Medical News Today spoke with Mara Mather about the emotional regulation of older individuals. “A concern I have is that readers may get the impression that older adults, in general, are worse than younger adults at managing their emotion. … To the contrary, previous research indicates that emotional well-being typically improves through adulthood, with the lowest emotional well-being seen among young adults. And in the current study, the older adults felt more empathy and positive emotions when viewing the pictures than younger adults,” she noted. “The brain patterns that the authors focus on do not relate to these age-related positivity effects. Instead, they are associated with individual differences among these older adults.”