# Neurobehavioral Mechanisms of Emotion Regulation in Depression across the Adult Lifespan

> **NIH NIH R01** · DUKE UNIVERSITY · 2020 · $632,894

## Abstract

ABSTRACT
The ability to regulate one’s emotional responses is critical for maintaining emotional health in the face of
adverse events that cumulate over the lifespan. Although some emotion regulation abilities are thought to be
maintained or even improve in healthy older adults, such beneficial maturation effects are moderated by
individual differences in depression and neurocognition that contribute to disability, morbidity, and loss of
quality of life into old age. Frontolimbic circuit dysfunction is a hallmark of both younger and older adults with
major depressive disorder (MDD), while both activation in and connectivity among components of these circuits
predicts treatment response. Such disruptions impact core cognitive processes, including cognitive control and
attentional biasing, that influence emotion regulation ability, although it is unknown how their susceptibility to
depressive influences varies across the adult lifespan. Moreover, MDD patients are less able to utilize
compensatory resources that help older adults cope with adversity, such as social support, in the face of age-
associated neurocognitive decline. Given the projected growth of the elderly population in the U.S. and the
associated burden on the public health system, it is imperative to develop effective interventions to target
regulatory deficits associated with depression in late life and to begin to identify neurocognitive predictors of
increasing depressive symptoms. Preliminary evidence from the study team demonstrates that the
effectiveness of regulatory strategies such as reappraisal and distraction vary with age and depressive status.
However, there is a pressing need for a comprehensive, integrative approach to study emotion regulation
strategy use that links brain circuitry integrity, cognitive function, social support, and clinical symptoms, and
investigates how these relationships change with age. The central hypothesis of the proposed study is that
age, diagnostic status, neurocognitive functioning, and social support will differentially impact reappraisal and
distraction efficacy, and that their combined effect on strategy use will predict depressive symptoms at 1 year
post-scan. The proposed study is expected to yield new insights in how maturational changes contribute to the
conscious ability to reduce negative affect in depressed adults. A total of 200 adults in stratified age groups
from 35 to 75 years with and without MDD will undergo structural and task-based functional neuroimaging. We
will test age- and diagnosis-specific differences in the success of two different emotion regulation strategies in
reducing experimentally induced negative affect, identify brain regions associated with successful use of
reappraisal and distraction using structural and functional magnetic resonance imaging, and test emotion
regulation as a predictor of future depression symptom severity. Results will be used to better target emotion
regulation interventions based on a ...

## Key facts

- **NIH application ID:** 9883047
- **Project number:** 5R01MH113238-04
- **Recipient organization:** DUKE UNIVERSITY
- **Principal Investigator:** KEVIN S LABAR
- **Activity code:** R01 (R01, R21, SBIR, etc.)
- **Funding institute:** NIH
- **Fiscal year:** 2020
- **Award amount:** $632,894
- **Award type:** 5
- **Project period:** 2017-06-01 → 2022-02-28

## Primary source

NIH RePORTER: https://reporter.nih.gov/project-details/9883047

## Citation

> US National Institutes of Health, RePORTER application 9883047, Neurobehavioral Mechanisms of Emotion Regulation in Depression across the Adult Lifespan (5R01MH113238-04). Retrieved via AI Analytics 2026-05-26 from https://api.ai-analytics.org/grant/nih/9883047. Licensed CC0.

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