Emotion Processing: Risk for Psychopathology

描述（由申请人提供）：本申请中提出的实验将进一步理解为什么儿童虐待的经历会导致广泛的精神和身体健康问题。尽管美国每年有数百万儿童遭受各种形式的虐待，但人们对这种经历如何影响大脑行为发育的了解相对较少。这项研究的总体目的是研究大脑回路是如何被环境经验塑造的，从而导致儿童心理健康问题。本应用程序中提出的研究使用新颖的神经科学方法来测量400名10-16岁儿童的情绪学习效率，其中一半是儿童虐待的受害者。具体目标是：(1)确定儿童如何发展对环境中与情绪相关的突发事件的敏感性，这对理解社会行为至关重要，并与焦虑和抑郁等问题有关；(2)利用心理社会压力的情感神经科学标记作为心理疾病风险指标，考察儿童整合和使用情绪信息的效率；(3)检验早期社会心理压力经历对儿童情绪加工调节控制的影响程度，包括攻击行为和情绪调节能力差。总之，这个应用程序提出了一个持续的研究项目，将检查与儿童虐待有关的情绪调节过程的改变。我们将把这些措施与青少年早期的心理健康结果联系起来。该项目有可能综合推进儿童和成人心理健康问题预防和治疗所需的关键领域。这些包括理解(1)大脑情绪调节的神经回路和神经生物学，重点是理解慢性社会心理压力暴露对情感神经回路的适应和影响；(2)这些回路的发展，特别是人类神经生物学快速发展时期的潜在过程，在此期间大脑可能对背景或环境影响特别敏感；(3)定义和指定环境对大脑和行为产生长期影响的方式。这些重点中的每一个都为促进知识和应用以改善公共卫生带来了巨大的希望。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The experiments proposed in this application will further understanding about why the experience of child abuse leads to a broad range of mental and physical health problems. Although millions of children experience various forms of child abuse each year in the United States, relatively little is understood about how this experience influences brain-behavioral development. The General Aim of this research is to examine how brain circuitry is shaped by environmental experience in ways that lead to childhood mental health problems. The research proposed in this application uses novel neuroscience-informed methods to measure the efficiency of emotional learning in 400 10-16 year old children, half of whom have been victims of child maltreatment. The Specific Aims are to: (1) determine how children develop sensitivity to emotion-related contingencies in their environments, which is critical for understanding social behavior and related to problems such as anxiety and depression; (2) examine the efficiency with which children integrate and use emotional information using affective neuroscience markers of psychosocial stress as indicators of risk for mental illness; (3) test the extent to which the experience of early psychosocial stress undermines children's regulatory control of emotion processing, relevant to behaviors such as aggression and poor emotion regulation. In sum, this application proposes a continuing program of research that will examine altered emotional regulatory processes associated with child abuse. We will link these measures to mental health outcomes in early adolescents. This project has potential to synthesize key areas necessary to advance prevention and treatment of mental health problems in children and adults. Those include understanding (1) the neural circuitry and neurobiology of the brain's regulation of emotion, with an emphasis on understanding adaptations and squeal of chronic psychosocial stress exposure on affective neural circuits, (2) the development of these circuits, specifically the processes underlying periods of rapid neurobiological development in humans during which the brain may be particularly sensitive to contextual or environmental influences; and (3) defining and specifying ways in which the environment creates long-term effects on brain and behavior. Each of these foci holds tremendous promise for advancement of knowledge and application to improvement of public health.