the ventral striatum – the brain area responsible for the feeling of reward – was also working. It becomes clear why indulging in memories is so pleasurable. The past tends to seem like a happier time to a person. Brian Urbik, director of the UK Consumer Knowledge Center, put forward the theory of “rosy retrospection”: people do not just imagine their past bright and cloudless, but because the brain is programmed to erase from memory heavy, painful moments. Thus, the tendency to nostalgia may be an adaptive mechanism. Indeed, if women remembered labor pains, for example, it is likely that many would not dare to do it again. That nostalgia feels good to a person is understandable. But what benefits does it bring? The following studies have confirmed that it can have a powerful effect on human health.

Boost your mood and become happier. In an experiment conducted by psychologists from Southampton, it is shown that the experience of reliving nostalgia is very common. Of the 172 students surveyed, 79% claimed to have had nostalgic thoughts at least once a week, while 16% reported having such moments every day. And there’s a reason why people tend to have these thoughts: nostalgia is definitely useful. To prove this, psychologists deliberately spoiled the participants’ mood by letting them read articles about tragic events and reporting supposedly bad results of a psychological test taken the day before. This sent the subjects into a depressed state, after which they indulged in nostalgia, which made them feel better. Psychological tests showed that sessions of pleasant memories reduced feelings of loneliness, increased self-esteem, mood and level of happiness. Thus, the scientists concluded that nostalgia produces happier moods and a sense of well-being. Photo: www.studio7.md Increase the sense of optimism. In another study by scientists from the mentioned university, it was demonstrated that nostalgic memories can increase a person’s sense of optimism. In the first experiment, the authors asked participants to recall an event that evoked bittersweet emotions and describe it. Another group had to describe an emotionally neutral event. Content analysis of the texts showed that the number of words expressing optimism and positive emotions was higher in the first group than in the second. In another experiment, participants listened to different melodies – nostalgic and neutral. Then they had to evaluate their emotional state. The test results showed that people who listened to music and immersed themselves in memories had a significantly higher level of optimism. The authors of the study also note that nostalgia can “activate” past positive experiences and project them into the future, forming an optimistic mood. Photo: all-rf.com To warm you up in a cold room. Music can bring the past to life just as well as smells. In an article published in the journal Emotion, Dr. Sedikides and his colleagues describe how listening to tracks from the past not only makes you feel warmer in your soul – but throughout your body. One study involved 1,070 volunteers between the ages of 12 and 68. The results of complex statistical analyses showed that music-induced nostalgia helped to raise body temperature and warm up in a cold room. Take away stress. According to psychologists at Rutgers University, happy memories can reduce stress levels by 85%. The experiment involved 134 volunteers who were divided into two groups. One was asked to immerse their hands in cold water and recall past events that evoke light emotions, while the other was asked to also dip their hands, but think about neutral events. The researchers found that participants in the first group felt calmer compared to the second, and also recorded lower levels of cortisol, a stress hormone. Brain scans showed that those who recalled happy moments from the past had increased activity in neural circuits related to reward and emotion processing. Beat depression. Scientists from the University of Massachusetts have found that pleasant memories can beat depression. In their study, they gave laboratory mice dates, and memories of the pleasantly spent time were stored in the animals’ brains. The rodents were then subjected to prolonged stress, which eventually led to depression. However, when the cells responsible for positive memories were activated in them, the depression went away for a while and the animals behaved as if nothing bad had happened. Five days later, after regular 15-minute manipulations with the cells, the depression completely disappeared: they formed new neurons in the hippocampus (the area of the brain responsible for storing memories), and also activated the neural chain linking the hippocampus, the amygdala (the center of emotion formation) and the contiguous nucleus (the pleasure center), which together gave an antidepressant effect. Improve social connections. Bright memories of the past can enhance feelings of social engagement. In an experiment conducted in collaboration with Sun Yat-sen University in Guangzhou, China, Chinese students served as subjects. One group was asked to recall events that evoked a pleasant longing for the past, while the other group was asked to recall insignificant events. The participants then had to rate how much support family members and friends had given them during those times. The results showed that a simple nostalgia session was enough to make people more confident in the support of their loved ones. Researchers from North Dakota State University confirmed the same with a regression analysis: nostalgia increased the sense of social connectedness in American students. After the subjects reminisced about the past, they completed a questionnaire about their social relationships: answering questions about, for example, whether there was someone to talk to about important decisions, or whether close relationships gave a sense of security, or whether there was a sense of being part of a group). Compared to the control group, participants who recalled the past before the survey showed greater social engagement. Overcome the fear of death. In addition, memories of the past help to get rid of negative moods in the future, in particular they reduce the fear of death. Researchers from North Dakota State University and Southampton University recruited two groups of volunteers: the first group needed to recall pleasant past events, and the second group needed to recall a neutral event. For the next stage of the test, the participants were shuffled among themselves and given a new task: one group had to answer two questions about death in writing (“What emotions does the thought of your own death evoke?”, “What happens to your body after you die?”), and the second group had to write about how they had once failed an important test. In the third step, all participants had to complete a psychological task that tested their level of preoccupation with the issue of death. The researchers offered them a fragment of the word “coff”, which had to be supplemented with another fragment so that the word with a negative or neutral coloring – “coffin” (coffin) or “coffee” (coffee). It turned out that those subjects who were not nostalgic and thought about death made up the word “coffin” with negative stylistic coloring. People who before the writing task about death recalled pleasant events, composed “coffee” – with neutral coloring. Thus, the authors concluded that nostalgia can protect the mind from heavy thoughts about death and future psychological attacks. Making life easier in dementia. Researchers from several UK universities conducted a series of experiments involving elderly people with dementia. In the first, the participants were divided into two groups: one was asked to recall an event from the past, which causes them sentimental pleasant longing, the other – to remember an ordinary event that does not cause emotions. The scientists then tested the psychological state of the participants using a special nostalgia scale, which revealed such indicators as self-esteem, level of independence, social connections, the presence of meaning in life, the level of optimism, and emotional health. Statistical analysis of the data showed that volunteers in the “nostalgia group” reported higher levels of psychological well-being. In another experiment, scientists turned on music to people with dementia that evoked feelings of nostalgia. Here too, the results confirmed that memories have a positive effect on patients: they had higher levels of social activity, optimism, autonomy and other indicators of psychological health. Thus, the researchers concluded that nostalgia can help people suffering from senile dementia, as memories can energize patients to cope with the threatening condition. A meta-analysis of 47 studies performed by researchers from the University of West Anglia in 2018, which included a total of 5,043 participants, summarized most of the available evidence on the impact of nostalgia on quality of life in dementia. Experts confirmed the therapeutic potential of nostalgia: lucid memories of the past can be a good resource for psychological health. Scientists from Japan conducted a study involving elderly people suffering from moderate to severe dementia. The specialists wanted to check what sounds surrounding them in the present, as well as those that should have been familiar to them in the past, could activate their memory. Participants were given different sounds – such as birds singing, a waterfall, rain, bees buzzing, the sound of kitchen utensils, burning wood, a temple gong, musical instruments and more – and volunteers had to guess what they had just heard and name the association. Some were guessed fairly easily (birds chirping or rain), and some were recognized only by women (the sound of pots). But it turned out that what the elderly recognized best were those sounds that were once very familiar to them. For example, one of the patients, as she herself admitted, was very fond of holiday festivals as a child, and when the sound of a flute was turned on, it reminded her of that, and she began to sing the old song “Village Feast”. The findings can be used to develop specific therapies that could improve memory function in people with dementia. Literature Gebauer J., Sedikides C. “Yearning for Yesterday.” Davis F. “Yearning for yesterday: A sociology of Nostalgia”. Photo: photocentra.ru