# A Neural Study of the Maturational Shift in Emotion Regulation in Healthy Aging and Depression

> **NIH NIH R21** · UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT SCH OF MED/DNT · 2021 · $246,000

## Abstract

Older adults tend to have age-related improvement in emotional well-being despite their physical and cognitive
decline. The psychological and neural mechanisms of this adult maturational shift in emotion regulation
(AMSER) remain to be elucidated. Gross and colleagues have classified emotion regulation (ER) strategies
into antecedent-focused (i.e., modifying emotional situations before making a full response, such as selectively
attending positive and avoiding negative stimuli or cognitive reappraisal through reinterpreting negative
situations to less negative, etc.) and response-focused (expressive suppression). Habitual use of effective ER
strategies is associated with emotional well-being. Yet, the empirical evidence on which ER strategy older
adults habitually use remains sparse and mixed. Generally, successful voluntary ER in younger and middle-
aged adults depends critically on executive control of the executive control network (ECN) on heightened
emotional salience in salience network (SN) and the emotional processing and reactivity network (ERN);
whereas involuntary ER depends on the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) of the default-mode network
(DMN) to regulate SN & ERN. Given the age-associated decrease of brain volume in the dorsal executive
prefrontal regions (mainly ECN) and relatively preserved volume in ventral prefrontal regions (such as vmPFC),
we hypothesize that older adults use the vmPFC in the DMN as a driver to regulate SN/ERN during both
voluntary and involuntary ER. This would explain ER failure in older adults with major depression because
vmPFC and ECN dysfunction is a key feature in this condition. In contrast, patients with remitted depression
(RD) may have success in ER, although a considerable proportion of RD patients relapse (especially older
adults). Rumination, a cognitive construct characterized by repetitive attention to emotional distress, increases
the risk of depression relapse in RD. However, a robust analysis of factors associated with ER and relapse has
not been performed. Therefore, we will investigate the extent to which individuals with RD display the
normative AMSER and identify associated factors. Our study will include 45 healthy adults and 45 major
depression patients 45–75 years old in a remitted state and free of medication with 15 subjects in each
diagnosis x age group (45–55, 55–65, 65–75 years old). We will employ emotional oddball and reappraisal
tasks to examine involuntary and voluntary ER on positive and negative affect separately. Our specific aims
are to identify 1) behavioral and 2) neural patterns of AMSER in healthy and RD adults. We will also explore
the association of cognitive function and successful ER, as well as sex differences in AMSER in both groups.
Our working hypotheses are: RD subjects are heterogeneous in ER; Those using maladaptive ER (rumination)
may elicit lower functional connectivity of DMN with ECN and SN/ERN during both involuntary and voluntary
ER, which will...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10086509
- **Project number:** 5R21MH121721-02
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF CONNECTICUT SCH OF MED/DNT
- **Principal Investigator:** Lihong Wang
- **Activity code:** R21 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2021
- **Award amount:** $246,000
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2020-02-01 → 2023-07-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10086509

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10086509, A Neural Study of the Maturational Shift in Emotion Regulation in Healthy Aging and Depression (5R21MH121721-02). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-23 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10086509. Licensed CC0.

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