Emotion-Cognition Interactions and Aging

描述（由候选人提供）：随着人类年龄的增长，他们的认知和情感生活出现了分化：认知功能的重要方面（即工作记忆、处理速度）稳步下降，而情感功能似乎有所改善。纵观对衰老的心理学研究历史，人们更重视调查老年人的认知缺陷，而不是情绪增强。尤其缺乏对这些轨迹相互作用的实证研究。这个特殊的项目将通过研究衰老大脑和年轻大脑对情绪面部表情的神经处理有何不同，来研究老年人情绪生活变化的神经基础（实验1）。此外，该应用程序将研究这些神经变化如何在行为水平和神经水平上与注意过程相互作用（实验2和3）。了解情绪信息的神经加工过程中与年龄相关的变化以及这些变化如何与认知加工相互作用，对心理衰老研究和干预至关重要。这一应用不仅将对心理衰老和认知情感神经科学领域做出重大贡献，而且在认知情感干预和培训计划方面也有可能影响临床老年学的研究。

DESCRIPTION (provided by candidate): As humans age, their cognitive and emotional lives diverge: important aspects of cognitive functioning (viz., working memory, processing speed) steadily decline whereas emotional functioning appears to improve. Throughout the history of psychological inquiry into aging, a greater emphasis has been placed on investigating the cognitive deficits of older adults than emotional enhancement. Especially lacking is empirical research focused on the interaction of these trajectories. This particular project will examine the neural substrates of changes in the emotional lives of older adults by examining how the neural processing of emotional facial expressions differs in the aging brain from the young brain (Experiment 1). In addition, this application will investigate how these neural changes interact with attentional processes on a behavioral level as well as a neural level (Experiments 2 & 3). Understanding age-related changes in the neural processing of emotional information and how these changes interact with cognitive processing is critical to psychological aging research as well as interventions. This application will not only make significant contributions to the fields of psychological aging and cognitive-affective neuroscience, but also has the potential to impact research in clinical gerontology with respect to cognitive-affective interventions and training programs.