E’VE ALL FELT THAT JAB TO THE SOUL YOU
get from driving by your old high school haunts or
hearing a tune you once danced to. But why is that
bittersweet sort of reminiscence so universal?
Modern neuroscientists and psychologists know
that a healthy dose of nostalgia is good for you, at
least if you’re recalling happy days. But there was no sweet-
ness to cut the bitter sensation in 1688, when Johannes Hofer
coined the word in his medical dissertation. A combination of
the Greek words nostos, or homecoming, and algos, or pain, it
was a special type of homesickness associated with soldiers
fighting far-off wars—and doctors feared it could kill.
Seventeenth-century physicians like Hofer worried such
thoughts depleted a patient’s “vital spirits,” draining their en-
ergy and putting health at risk, says Susan J. Matt, a profes-
sor of history at Weber State University. In the 19th century,
doctors debated whether nostalgia was a disease in its own
right or something that exacerbated other conditions common
among troops, like dysentery. Either way, they believed it could
cause irregular heartbeat, fever, and, in rare cases, death.
Our opinion of nostalgia has evolved since then, but the
phenomenon still eludes understanding. “It’s a very mixed
emotion,” says Frederick Barrett, a cognitive neuroscientist
at Johns Hopkins University. That makes it hard to shoehorn
into existing psychological theory, which typically catego-
rizes emotions as either positive or negative. And triggers—
the cars, chords, or smells that blast you into the past—are
extremely personal. When one person’s trash is another’s sen-
timental treasure, designing a standardized study is difficult.
But we do know nostalgia has a marked effect on us:
Imaging studies show us that these experiences have their
own neural signature. In 2016, Barrett reported that meaning-
ful musical cues changed the activity of the substantia nigra, a
reward processing center that makes the happy hormone do-
pamine. That same year, neuroscientists in Japan published
their own study, which argues that the emotion is co-produced
by the brain’s recall and reward systems. They found that nos-
talgic images tax the memory-managing hippocampus more
than other sights, as people mine autobiographical details
deep in the past. This mental effort pays off: As the hippocam-
pus activates, so too does the ventral striatum, another of the
brain’s dopaminergic reward centers.
That longing for the past might be a protective mechanism,
says Tim Wildschut, a professor of social and personality psy-
chology at the University of Southampton in England. Since
2001, he and his colleagues have generated a growing body of
evidence that individuals more prone to nostalgia are generally
more likely to socialize, feel empathy, and find life meaning-
ful. But their work also suggests a more primitive purpose for
the feeling: The same neurology that makes us long for peo-
ple and places we’ve left behind may have evolved to remind
our ancient ancestors of pleasant physical sensations during
periods of discomfort and pain. In a 2012 study in the journal
Emotion, Wildschut’s team showed that lower temperatures
make us more nostalgic, and that nostalgia makes us feel
toasty even when we’re objectively colder—a bit of magical
thinking that could help people persevere in situations that
might otherwise feel hopeless. If remembering the warmth
of the cave you last called home could trick you into feeling a
little less freezing, you might just keep moving long enough to
find shelter before your body starts to shut down.
In the modern era of sweaters and central heating, research
suggests that the occasional look backward can also give us a
life-affirming boost in more-subtle ways: by increasing self-
esteem and protecting against depression. Clay Routledge,
a social psychologist at North Dakota State University, con-
ducted some of the earliest experimental studies on reminisc-
ing as a mechanism for emotional self-regulation. “We’re in
this campaign for some sort of meaning in life,” Routledge
says. When you feel anxious or inconsequential, memories can
be a source of comfort. “These cherished experiences we’ve
accumulated across time make our lives seem meaningful,”
he says. Feeling nostalgic helps us access them.
Sentimentality’s apparent power to jump-start one’s
memory also seems to improve recall ability in people with
Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. In 2011, Mary
Mittelman, a researcher at New York University Langone
Health’s department of psychiatry, founded the Unforgetta-
bles, a chorus for people with dementia in New York City.
When the ensemble performs familiar tunes—think classic
songs like “Ol’ Man River”— participants, even some who
struggle with regular speech, start to sing along. Some cli-
nicians are trying to fold retro audio into formal dementia
care, with curated playlists and personalized concerts put on
by music therapists for patients and their families.
New flavors of this sort of “reminiscence therapy” are
emerging around the world. In 2018, London-based startup
Virtue Health launched the virtual reality app LookBack,
which allows headset- wearing users to visit memorable lo-
cations around the world, or just take a walk on a familiar
beach. That same year, the George G. Glenner Alzheimer’s
Family Centers opened its first Town Square, an adult day-
care facility designed to look like a small town in 1950s
America. Though LookBack and Town Square have yet
to publish peer-reviewed data on the success of their pro-
grams, clients say the projects have helped seniors access
dusty memories and reconnect with loved ones.
Scientists need a lot more information to adequately
characterize this complex and bittersweet human sentiment.
But while centuries of doctors considered nostalgia a deadly
disease, we now know how wrong they were: Our longing for
a lost time can help us make it through today.BY ELEANOR CUMMINSPOPSCI.COM / SPRING 2020 27