SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH NETWORK ON DECISION NEUROSCIENCE AND AGING SEED GRANTS, 2013
OXYTOCIN AND SOCIAL DECISION MAKING IN AGING
Natalie Ebner – Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Florida
Ronald Cohen – Professor of Aging and Geriatric Research, University of Florida
David Feifel – Professor, Department of Psychiatry, UCSD
Determining whether an unfamiliar person is trustworthy and approachable are crucial decisions humans routinely face in their social environments. Older compared to young adults show increased interpersonal trust, rendering them more susceptible to trusting ill-intending people and scams, seriously compromising emotional and physical health and social life. This age-related increase in trust may be due to older adults’ decreased ability to accurately read other people’s social and emotional cues; it may also be due to age-related alterations in brain function associated with trust-related decision making and/or specific peptides/hormones that directly affect prosociality. The neuropeptide oxytocin has been shown to elevate interpersonal trust. However, nothing is known about age-related changes in the oxytocin system in the context of trust-related decision making. Following a standardized, double-blind procedure, participants in this research study will self-administer synthetic oxytocin (or placebo) intra-nasally before engaging in an economic trust game, a food trust game, and a facial trustworthiness task, while undergoing fMRI. The findings will advance basic science in clarifying neuroendocrine and behavioral relationships in the context of trust and decision making in aging. In addition, information gained from this project will have the potential to inform interventions targeted at social and emotional dysfunction in the elderly with the long-term goal to help older adults make better decisions in social contexts and reduce social stress and anxiety.
ACUTE STRESS AND AGE-RELATED DIFFERENCES IN REWARD PROCESSING AND EXECUTIVE FUNCTION
Anthony Porcelli – Assistant Professor of Psychology, Marquette University; Assistant Adjunct Professor of the CTSI, Medical College of Wisconsin
Kristy Nielson – Professor of Psychology, Marquette University; Associate Adjunct Professor of Neurology, Medical College of Wisconsin
April Harkins – Assistant Professor in Clinical Lab Science, Marquette University
Aging is associated with cognitive declines across multiple functional domains, at the extreme end converting to dementia or neurodegenerative disorders such as Alzheimer’s Disease. Even “healthy aging” is associated with declines in memory and executive functioning (EF), which are essential to independent living. EF is a broad construct composed of multiple neurocognitive functions including, but not limited to, working memory, attention, response selection and inhibition, and mental set formation/maintenance, and depends on the integrity of fronto-striatal circuitry. While much research has been conducted along these lines with memory, some aspects of EF such as decision-making are only beginning to be examined. This research project will study the relationship between acute stress and age-related differences in reward processing and executive function. The project will tap new directions in clarifying age-related cognitive decline, focusing on fundamental cognitive processes that are highly susceptible to decline. The project has the potential to reveal as yet undiscovered harbingers of cognitive decline that can also give rise to early interventions to address those declines.
FINANCIAL FRAUD RESEARCH CENTER SEED GRANT, 2012
The Financial Fraud Research Center, a joint initiative of the Stanford Center on Longevity and the FINRA Investor Education Foundation, made its first $50,000 seed grant in 2012. Stanford researchers, led by Ian Gotlib, David Starr Jordan Professor of Psychology, will investigate the role of emotion on responses to fraudulent advertising.
THE EFFECTS OF POSITIVE AND NEGATIVE AROUSAL ON THE SUSCEPTIBILITY OF OLDER ADULTS TO FALSE ADVERTISING
Ian H. Gotlib, PhD – Professor, Department of Psychology
Katharina Kircanski, PhD – Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Psychology
Nanna Notthoff, MA – Doctoral Student, Department of Psychology
Perpetrators of fraud often report attempting to evoke strong emotions, such as excitement or anger, in potential victims as a way of impairing their decision-making ability. Although excitement and anger are distinct emotions, they share a state of high arousal, assessed with self report and psychophysiological measurement. Ian Gotlib, Professor of Psychology, and his team are using their seed grant to conduct a laboratory study with older adults in which they are examining the immediate effects of positive and negative high-arousal states on responses to fraudulent advertisements, compared with a low-arousal control condition. Findings from this study will allow these investigators to examine the differential impact of positive and negative mood states and levels of arousal on susceptibility to fraudulent advertisements and will help in the design of fraud prevention programs.