Understanding cognitive mechanisms of emotion regulation in aging

了解衰老过程中情绪调节的认知机制

• 批准号: 8422427
• 负责人: KEVIN N OCHSNER
• 金额: $ 48.07万
• 依托单位: COLUMBIA UNIV NEW YORK MORNINGSIDE
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 财政年份: 2013
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2013-06-15 至 2018-05-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/8422427
• 关键词: Adult; Affective; Age; Aging; American; Amygdaloid structure; Behavior; Behavior Control; Behavior Therapy; Behavioral; Brain; Chronic; Circadian Rhythms; Cognitive; Corpus striatum structure; Data; Development; Elderly; Elements; Emotional; Emotions; Event; Exhibits; Face; Fostering; Freedom; Functional Imaging; Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging; Goals; Health; Holocaust survivor; Impaired cognition; Impairment; Individual; Investigation; Lateral; Lead; Life Cycle Stages; Longevity; Measures; Medial; Modeling; Neurobiology; Neurosciences Research; Participant; Pathway interactions; Personal Satisfaction; Population; Principal Investigator; Process; Psyche structure; Regulation; Reporting; Risk; Source; Staging; Stimulus; Stress; Suggestion; Support System; System; Testing; Variant; age group; age related; aged; coping; design; emotion regulation; flexibility; gaze; imaging modality; mortality; neural model; neuromechanism; positive emotional state; premature; programs; psychologic; public health relevance; relating to nervous system; research study; response; skills; social; success; therapy development; young adult

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): As the baby boomers grow into older adulthood, the number of Americans aged 65+ rises 175% over the next twenty years when older adults will comprise ~20% of the population by the year 2030. As such, understanding the psychological and neural mechanisms supporting their emotional health and well-being is of the utmost importance. Happily, while cognitive abilities decline, older adults report more positive emotion in their daily lives and preferentially attend to and remember positive stimuli and events. Exactly why older adults exhibit these positivity biases is not yet clear, however. Among the possible reasons, how older adults regulate their emotion has been advanced as a potentially key factor in need of further investigation. Evidence suggests that older adults have chronically activated goals to regulate their emotion and effectively use strategies that influence the situations in which they place themselves, how they attend to them, and how their emotions manifest in overt behavior. However, one can't - and perhaps shouldn't - always try to avoid, modify, ignore or suppress expressive responses to the stressful health/mortality-related situations that become frequent in older age. Another regulatory option would be to use reappraisal, a cognitive strategy whereby changing one's interpretation of events changes one's emotional responses to them. Reappraisal is among the most effective and beneficial regulatory strategies for maintaining mental, physical and social health. Unfortunately, it isn't yet clear whether older adults are adept at using reappraisal, and what psychological and neural mechanisms determine their level of reappraisal skill. Of the few studies focusing on reappraisal in aging, some suggest impairment and others do not. Here we use fMRI to systematically examine whether, when and why older adults are effective at reappraisal. As such, this proposal responds directly to FOA PAR- 11-337's's call for applications that examine social, affective and cognitive behaviors of relevance to aging at the behavioral, psychological and neurobiological levels. Guided by a model of the neural systems supporting effective reappraisal in young adults, we will test hypotheses about the contexts where reappraisal ability could be impaired - or intact - in aging. We hypothesize that the extent to which an older adult can effectively reappraise depends on two kinds of factors, each a focus of one of our Specific Aims. Under Aim 1 we will conduct two experiments examining the extent to which older adults ability to reappraise depends on specific cognitive processes involved in the reappraisal strategies/tactics that are deployed. Under Aim 2 we will conduct two more experiments asking how older adults ability to reappraise depends on their goals to decrease or increase emotion, and whether their chronic regulatory goals lead them to effectively initiate regulation on their own. Together, these studies could have important implications for understanding both normal and abnormal emotional health in older age and foster development of interventions that enhance well- being and the ability to cope with the stress associated with the physical and cognitive decline of older age.

描述（由申请人提供）：随着婴儿潮一代的成长，年龄在65岁以上的美国人的数量在未来20年中上升了175％，当时老年人到2030年将占人口的约20％。因此，了解了支持其情感健康和幸福感的心理和神经机制，这是最重要的。令人高兴的是，尽管认知能力下降，但老年人在日常生活中报告了更多积极的情绪，并优先考虑并记住积极的刺激和事件。确切地 但是，为什么老年人表现出这些阳性偏见尚不清楚。在可能的原因中，老年人如何调节自己的情绪是需要进一步研究的潜在关键因素。有证据表明，老年人已经长期激活目标来调节自己的情绪，并有效地使用影响自己所处情况，如何参加他们的情况以及他们的情绪如何在公开行为中表现出来的策略。但是，人们不能 - 也许不应该 - 始终尝试避免，修改，忽略或抑制对压力性健康/死亡率相关的压力与年龄相关的情况的表达反应。另一个监管选择是使用重新评估，这是一种认知策略，改变人们对事件的解释改变了人们对它们的情感反应。重新评估是维持精神，身体和社会健康的最有效和最有益的监管策略之一。不幸的是，尚不清楚老年人是否擅长使用重新评估，以及哪些心理和神经机制决定了重新评估技能的水平。在少数关注衰老重新评估的研究中，有些人建议损害和其他研究。在这里，我们使用fMRI系统地检查老年人是否有效重新评估。因此，该提案直接响应了FOA 11-337的呼吁，呼吁在行为，心理和神经生物学水平上检查与衰老相关的社会，情感和认知行为。在支持年轻人有效重新评估的神经系统模型的指导下，我们将测试有关在衰老中可能会受损或完整的背景下的假设。我们假设老年人可以有效重新评估的程度取决于两种因素，每种因素都是我们特定目标之一的重点。在AIM 1下，我们将进行两个实验，以研究老年人重新评估的能力取决于重新评估策略/策略所涉及的特定认知过程的程度。在AIM 2下，我们将进行另外两个实验，询问老年人重新评估的能力如何取决于他们的目标减少或增加情绪，以及他们的长期监管目标是否导致他们自行有效地启动监管。在一起，这些 研究可能对了解老年的正常和异常情绪健康以及促进干预措施的发展具有重要意义 年龄。