The purpose of this K01 Career Development Award is to support the candidate's training in the field of cognitive neuroscience of aging; specificall the research in this application will advance knowledge of the relationship between cognitive aging and executive control over responses to emotional and non- emotional information. Poor control over responses to negative emotional information and biased attention toward negative information are thought to be the root of affective disorders like depression and anxiety. These concerns are especially relevant in the face of known age-related decreases in executive control and inhibition that arise as a result of the cognitive aging process. Despite the relevance of effective cognitive and emotional inhibition to successful aging, to date there has been no research examining associated neural mechanisms in healthy older adults, and no investigation of their relationship to structural white or grey matter markers. The proposed cross-sectional study in healthy older adults takes the approach of employing a task that incorporates both emotional and non-emotional response inhibition in an fMRI scanner. This research will examine the neural mechanisms related to healthy older adults' ability to exert control over cognitive and emotional processing, as well as the relationship of task-related neural networks to neural networks active at rest and to structural markers of cognitive aging. This work will facilitate thecandidate's short-term goals to: a) develop tasks to systematically test the behavioral and neural mechanisms underlying effective inhibition of responses to emotional (positive and negative) stimuli; b) to examine the relationship between task-related and resting-state neural connectivity in older adults; and c) to identify how age-related changes in white matter integrity and grey matter volume mediate the relationship between the neural markers and behavioral responses of inhibition to emotional and non-emotional stimuli. The proposed research takes an integrated, innovative approach: it applies a state of the art paradigm to study the impact of cognitive control over emotional information in a cognitive aging framework, with an appreciation of individual differences in cognition and wellbeing. This appliocation is directly in line with th NIA Behavioral and Systems Neuroscience Branch, Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience Section's mission to employ advanced technologies to study age-related changes in the structural and functional pathways necessary for proficient cognitive and emotional functioning. This research will facilitate disambiguation of the relationship between impaired cognitive and emotional control in late-life. It will also enable identification of target mechanisms for neurobehavioral interventions in those who have ineffective or insufficient emotion regulation in late life. The proposed integrated program of research, mentorship and didactic training, combined with the outstanding research environment at Stanford University will foster the candidate's long-term career objective to be an independent investigator studying the interaction of cognitive and emotional processes in late life.
This Career Development Award aims to increase our knowledge of the interplay between cognitive and emotional processes in the elderly. My career goal is to identify potential targets of remediation and training for older adults who have poor control over responses to emotional information; and provide insights for my longer-term research studying the trajectory of declining cognitive and emotional control in late life. To achieve these goals; the present study in healthy older adults takes a multi-modal approach to characterizing the relationship among brain networks needed for emotional or cognitive control; intrinsically active networks; and structural markers of cognitive aging.
| Greif, Taylor R; Waring, Jill D (2018) Emotional Contrast and Psychological Function Impact Response Inhibition to Threatening Faces. Motiv Emot 42:920-930 |
