Aggressiveness may age your brain

Young adults who are aggressive or cope badly with stress have a greater risk of suffering from memory problems decades later in middle age, a new study has revealed.  Swiss and American scientists carried out psychological tests on over 3,000 young men and women born between 1955 and 1968 to assess their levels of hostility, stress, and cognitive ability at the mean age of 25 years.  The study, published in Neurology, found that participants with the highest levels of aggressiveness or who coped badly with stress performed significantly worse on thinking and memory tests 25 years later compared with people who had the lowest levels.  “We found that having a generally unfriendly attitude or managing stress badly could have the same repercussions on cognitive abilities after the age of 50 as the act of ageing ten years can do,” declared Emiliano Albanese, a professor in the Department of Psychiatry at University of Geneva, who took part in the study.  “People do not ...