Expanding the knowledge base for emotion regulation in aging

项目主任/首席调查员(最后、第一、中间)：Ochsner，Kevin N. 到2040年，65岁以上的成年人数量预计将占美国人口的约22%1。 鉴于老年人口增加了175%，基础研究必须扩大证据 关于情绪调节过程中与年龄相关的标准化成熟转变的基础-过程 支持对生活压力源的适应性反应，促进健康和福祉。RFA-MH-17-405呼叫 正是这种类型的研究，关键问题是什么机制支撑着这一自相矛盾的发现 健康和认知能力随着年龄的增长而下降，但老年人在日常生活中报告的积极情绪更多 生活，并优先关注和记住积极的刺激和事件。情绪调节一直是 先进是导致这种积极偏见的一个可能的关键因素。现在的研究表明，老年人可以 有效地使用某些类别的监管策略，包括关注情况、关注和应对- 有重点的战略。尽管早期的研究似乎表明，老年人使用 强大且可广泛部署的认知策略重新评估，我们最近的试点研究表明，这取决于 关于如何重新评价：老年人在认知上较少地将负面事件的影响降至最低，但 可以通过从他们身上发现积极的意义来肯定他们的反应。情绪调节模型的演变 然而，我们的实验室和其他人提出了这类工作的一个主要限制：它只关注于 在接到指示时执行监管策略，并忽略可能 在战略实施之前必须：首先，识别一个人目前的情绪状态和 第二，决定是否以及如何改变这种状态。到目前为止，很少或根本没有注意到 这两个关键调控阶段的潜在年龄相关变化。在三个目标上，这笔赠款将检验这一演变 建立模型并解决知识中的这些关键差距。目标1将功能磁共振成像与一项新的心理物理任务相结合 问一问不同的情绪识别方法如何对老年人和 更年轻的成年人。目标2将使用我们已建立的用于研究重新评估的fMRI方法的新变体来询问 老年人和年轻人在重新评估的决定上是否以及如何不同，如果是，使用最小化与 对重新评估进行积极评价。探索性目标3试图将这些基于实验室的行为和大脑标记物联系起来 情绪反应和调节对日常情绪体验和调节目标的测量 使用生态瞬时评估(EMA)进行评估。总之，这项拟议的研究可能会提供新的 老年情感悖论的答案--表明积极偏见可能部分源于年龄-- 在识别你的情绪和决策方式的未被认识的调控效果方面的相关差异 是为了调节这些情绪。通过这样做，我们将扩大关于 情绪调节的心理和神经基础，以及它们在一生中如何变化， 对设计未来可能的干预措施以改善情绪健康的影响。 OMB编号0925-0001/0002(03/16修订版批准至2018年10月31日)页面续格式页面

Program Director/Principal Investigator (Last, First, Middle): Ochsner, Kevin N. By 2040, the number of adults aged 65+ is expected to comprise approximately 22% of the U.S. population1. Given this 175% increase in the older adult population, it is imperative that basic research expand the evidence base concerning normative age-related maturational shifts in emotion regulation processes – processes that support adaptive responding to life stressors and promote health and well-being. RFA-MH-17-405 calls for exactly this type of research, with a key question concerning what mechanisms underlie the paradoxical finding that health and cognitive abilities decline with age but older adults report more positive emotion in their daily lives and preferentially attend to and remember positive stimuli and events. Emotion regulation has been advanced as a possible key factor underlying this positivity bias. Studies now show that older adults can effectively use certain classes of regulatory strategies, including situation-focused, attentional, and response- focused strategies. Although early studies appeared to show age-related impairments in older adults use of the powerful and widely deployable cognitive strategy reappraisal, our recent pilot studies show that this depends on how one reappraises: older adults are less able to cognitively minimize the impact of negative events but can positivize their reponses by finding positive meaning in them. Evolving models of emotion regulation from our lab and others suggest a major limitation of such work, however: It focuses exclusively on the ability to implement regulatory strategies when instructed to do so, and ignores two critical processing stages that may necessarily precede strategy implementation: First, the identification of one's current emotional state and second, the decision whether and how to change this state. To date, little to no attention has been paid to potential age-related changes in these two key regulatory stages. In three Aims, this grant will test this evolving model and address these critical gaps in knowledge. Aim 1 will combine fMRI with a novel psychophyisical task to ask how different ways of identifying you emotions can have different emotion regulatory effects for older vs. younger adults. Aim 2 will use a novel variant of our established fMRI methods for studying reappraisal to ask whether and how older and younger adults differ in decisions to reappraise, and if so, using minimizing vs. positivizing reappraisals. Exploratory Aim 3 attempts to connect these lab-based behavioral and brain markers of emotional response and regulation to measures of daily emotional experience and regulatory goals as assessed using ecological momentary assessment (EMA). Together, the proposed research could provide new answers for the emotion paradox of aging – suggesting that the positivity bias could arise in part from age- related differences in the unappreciated regulatory effects of identifying your emotions and the ways decisions are made to regulate those emotions. In so doing, we will broaden the knowledge base concerning the psychological and neural underpinnings of emotion regulation and how they change across the lifespan, with implications for designing possible future interventions to improve emotional well-being. OMB No. 0925-0001/0002 (Rev. 03/16 Approved Through 10/31/2018) Page Continuation Format Page