Interpersonal Emotion Regulation in Neurodegenerative Disease: Pathways to Caregiver Health

项目摘要 神经退行性疾病导致严重的认知、情感和功能障碍， 使个人依赖于提供照料的亲密关系伙伴。虽然，这是一个积极的 为许多人提供经验，为由于以下原因而具有社会情感缺陷的人提供护理 神经退行性疾病可能导致配偶照顾者的不良后果，包括精神不佳， 和身体健康的结果。然而，很少有研究探讨了二元，人际途径，通过 哪些护理接受者的社会情感缺陷导致其护理者的健康问题。目前的研究 关注人际情绪调节-照顾者的负面情绪在多大程度上是 在冲突和急性应激源中， 他们的照顾者-作为一个潜在的途径连接照顾者的社会情绪缺陷，他们的照顾者， 健康问题这项研究将比较神经正常人与阿尔茨海默病（AD）患者 和行为变异性额颞叶痴呆（bvFTD），以了解这些不同的疾病类型 影响人际情绪调节（目标1）。这项研究将描绘神经，自主， 人际情绪调节的行为相关性（目标2），重点是疾病相关的萎缩， 自主神经和行为因素理论上有助于人际情绪调节，包括迷走神经 灵活性，对他人情绪表达的视觉关注，以及同理心。最后，本研究将探讨 不良的人际情绪调节是否会纵向影响照顾者的健康（目标3）。拟议 研究将提供一个更微妙的框架，以了解如何社会情绪障碍，由于 神经退行性疾病会随着时间的推移影响护理人员的健康，并促进我们对 人际情绪调节和促进或阻碍健康老龄化的二元过程。

PROJECT SUMMARY Neurodegenerative diseases lead to profound cognitive, emotional, and functional impairments that leave individuals dependent upon close relational partners who provide care. Although caregiving is a positive experience for many individuals, providing care for an individual who has socioemotional deficits due to neurodegenerative disease can lead to adverse consequences for spousal caregivers, including poor mental and physical health outcomes. However, little research examines the dyadic, interpersonal pathways through which care recipients’ socioemotional deficits lead to health problems for their caregivers. The current research focuses on interpersonal emotion regulation – the extent to which a caregiver’s negative emotion is downregulated and a caregiver’s positive emotion is upregulated during conflict and an acute stressor with their care recipient – as a potential pathway linking care recipients’ socioemotional deficits to their caregivers’ health problems. The research will compare neurotypicals with individuals who have Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) and behavioral variant frontotemporal dementia (bvFTD) to understand how these different disease types influence interpersonal emotion regulation (Aim 1). The research will delineate the neural, autonomic, and behavioral correlates of interpersonal emotion regulation (Aim 2), with an emphasis on disease related atrophy, autonomic, and behavioral factors theorized to subserve interpersonal emotion regulation, including vagal flexibility, visual attention to other’s emotional expressions, and empathy. Finally, this research will examine whether poor interpersonal emotion regulation impacts caregiver health longitudinally (Aim 3). The proposed research will provide a more nuanced framework for understanding how socioemotional impairments due to neurodegenerative diseases affect caregivers’ health over time, and advance our understanding of interpersonal emotion regulation and the dyadic processes that promote or hinder healthy aging.