ANTERIOR CINGULATE ACTIVATION IN GERIATRIC DEPRESSION

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This proposal is for a K23 Patient-Oriented Mentored Scientist Award. The applicant is a clinical neuropsychologist with research training and publications on structural and functional MRI correlates of aging. The goal of the proposal is to support the applicant's growth into an independent investigator, whose research focuses on the neurobiology of geriatric depression, using cognitive and affective neuroscience approaches. Neuropsychological, electrophysiology, and structural MRI findings suggest that anterior cingulate (ACC) dysfunction contributes to the pathogenesis of late-life depression and some of these abnormalities even influence the response of depression to treatment. fMRI offers a more direct approach to investigate ACC dysfunction that may underlie cognitive and affective disturbance in late-life depression. The training and research proposed in this application aims to prepare the applicant to become an effective independent investigator in the neurobiology of late-late mood disorders. Coursework, seminars, tutorials, collaborative studies, and paper writing all were planned with the goal of giving the applicant substantive knowledge in the cognitive and affective neuroscience of depression, skills in fMRI task development and data analysis, and training in clinical trials methodology. The training environment (Weill Cornell Institute of Geriatric Psychiatry) is a Center with findings and a research agenda focused on the role of ACC in geriatric depression and thus would be fertile ground for the applicant's growth. Mentors and experts from Cornell, NIMH, Harvard, University of Pennsylvania, and NKI were selected with complementary expertise in areas relevant to the applicant's training needs. The training experience was designed in a way that the applicant has the opportunity to benefit maximally from interaction with her mentors. Moreover, the applicant will pursue a research project that can function as the training ground for accomplishing her educational aims. The project will use neurobehavioral probes to elicit activation of the ACC in geriatric depressed patients and age-matched comparison subjects. The project hypothesizes that 1) In both groups, cognitive interference conditions and negatively valenced word conditions will elicit differential activation of the ACC; 2) In response to cognitive and emotional probes, activation in the dorsal and perigenual ACC will distinguish geriatric depressed patients from comparison subjects.