The overall goal of this grant is to continue supporting the multidisciplinary Scientific Research Network on Decision Neuroscience and Aging. The integrative emerging area that this grant will support combines the strengths of several fields including psychology, neuroscience, and economics to facilitate rapid scientific progress and directly contribute to the development of effective interventions and policies to improve health and well being across the life span. Over five years this network grant will support scientific meetings, intensive training workshops for researchers at all stages, collaboration and mentorship initiatives, and pilot grant competitions for researchers new to the field. These activities will directly support the growth, development, and sustainability of the decision neuroscience of aging. This grant will support growth of the network through dissemination activities. Scientific meetings will increase awareness of the latest findings with the goal of drawing new researchers into the area and encouraging new collaborations. A small grant competition will encourage scientists to join the area and will stimulate new research through small scale pilots. This network grant will support development of the area through methods workshops and an outside mentorship program. Short, intensive workshops will focus on training researchers at all stages in the collection and analysis of various emerging behavioral (e.g., health-related, social, economic) and biological (e.g., neurochemical, genetic, hormonal) measures. The development of these skills is currently difficult to achieve in traditional single discipline training programs, but will be essential for taking advantage of the growing number of large multivariate and multi-level integrative datasets generated by this area in the future. In general the network will focus on investing in the sustainability of this field by ensuring that graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and junior and senior faculty are invited to participate in all activities. Workshops, meetings, small pilot grants, and collaboration initiatives will facilitate the transition from a small group of individuals managing network activities to a strong field of researchers leading future work in this area. After completion of activities, this emerging area will be in better position for network members to pursue funding to support the network in the future using more traditional mechanisms.
Relevance As the proportion of older adults in the population continues to expand, magnifying the relative impact of their decisions, it is increasingly imperative to better understand changes in decision making across the life span. The recent, rapid rise in interdisciplinary research combining psychology, neuroscience, and economics has tremendous potential for increasing translation of science for real-world impact. The long-term goal of this network is to conduct integrative and multidisciplinary research that contributes directly to interventions aimed at improving health and well being in the daily lives of aging adults.
