Affective science (the study of emotions, moods, affect-based pathology and other emotion-related phenomena) has expanded dramatically in recent years, having significant impact in psychology, psychiatry, neurology, and neuroscience. Our training program augments the specialized training predoctoral students receive in their chosen fields with substantive exposure to other traditions and methods within affective science. By sharing didactic, patient case conference, workshop, and other experiences over a three-year period, predoctoral trainees form a cohort group at an early stage of their career that fosters greater familiarity and comfort with clinical issues (mental illness, neuropathology) and stronger professional ties to those from other approaches and disciplines than would occur in traditional training. The multi-university nature of the training program greatly expands the community of affective scientists that trainees meet, learn from, and work with. The training program is built on the view that fostering an appreciation and understanding of the theories, methods, and data from areas beyond one's own area of specialization lays the groundwork for better communication among subspecialties, more interdisciplinary collaborations, and a stronger, more integrative and generative affective science. In this application for a third five years of support, we propose to continue selecting four new predoctoral trainees per year from psychology, neuroscience, and health sciences programs at four Bay Area universities (the Berkeley, Davis, and San Francisco campuses of the University of California and Stanford University). Trainees participate in a three- year training sequence leading up to their dissertation research that includes a year-long core training seminar, a bimonthly patient case conference, visits to training faculty laboratories at the four campuses, specialized workshops, and an annual conference where trainees'research findings are presented and discussed. Close mentoring and monitoring of trainee progress is maintained throughout. We believe that this method of training students has significant societal benefits, which derive from applying knowledge derived from basic affective science to a range of public health issues including: (a) mental health and illness;(b) physical health and disease;(c) attachment, loyalty, and relationship quality;(d) well-being;(e) addictions;(f) violence;(g) treatment design and evaluation;and (h) inter-group conflict and communication.
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