Individual differences in early autonomic nervous system activity

 描述(申请人提供)：为什么有些人在平静的生活海洋中漂浮，而另一些人却不断地坐着情绪过山车？为什么一些情绪敏感的婴儿长大后会变得平静，以人为中心的成年人，而另一些人仍然不稳定？关于情绪生活中变异的起源和持久性的问题是精神病学和发展科学中最重要的问题之一。这项拟议研究的目标是调查婴儿在一个对情绪生活至关重要的系统--自主神经系统--中的变异。为此，我们将量化自主神经系统(ANS)的两个分支--副交感神经系统(PNS)和交感神经系统(SNS)--活动的自发变化。PNS和SNS的活动在不同的人之间是高度不同的，它们共同维持动态平衡，被认为赋予刺激环境以情感意义，并与健康和病理性情感体验的变化有关。变异似乎至少在儿童早期就表现出来了，但我们不知道在婴儿期ANS功能中存在多少变异，早期ANS变异是否与其他行为或生物学表型有关，在整个发育过程中变异有多稳定，以及是什么预测了它的稳定性。拟议的研究将填补这些知识空白。我们建议在婴儿完成对其行为表型和生物学特征的标准化评估后记录ANS活动，作为生物行为评估计划(BBA；OD010962)的一部分。然后，我们将评估已建立的行为表型(例如，气质)和生物标记物(例如，血浆皮质醇水平、C反应蛋白水平；5-羟色胺和单胺氧化酶A启动子基因型)的变化是否预测ANS活性，以及变化是否在生命的第一年保持稳定。这项拟议研究的长期目标是建立恒河猴作为影响早期发育的良好模型，以便我们随后能够识别精神病理学的早期生物标记物和治疗方法。

 DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Why is it that some people float through life in a sea of tranquility while others are constantly riding an emotional roller coaster? Why do some emotionally reactive babies grow up to become calm, centered adults and others remain volatile? Questions about the origins and persistence of variation in emotional life are some of the most important questions for psychiatric and developmental science. The goal of the proposed research is to investigate variation in infants in one system that is important for emotional life-the autonomic nervous system. To that end, we will quantify spontaneous variation in activity of the two branches of the autonomic nervous system (ANS)-the parasympathetic nervous system (PNS) and the sympathetic nervous system (SNS). Activity of the PNS and SNS, which work together to maintain homeostasis is highly variable between people, thought to imbue the stimulus environment with affective meaning, and related to variation in both healthy and pathological affective experience, both healthy and pathological. Variation appears to manifest at least by early childhood but what we do not know is how much variation exists in ANS functioning during infancy, whether early ANS variation relates to other behavioral or biological phenotypes, how stable variation is across development, and what predicts its stability. The proposed research will fill these knowledge gaps. We propose to record ANS activity from infants after they complete a standardized assessment of their behavioral phenotypes and biological profiles as part of the BioBehavioral Assessment program (BBA; OD010962). We will then evaluate whether variation in established behavioral phenotypes (e.g., temperament) and biological markers (e.g., plasma cortisol levels, c-reactive protein levels; serotonin and monoamine oxidase A promoter genotypes) predict ANS activity, and whether variation is stable across the first year of life. The long term goal of the proposed research is to establish rhesus monkeys as a good model for affect development across early development so that we can subsequently identify early biomarkers of and treatments for psychopathology.