# Emotion-cognition interactions and aging

> **NIH NIH R01** · UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA · 2020 · $1,032,291

## Abstract

ABSTRACT
Success requires focus and the ability to screen out distractions. This is especially important in arousing
situations: When avoiding imminent danger, tackling a cognitive challenge or trying to achieve a desired goal,
focusing on what has highest priority or is most salient is often helpful. We plan to test the hypothesis that
when arousing or challenging situations activate the locus coeruleus (LC) in healthy younger adults, it
enhances processing high priority or highly salient items but impairs processing of less active competing
representations. The framework behind this hypothesis is the first to explain how arousal both enhances and
impairs attention and memory and this project will be the first to systematically examine the relationship
between LC structural decline and cognitive function in normal aging and in Alzheimer's disease. We predict
that, in older adults, the LC has a less targeted effect than it does in younger adults, meaning that arousal still
has a significant impact on older adults' cognitive processing but that it is less likely to increase the selectivity
of their attention or the specificity of their memories. Furthermore, we predict that in Alzheimer's disease,
declines in structural connectivity will be extensive enough to impair both the excitatory and inhibitory effects of
LC activity. This work to understand the role of the LC in cognitive function becomes particularly urgent in light
of recent striking findings indicating that the LC is the first place in the brain that sporadic (or late-onset)
Alzheimer's related tau pathology emerges, and that by young adulthood, most people have at least some tau
pathology in the LC. Here we use neuromelanin-weighted structural MRI images and diffusion tensor imaging
structural connectivity measures to examine how LC integrity relates to function on a variety of tasks that
assess cognitive selectivity. We will test healthy older adults, older adults with late-onset Alzheimer's and
younger and middle-aged adults with genetic subtypes of Alzheimer's disease (due to mutations in the PSEN1
and APP genes) that lead to early onset of the disease.

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9878730
- **Project number:** 5R01AG025340-14
- **Recipient organization:** UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
- **Principal Investigator:** MARA MATHER
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $1,032,291
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2004-09-01 → 2022-02-28

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9878730

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9878730, Emotion-cognition interactions and aging (5R01AG025340-14). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-22 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9878730. Licensed CC0.

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