Aging, Emotion, and Inhibition: Neuroimaging Insights into the Automatic Regulation of Affect
Poster No:
1827
Submission Type:
Abstract Submission
Authors:
Arthur Tsai1, Kuo Chii-Shyang2
Institutions:
1Institute of Statistical Science, Taipei, Taiwan, 2Department of Electrical Engineering, National Central University, Taoyuan, Taiwan
First Author:
Co-Author:
Introduction:
Cognitive neuroscience recognizes the profound impact of emotional stimuli on cognitive processes. Research over the past decade has delved into emotional-cognitive interactions, revealing the dual nature of emotional information-capable of enhancing and impairing the cognitive control (Cohen & Henik, 2012; Dolcos, Iordan, & Dolcos, 2011). Negative stimuli, while hindering executive control, paradoxically improve performance when attention is selectively focused (Cohen & Henik, 2012). This study investigates the automatic regulation of affect in young and older adults, employing spectral analysis and directed transfer function. It aims to unravel the nuanced modulation of inhibition across age groups, exploring the effects of age and emotional modulation on response inhibition parameters and underlying neural mechanisms labs (Okon-Singer, Pessoa, & Shackman, 2015). Results suggest older adults may exhibit more automatic regulation of affect compared to their younger counterparts.
Methods:
We examined emotional modulation's impact on response inhibition and associated neural correlates in 35 young and 35 older adults using fMRI and the Emotional Stop-Signal Paradigm (ESSP, Pawliczek et al., 2013; Verbruggen & De Houwer, 2007). Disgusted and neutral expressive faces, selected for age, sex, and valence scores, comprised 140 stimuli from the Taiwanese face database (Tu, Lin, Suzuki, & Goh, 2018). Infomax ICA identified independent components (ICs) in preprocessed ESSP fMRI data, subjected to 20 iterations using ICASSO for reliability. The gRAICAR algorithm (Yang et al., 2012) and unsupervised clustering analyzed IC discriminatory potential between age groups. Spectral analysis and Directed Transfer Function (DTF) assessed cortical network dynamics.
Results:
Compared to younger adults, older adults exhibited delayed responses in neutral and disgusting trials. However, the DTF analysis revealed heightened brain connectivity in older adults during emotional response inhibition tasks. Significance was set at p < 0.05 with 5000 permutations and TFCE correction (Figure 1). Figure 2 depicts increased connectivity in older adults, complicating our understanding of age-related cognitive control differences. Insights enhance comprehension of emotion, cognitive control, and neural connectivity relationships.
Conclusions:
Integrating emotional faces into response inhibition paradigms provides a nuanced perspective on emotion-cognitive control interplay. Patterns emerged - decreased go hits for young and increased for older adults in response to negative emotion contexts. Differential brain activity in older adults, lower parietal and higher frontal activity, further distinguishes inhibition processes (Figure 2). Age-related changes indicate increased connectivity in older adults, potentially augmenting automatic regulation of affect. These findings contribute to understanding emotional influences on cognitive control across age groups.
Emotion, Motivation and Social Neuroscience:
Emotional Perception 2
Modeling and Analysis Methods:
fMRI Connectivity and Network Modeling 1
Keywords:
ADULTS
Aging
Cognition
Emotions
1|2Indicates the priority used for review
Provide references using author date format
Dolcos, F., Iordan, A. D., & Dolcos, S. (2011). Neural correlates of emotion–cognition interactions: A review of evidence from brain imaging investigations. Journal of Cognitive Psychology, 23(6), 669-694.
Okon-Singer, H., Pessoa, L., & Shackman, A. J. (2015). The neurobiology of emotion-cognition interactions: Frontiers Media SA.
Pawliczek, C. M., Derntl, B., Kellermann, T., Kohn, N., Gur, R. C., & Habel, U. (2013). Inhibitory control and trait aggression: neural and behavioral insights using the emotional stop signal task. Neuroimage, 79, 264-274.
Tu, Y.-Z., Lin, D.-W., Suzuki, A., & Goh, J. O. S. G. (2018). East Asian young and older adult perceptions of emotional faces from an age-and sex-fair East Asian facial expression database. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 2358.
Verbruggen, F., & De Houwer, J. (2007). Do emotional stimuli interfere with response inhibition? Evidence from the stop signal paradigm. Cognition and emotion, 21(2), 391-403.
Yang, Z., Zuo, X. N., Wang, P., Li, Z., LaConte, S. M., Bandettini, P. A., & Hu, X. P. (2012). Generalized RAICAR: discover homogeneous subject (sub)groups by reproducibility of their intrinsic connectivity networks. Neuroimage, 63(1), 403-414. doi:10.1016/j.neuroimage.2012.06.060