Nostalgia can be toxic to our minds. Here’s why.

There’s neuroscience behind the pitfalls of nostalgia and sentimentalism — so don’t fall for the trap.

Nostalgia isn’t as blissful as we usually think it is. But why do we become nostalgic? And why do so many of us get stuck there?

There are many reasons for nostalgia — a yearning for the past as an experience to compare the present to. The concept of nostalgia is analogous to bygone moments and for many, positive reinforcement of “a happier time”. Personal moments that resonate and figuratively travel through time — a wistfulness and yet most likely — sadness.

Nostalgia originally meant ‘homesick’. Its etymology has familiar components in Ancient Greek: the word “nostos” meaning ‘to go back home’ and “algos” which translates a little more specifically as personal, emotional pain.

A recent study by David Newman at the USC Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences found nostalgia was most closely linked to sadness and even depression symptoms within the brain — if the nostalgia was unprompted. Yet, when we make ourselves reminisce, we tend to otherwise have a more positive experience.