# Mechanisms Underlying Emotion Regulation Abnormalities in Youth at Clinical High-Risk for Psychosis

> **NIH NIH R21** · UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA · 2020 · $188,750

## Abstract

Project Summary
Psychotic disorders are serious and debilitating mental illnesses that incur substantial suffering for patients and
present major challenges to our health care system. Given that few individuals achieve recovery after the onset
of a psychotic disorder, there is increasing interest in the early identification and prevention of psychosis.
Psychotic disorders are typically preceded by a prodromal phase characterized by functional decline and
subtle attenuated symptoms that progressively worsen over the course of several months to years. This period
is of interest both as a window for investigating processes involved in disease onset and as a potential point of
intervention and prevention. The stress-vulnerability model remains one of the leading theories on the origins
of psychosis. However, dysfunctional HPA axis activity and heightened stress reactivity alone only modestly
predicts conversion to psychosis among CHR youth and has not led to breakthroughs in prevention. To
develop novel targets for early intervention, the current project aims to test the central hypothesis that
abnormalities in emotion regulation (i.e., the ability to use strategies to decrease the intensity or frequency of
negative emotion) are a vulnerability factor that increases risk for developing a psychotic disorder. We propose
to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of emotion regulation through the lens of Gross’ extended process
model of emotion regulation. This model proposes that emotion regulation involves a series of stages,
including: identification (i.e., detecting emotion and determining whether to regulate), selection (i.e., choosing a
strategy), and implementation (i.e., executing the selected strategy). Our preliminary data in adults with
schizophrenia (SZ) indicates that abnormalities at each of these stages contribute to state fluctuations in
hallucinations and delusions. The current application proposes to extend this finding to 50 CHR youth and 50
healthy controls who will complete a cross-sectional evaluation consisting of a multimodal battery of emotion
regulation laboratory tasks (behavior, electrophysiology, eye tracking, pupillometry) and 6 days of ecological
momentary assessment (EMA) that will be submitted to mathematical modeling. This data will be used to
complete the following specific aims: 1): To evaluate the stress-vulnerability model and test the hypothesis that
attenuated psychotic experiences are temporally preceded by abnormalities in autonomic nervous system
reactivity; 2) To define which stages of emotion regulation are abnormal in CHR youth and identify moderators
of each stage; 3) To identify whether abnormalities at each of the stages of emotion regulation are predictive of
psychosis risk and determine whether the combination of emotion regulation abnormalities and stress reactivity
will predict psychosis risk more so than either variable alone. Findings resulting from this study will benefit
early identification and preven...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10011943
- **Project number:** 5R21MH119438-02
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA
- **Principal Investigator:** GREGORY P STRAUSS
- **Activity code:** R21 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $188,750
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-09-09 → 2022-06-30

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10011943

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10011943, Mechanisms Underlying Emotion Regulation Abnormalities in Youth at Clinical High-Risk for Psychosis (5R21MH119438-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10011943. Licensed CC0.

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