# Effects of Aging on Mind-Body Connections

> **NIH NIH F31** · UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON · 2020 · $32,819

## Abstract

Project Summary/Abstract. Chronic stress has been shown to critically impact long-term emotional and
physical health. In a society where nearly 75% of Americans report stress at levels that exceed what they
consider healthy (American Psychological Association, 2015), better understanding of the factors that contribute
to effective stress regulation is needed. Stress-physiology coherence is an individual difference measure of the
association between subjective experience and peripheral physiological activity under stress, which has recently
been shown to be an important correlate of both psychological and physical well-being (Sommerfeldt, Schaefer,
Brauer, Ryff, & Davidson, 2019). This proposed project seeks to better understand the neural underpinnings and
importance of stress-physiology coherence for stress regulation in aging. Previous work specifically investigated
stress-heart rate coherence, the within-individual association between subjective stress and heart rate over the
course of a stress-induction paradigm involving computerized cognitive stressor tasks (Sommerfeldt et al., 2019).
Over 1,000 participants completed this paradigm as part of the second wave of the Midlife in the United States
project (MIDUS; www.midus.wisc.edu). Stress-heart rate coherence was positively associated with
psychological well-being, and inversely associated with factors commonly linked to reduced well-being, including
anxiety, depression, and levels of pro-inflammatory markers interleukin-6 and C-reactive protein. Furthermore,
stress-heart rate coherence was inversely associated with denial coping, suggesting that for at least some
individuals, low stress-heart rate coherence may be due to denying one’s own feelings and/or the reality of
stressors. Age was also inversely associated with stress-heart rate coherence, such that older participants had
a weaker association between their subjective stress and their heart rate. Bodily changes that occur with aging
can influence mind-body connections and the experience of affective states (Berry Mendes, 2010). This
weakening of the connection between mental and physical states is signified by findings of lower stress-heart
rate coherence in older individuals. Using data from additional MIDUS cohorts, the proposed project aims to 1)
Establish the functional and structural neural correlates of stress-heart rate coherence, 2) Identify age-related
differences in affective biasing and neural correlates of stress-heart rate coherence, and 3) Ascertain longitudinal
changes in stress-heart rate coherence and directionality with relation to well-being. This research will facilitate
valuable training opportunities in neuroimaging data analysis, writing, public speaking, and mentoring for a
doctoral student in Psychology at the University of Wisconsin – Madison while also establishing the neural
correlates of this important individual difference measure, stress-physiology coherence. The project will inform
whether stress-physiol...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10025374
- **Project number:** 5F31AG066323-02
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN-MADISON
- **Principal Investigator:** Sasha L Sommerfeldt
- **Activity code:** F31 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $32,819
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2019-09-11 → 2022-09-10

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10025374

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10025374, Effects of Aging on Mind-Body Connections (5F31AG066323-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10025374. Licensed CC0.

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