Emotion and Age--Reaction, Regulation and Understanding

描述(由申请人提供)：社会情绪功能在整个生命周期中发挥着核心作用，是成功老龄化的主要因素。虽然老年人在许多心理和生理领域都会出现失落，但情感似乎是一个相对幸免的功能领域。在这项由父母资助的竞争性修订研究中，我们正在使用横断面和纵向设计来研究不同年龄段的社会情绪功能。在竞争性修订中，我们建议扩大这项工作的范围，以考虑年龄组内社会情绪功能的四个方面的个体差异的来源：(A)情绪反应，(B)情绪调节，(C)情绪理解，和(D)长期婚姻中的情绪。我们将通过研究社会情绪功能这些方面的客观、精确测量的行为和生理标记物与参与神经递质和神经递质调节的基因的特征良好的多态之间的关系来检验这些变异的遗传贡献。 与社会情绪功能高度相关的神经肽：(A)儿茶酚-o-甲基转移酶(COMT)基因，b)5-羟色胺转运体(5-HTT)基因，(C)加压素受体1a基因(AVPR1a)，以及(D)催产素受体基因(OXTR)。这项拟议的研究通过探索年龄组中社会情绪功能的个体差异，并通过研究这些基因与行为的关系，扩大了父母补助的范围。 公共卫生相关性：这项研究项目考察了情绪功能和社会功能，这两者都与身心健康密切相关。对老年人的情绪和社会功能进行了研究，他们身体健康问题的风险更高。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Socio-emotional functioning plays a central role throughout the life-span and is a major factor in successful aging. Whereas losses are seen in many psychological and physical domains in old age, emotion appears to be an area of functioning that is relatively spared. In research supported by the parent grant for this competitive revision, we are studying socio-emotional functioning in different age groups using both cross-sectional and longitudinal designs. In the competitive revision, we propose to expand the scope of this work to consider sources of individual differences within age groups in four aspects of socio-emotional functioning: (a) emotional reactivity, (b) emotion regulation, (c) emotional understanding, and (d) emotion in long-term marriage. We will examine genetic contributions to these variations by studying relationships between objective, precisely measured behavioral and physiological markers of these aspects of socio-emotional functioning and well-characterized polymorphisms of genes involved in the regulation of neurotransmitters and neuropeptides that are highly relevant to socio-emotional functioning: (a) the catechol-o-methyl transferase (COMT) gene, b) the serotonin transporter (5-HTT) gene, (c) the vasopressin receptor 1a gene (AVPR1A), and (d) the oxytocin receptor gene (OXTR). The proposed research expands the scope of the parent grant by exploring individual differences within age groups in socio-emotional functioning and by studying these gene-behavior relationships. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: This research project examines emotional functioning and social functioning, both of which are intimately connected to physical and mental health. Emotional and social functioning are studied in older adults, who are at heightened risk for physical health problems.