# Unpacking Emotion Inflexibility and Prospective Prediction of Affective Disease

> **NIH NIH R01** · KENT STATE UNIVERSITY · 2020 · $139,969

## Abstract

Abstract:
Clear evidence indicates that affective disorders, such as depression, anxiety, and stress
disorders emerge at the intersection of pre-existing vulnerability and significant, highly stressful
life events. However, there is little research mapping trajectories of psychological adjustment
following traumatic events in older adults and existing evidence suggests both advantages and
disadvantages to aging in basic emotional processes that underlie disease risk. Current
assessment and interventions targeting older populations are inadequate and there is an urgent
need for improvements in both conceptual and applied knowledge. This proposed supplement
to R01MH113622 will address these needs by the additional recruitment of 100 older adults
(age >65) to the existing cohort (n = 400; age 21-65) to facilitate comparison across the adult
lifespan. Patients without severe cognitive dysfunction or dementia will be recruited in hospital,
and as with the parent grant, assessed beginning at 1 month following injury until 18 months.
Assessments include rigorous in-lab indices of cognitive and emotional processes, psychiatric
and treatment history, as well as experience sampling at 4 months post injury. Then subsequent
follow-up assessments occur at 9, 12, and 18 months. This approach will facilitate modelling of
adjustment over time, by age, as well as the investigation of key facets of emotion processing
known to predict affective disease. We focus on the super-ordinate construct of Emotion
Flexibility (EF) which encompasses the ability to generate or up-regulate emotions, as well as to
shift or down-regulate emotions according to needs and/or environmental demands. EF is well-
suited to inform models of emotion-related risk and adjustment as it characterizes an optimal
balance of two biologically-based, constituent dimensions: “bottom-up” threat-related processing
and “top-down” cognitive control increasingly recognized as central to all emotion processing.
Both dimensions may show meaningful changes with aging, independently, and in relation to
each other. Finally, we assess the relationship between EF and the onset of three key
transdiagnostic symptoms following trauma: negative mood, ruminative cognition, and sleep
disruption. Consistent with NIMH priorities, this supplement would help to explicate the
processes that underlie emotion disruptions in older adults as well as begin to identify unique
age-related factors that could prove to be predictive of emotion-related disease, thereby
informing the development of improved risk assessments and treatment for older patients.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 10136402
- **Project number:** 3R01MH113622-03S1
- **Recipient organization:** KENT STATE UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** Karin Galiah Coifman
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $139,969
- **Award type:** 3
- **Project period:** 2018-04-01 → 2022-12-31

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/10136402

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 10136402, Unpacking Emotion Inflexibility and Prospective Prediction of Affective Disease (3R01MH113622-03S1). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-24 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/10136402. Licensed CC0.

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