The objective of this proposal is to support the candidate's development of skills necessary to perform functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) research to investigate the role of the orbitofrontal cortex in social and emotional functioning. The training component includes the mentored development of skills in optimizing blood oxygenation level-dependent (BOLD) signal in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) in healthy participants, neuroradiology assessment of circumscribed brain lesions, and the introduction of neuropsychological patients with OFC damage into the fMRI environment. Damage to the OFC causes emotion dysregulation and socially inappropriate behavior. The acquired skills will allow for the investigation of neural mechanisms of emotion processing with and without the neural input of the OFC. The research plan proposes to investigate behavioral and neural mechanisms of three primary emotion processes: 1) inhibition of irrelevant emotional material; 2) the effect of emotional valence (positive vs. negative) on inhibition of emotional material; 3) the influence of mood-state on attention and judgment. Through complementary behavioral and fMRI methods, these studies will demonstrate the neural mechanisms involved in emotion regulation, including the neural dynamics of orbitofrontal cortex mediation of cortical and sub-cortical brain regions in healthy individuals and the reorganization of these dynamics after orbitofrontal damage. This research is crucial to the understanding of affective symptoms across a variety of neurological and psychological disorders. Orbitofrontal cortex mediation of emotion processing is under-researched and poorly understood because methodological constraints of traditional neuroimaging and difficulties establishing a patient cohort. The University of California at Berkeley provides the perfect training environment as it has a multidisciplinary group of researchers working on advanced fMRI techniques, as well as an established cohort of patients with OFC damage. The proposed research and training plan will provide highly specialized training for the candidate and facilitate the development of a neurobiological model of social and emotional functioning that can be applied with specific hypotheses across a spectrum of neurological and psychological disorders.
