ANTERIOR CINGULATE ACTIVATION IN GERIATRIC DEPRESSION

描述（由申请人提供）：本提案为K23面向患者的指导科学家奖。申请人是一名临床神经心理学家，在结构和功能MRI与衰老相关方面进行过研究培训并发表过论文。该提案的目标是支持申请人成长为一名独立的研究者，其研究重点是老年抑郁症的神经生物学，使用认知和情感神经科学方法。神经心理学、电生理学和结构MRI结果表明，前扣带（ACC）功能障碍与老年抑郁症的发病机制有关，其中一些异常甚至影响抑郁症对治疗的反应。功能磁共振成像提供了一种更直接的方法来研究ACC功能障碍，它可能是晚年抑郁症中认知和情感障碍的基础。

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.