The overarching goal of my program of research is to understand how close relationships influence cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. Marital quality has shown consistent associations with a diverse array of physical health outcomes, including cardiovascular disease (CVD) morbidity and mortality. However, the mechanisms underlying the health effects of marriages remain poorly understood. Sleep is a fundamental health behavior that has significant effects on physiology and well-being and is typically a behavior that is """"""""shared"""""""" between married partners. However, scant research has considered the degree to which couples'sleeping behavior interacts with relationship functioning and importantly, the degree to which this interaction contributes to cardiovascular health. The training and research plan will provide the candidate with the necessary knowledge and skills to conduct cutting-edge, transdisciplinary research that examines the interaction of relationship functioning and sleep on psychological and physiological risk factors relevant to cardiovascular risk, including daily mood, daytime and nocturnal ambulatory blood pressure responses, and inflammatory biomarkers. The proposed research involves a multi-modal assessment of relationship functioning, including daily diaries and observer-coded marital behaviors, to provide a richer analysis of how positive and negative marital behaviors influence these cardiovascular risk markers. In addition, the study includes daily diaries of sleep quality and objective assessments of sleep (using actigraphy) to provide ah ecologically valid assessment of how couples'sleeping behavior interacts with relationship functioning and ultimately is linked with cardiovascular risk markers. The cohort will include 42 married couples. To achieve the goals of this research plan and to establish myself as a leading researcher in the study of relationships, sleep, and cardiovascular health, I require further training in the following areas: 1) observational methodologies for measuring dyadic behaviors;2) neurobiological and cognitive bases for healthy sleep and sleep disturbance;3) emerging cardiovascular biomarkers, including nocturnal blood pressure dipping, and inflammatory markers;and 4) advanced statistical techniques. The investment in this candidate and the efforts of the proposed research plan will contribute to our understanding of how and why some relationships may be cardio-protective whereas others may confer increased cardiovascular risk.
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