CAREER: Functional Brain Networks Mediating Positivity Bias in Healthy Aging

许多重大的社会决策都是在高度不确定的情况下做出的。不确定性的一个来源是基于这样一个事实，即大多数人类交流是非语言的。因此，人们面临着理解非语言信号的任务，这些非语言信号可以被以各种方式解释。举个例子，谈话中沉默的停顿可以传达不适、愤怒、满足、深思或同理心。根据具体情况(工作面试、第一次约会、与老师见面或体检)，一个人解决这种不确定性的能力可能会产生深远的影响。对不确定性的反应还可以揭示情绪处理和应对策略的重要个体差异，这些技能的缺陷可能会对心理和社会功能产生广泛影响。对社会、教育和就业的实际和财政成本是深远的。然而，人们对使我们能够应对和应对不确定性的过程知之甚少。这个职业项目考虑了不同的人如何应对这些极端不确定的情况。与年轻人相比，老年人更有可能乐观，对不确定性有更积极的解释。通过将社会心理学与发展科学、认知神经科学和网络科学相结合，该项目寻求在整个发展过程中更好地理解对不确定性的反应。它的重点是如何解释这些情况，以及大脑功能和连接如何促进特定的反应。一些人在应对不确定性时所经历的负面想法和感受可能会对健康、工作表现和人际关系产生有害的后果。这个项目为开发干预措施来扰乱这些适应不良的过程，从而有利于更有成效的反应奠定了基础。在这个职业项目中，我们测量了年轻人的大脑功能和大脑连通性，以表征个体在价位偏差上的差异的来源，即人们将不确定性解释为具有积极或消极情绪意义的程度。网络分析工具被用来在大脑的基本功能组织和价态偏差之间建立联系，并提供关于大脑功能的可变性的信息，因为它与偏差有关。由于老年人天生倾向于将模棱两可的暗示解释为积极的，因此这项研究检查了老年人相同的大脑功能和连接性指标，以确定这种增强的积极情绪背后的机制。长期目标是探索大脑机制，该机制可以解释当一个人对同一事件做出反应时，另一个人经历负面情绪时，是什么让另一个人体验到积极情绪。这项研究考虑了人们如何学会“做得更好”，以增加幸福感和应对潜在威胁的韧性。这些发现将揭示，随着时间的推移，持有更乐观观点的个人如何学会推翻基本的默认负面情绪，转而以积极的眼光解决不确定性。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Many significant social decisions are made in situations of high uncertainty. One source of uncertainty is based on the fact that most of human communication is nonverbal. As a result, people are faced with the task of understanding nonverbal signals that could be interpreted in a variety of ways. As one example, a silent pause in conversation can communicate discomfort, anger, contentment, thoughtfulness, or empathy. Depending on the context (a job interview, a first date, meeting with a teacher, or a medical exam), one's ability to resolve such uncertainty can have profound consequences. Responses to uncertainty can also reveal important individual differences in emotion processing and coping strategies, and deficiencies in these skills can have widespread effects on mental and social functioning. The practical and financial costs to society, education, and employment are far-reaching. Yet, very little is known about the processes that allow us to cope with and respond to uncertainty. This CAREER project considers the ways in which different people respond to these situations of extreme uncertainty. In comparison to younger adults, older adults are more likely to be optimistic and to have more positive interpretations of uncertainty. By integrating social psychology with developmental science, cognitive neuroscience and network sciences, this project seeks to better understand responses to uncertainty throughout development. It focuses on how these situations are interpreted and on how brain function and connectivity may promote a certain response. The negative thoughts and feelings some individuals experience in response to uncertainty can have deleterious outcomes on health, work performance, and relationships. This project lays the foundation for developing interventions to disrupt these maladaptive processes in favor of more productive responses.In this CAREER project, brain function and brain connectivity are measured in younger adults to characterize the source of individual differences in valence bias, or the extent to which someone interprets uncertainty as having a positive or negative emotional meaning. Network analytic tools are applied to establish a link between the basic functional organization of the brain and valence bias, and to provide information about variability in brain function as it relates to the bias. Because older adults have a natural bias to interpret ambiguous cues as positive, this research examines the same brain function and connectivity measures in older adults to determine the mechanisms underlying this enhanced positivity. The long-term goal is to explore the brain mechanisms that can explain what makes one person experience a positive emotion when another person, in response to the same event, experiences a negative emotion. The research considers how people can learn to "do it better" to increase well-being and resilience in response to potential threats. The findings will shed light on how individuals with a more optimistic view learn, over time, to override a fundamental default negativity and instead resolve uncertainty in a positive light.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.