Psychological resilience and neurodegenerative risk: A connectomics-transcriptomics investigation in healthy adolescent and middle-aged females.

Adverse life events can inflict substantial long-term damage, which, paradoxically, has been posited to stem from initially adaptative responses to the challenges encountered in one's environment. Thus, identification of the mechanisms linking resilience against recent stressors to longer-term psychological vulnerability is key to understanding optimal functioning across multiple timescales. To address this issue, our study tested the relevance of neuro-reproductive maturation and senescence, respectively, to both resilience and longer-term risk for pathologies characterised by accelerated brain aging, specifically, Alzheimer's Disease (AD). Graph theoretical and partial least squares analyses were conducted on multimodal imaging, reported biological aging and recent adverse experience data from the Lifespan Human Connectome Project (HCP). Availability of reproductive maturation/senescence measures restricted our investigation to adolescent (N = 178) and middle-aged (N = 146) females. Psychological resilience was linked to age-specific brain senescence patterns suggestive of precocious functional development of somatomotor and control-relevant networks (adolescence) and earlier aging of default mode and salience/ventral attention systems (middle adulthood). Biological aging showed complementary associations with the neural patterns relevant to resilience in adolescence (positive relationship) versus middle-age (negative relationship). Transcriptomic and expression quantitative trait locus data analyses linked the neural aging patterns correlated with psychological resilience in middle adulthood to gene expression patterns suggestive of increased AD risk. Our results imply a partially antagonistic relationship between resilience against proximal stressors and longer-term psychological adjustment in later life. They thus underscore the importance of fine-tuning extant views on successful coping by considering the multiple timescales across which age-specific processes may unfold.

Brain-environment alignment during movie watching predicts fluid intelligence and affective function in adulthood.

BOLD fMRI studies have provided compelling evidence that the human brain demonstrates substantial moment-to-moment fluctuations in both activity and functional connectivity (FC) patterns. While the role of brain signal variability in fostering cognitive adaptation to ongoing environmental demands is well-documented, the relevance of moment-to-moment changes in FC patterns is still debated. Here, we adopt a graph theoretical approach in order to shed light on the cognitive-affective implications of FC variability and associated profiles of functional network communication in adulthood. Our goal is to identify brain communication pathways underlying FC reconfiguration at multiple timescales, thereby improving understanding of how faster perceptually bound versus slower conceptual processes shape neural tuning to the dynamics of the external world and, thus, indirectly, mold affective and cognitive responding to the environment. To this end, we used neuroimaging and behavioural data collected during movie watching by the Cambridge Center for Ageing and Neuroscience (N = 642, 326 women) and the Human Connectome Project (N = 176, 106 women). FC variability evoked by changes to both the concrete perceptual and the more abstract conceptual representation of an ongoing situation increased from young to older adulthood. However, coupling between variability in FC patterns and concrete environmental features was stronger at younger ages. FC variability (both moment-to-moment/concrete featural and abstract conceptual boundary-evoked) was associated with age-distinct profiles of network communication, specifically, greater functional integration of the default mode network in older adulthood, but greater informational flow across neural networks implicated in environmentally driven attention and control (cingulo-opercular, salience, ventral attention) in younger adulthood. Whole-brain communication pathways anchored in default mode regions relevant to episodic and semantic context creation (i.e., angular and middle temporal gyri) supported FC reconfiguration in response to changes in the conceptual representation of an ongoing situation (i.e., narrative event boundaries), as well as stronger coupling between moment-to-moment fluctuations in FC and concrete environmental features. Fluid intelligence/abstract reasoning was directly linked to levels of brain-environment alignment, but only indirectly associated with levels of FC variability. Specifically, stronger coupling between moment-to-moment FC variability and concrete environmental features predicted poorer fluid intelligence and greater affectively driven environmental vigilance. Complementarily, across the adult lifespan, higher fluid (but not crystallised) intelligence was related to stronger expression of the network communication profile underlying momentary and event boundary-based FC variability during youth. Our results indicate that the adaptiveness of dynamic FC reconfiguration during naturalistic information processing changes across the lifespan due to the associated network communication profiles. Moreover, our findings on brain-environment alignment complement the existing literature on the beneficial consequences of modulating brain signal variability in response to environmental complexity. Specifically, they imply that coupling between moment-to-moment FC variability and concrete environmental features may index a bias towards perceptually-bound, rather than conceptual processing, which hinders affective functioning and strategic cognitive engagement with the external environment.

Contextual and Developmental Differences in the Neural Architecture of Cognitive Control.

Because both development and context impact functional brain architecture, the neural connectivity signature of a cognitive or affective predisposition may similarly vary across different ages and circumstances. To test this hypothesis, we investigated the effects of age and cognitive versus social-affective context on the stable and time-varying neural architecture of inhibition, the putative core cognitive control component, in a subsample (N = 359, 22-36 years, 174 men) of the Human Connectome Project. Among younger individuals, a neural signature of superior inhibition emerged in both stable and dynamic connectivity analyses. Dynamically, a context-free signature emerged as stronger segregation of internal cognition (default mode) and environmentally driven control (salience, cingulo-opercular) systems. A dynamic social-affective context-specific signature was observed most clearly in the visual system. Stable connectivity analyses revealed both context-free (greater default mode segregation) and context-specific (greater frontoparietal segregation for higher cognitive load; greater attentional and environmentally driven control system segregation for greater reward value) signatures of inhibition. Superior inhibition in more mature adulthood was typified by reduced segregation in the default network with increasing reward value and increased ventral attention but reduced cingulo-opercular and subcortical system segregation with increasing cognitive load. Failure to evidence this neural profile after the age of 30 predicted poorer life functioning. Our results suggest that distinguishable neural mechanisms underlie individual differences in cognitive control during different young adult stages and across tasks, thereby underscoring the importance of better understanding the interplay among dispositional, developmental, and contextual factors in shaping adaptive versus maladaptive patterns of thought and behavior.SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT The brain's functional architecture changes across different contexts and life stages. To test whether the neural signature of a trait similarly varies, we investigated cognitive versus social-affective context effects on the stable and time-varying neural architecture of inhibition during a period of neurobehavioral fine-tuning (age 22-36 years). Younger individuals with superior inhibition showed distinguishable context-free and context-specific neural profiles, evidenced in both static and dynamic connectivity analyses. More mature individuals with superior inhibition evidenced only context-specific profiles, revealed in the static connectivity patterns linked to increased reward or cognitive load. Delayed expression of this profile predicted poorer life functioning. Our results underscore the importance of understanding the interplay among dispositional, developmental, and contextual factors in shaping behavior.

Similarity in functional brain architecture between rest and specific task modes: A model of genetic and environmental contributions to episodic memory.

The ability to keep a mental record of specific past events, dubbed episodic memory (EM), is key to lifespan adaptation. Nonetheless, the neural mechanisms underlying its typical inter-individual variability remain poorly understood. To address this issue, we tested whether individual differences in EM could be predicted from levels of functional brain re-organization between rest and task modes relevant to the transformation of perceptual information into mental representations (relational processing, meaning extraction, online maintenance versus updating of bound perceptual features). To probe the trait specificity of our model, we included three additional core mental functions, processing speed, abstract reasoning, and cognitive control. Finally, we investigated the extent to which our proposed model reflected genetic versus environmental contributions to EM variability. Hypotheses were tested by applying graph theoretical analysis and structural equation modeling to resting state and task fMRI data from two samples of participants in the Human Connectome Project (Sample 1: N = 338 unrelated individuals; Sample 2: N = 268 monozygotic vs. dizygotic twins [134 same-sex pairs]). Levels of functional brain reorganization between rest and the scrutinized task modes, particularly relational processing and online maintenance of bound perceptual features, contributed substantially to variations in both EM and abstract reasoning (but not in cognitive control or processing speed) among the younger adults in our sample, implying a substantial neurofunctional overlap, at least during this life stage. Similarity in functional organization between rest and each of the scrutinized task modes drew on distinguishable neural resources and showed differential susceptibility to genetic versus environmental influences. Our results suggest that variability on complex traits, such as EM, is supported by neural mechanisms comprising multiple components, each reflecting a distinct pattern of genetic versus environmental contributions and whose relative importance may vary across typical versus psychopathological development.

Trajectories of brain system maturation from childhood to older adulthood: Implications for lifespan cognitive functioning.

The human brain's intrinsic functional architecture reflects behavioural history and can help elucidate the neural mechanisms underlying age-related cognitive changes. To probe this issue, we used resting state (N = 586) and behavioural (N = 255) data from a lifespan sample and tested the interactions among ten intrinsic neural systems, derived from a well-established whole-brain parcellation. Our results revealed three distinguishable profiles, whose expression strengthened with increasing age and which characterized developmental differences in connectivity within the ten systems, between networks thought to underlie cognitive control and non-control systems, and among the non-control networks. The within-network connectivity profile was typified by decreased connectivity within two external processing networks (auditory/language and ventral attention). The non-control-to-non-control connectivity profile was typified by increased separation between networks involved in external processing, including language (dorsal attention, auditory) and those linked to internally generated cognitions and category learning (default mode, subcortical). Finally, the third connectivity profile was characterized by increased coupling of the three control networks (frontoparietal, salience, cingulo-opercular) with one another and with the remaining systems, particularly the subcortical and the two networks showing declining segregation with age. All three profiles showed significant associations with behavior during young adulthood, although these effects were less discernible during early development (before the age of 21) and degraded during late middle age and older adulthood. An exception to this trend was observed with respect to the within-network connectivity profile, whose "precocious" expression during early development predicted superior cognitive functioning. These findings thus help explain lifespan changes in the quality of mental processes, while also pointing to distinguishable mechanisms, which aid behavioural performance during different life stages.

Inter-individual differences in the experience of negative emotion predict variations in functional brain architecture.

Current evidence suggests that two spatially distinct neuroanatomical networks, the dorsal attention network (DAN) and the default mode network (DMN), support externally and internally oriented cognition, respectively, and are functionally regulated by a third, frontoparietal control network (FPC). Interactions among these networks contribute to normal variations in cognitive functioning and to the aberrant affective profiles present in certain clinical conditions, such as major depression. Nevertheless, their links to non-clinical variations in affective functioning are still poorly understood. To address this issue, we used fMRI to measure the intrinsic functional interactions among these networks in a sample of predominantly younger women (N=162) from the Human Connectome Project. Consistent with the previously documented dichotomous motivational orientations (i.e., withdrawal versus approach) associated with sadness versus anger, we hypothesized that greater sadness would predict greater DMN (rather than DAN) functional dominance, whereas greater anger would predict the opposite. Overall, there was evidence of greater DAN (rather than DMN) functional dominance, but this pattern was modulated by current experience of specific negative emotions, as well as subclinical depressive and anxiety symptoms. Thus, greater levels of currently experienced sadness and subclinical depression independently predicted weaker DAN functional dominance (i.e., weaker DAN-FPC functional connectivity), likely reflecting reduced goal-directed attention towards the external perceptual environment. Complementarily, greater levels of currently experienced anger and subclinical anxiety predicted greater DAN functional dominance (i.e., greater DAN-FPC functional connectivity and, for anxiety only, also weaker DMN-FPC coupling). Our findings suggest that distinct affective states and subclinical mood symptoms have dissociable neural signatures, reflective of the symbiotic relationship between cognitive processes and emotional states.

Neural activity patterns evoked by a spouse's incongruent emotional reactions when recalling marriage-relevant experiences.

Resonance with the inner states of another social actor is regarded as a hallmark of emotional closeness. Nevertheless, sensitivity to potential incongruities between one's own and an intimate partner's subjective experience is reportedly also important for close relationship quality. Here, we tested whether perceivers show greater neurobehavioral responsiveness to a spouse's positive (rather than negative) context-incongruent emotions, and whether this effect is influenced by the perceiver's satisfaction with the relationship. Thus, we used fMRI to scan older long-term married female perceivers while they judged either their spouse's or a stranger's affect, based on incongruent nonverbal and verbal cues. The verbal cues were selected to evoke strongly polarized affective responses. Higher perceiver marital satisfaction predicted greater neural processing of the spouse's (rather than the strangers) nonverbal cues. Nevertheless, across all perceivers, greater neural processing of a spouse's (rather than a stranger's) nonverbal behavior was reliably observed only when the behavior was positive and the context was negative. The spouse's positive (rather than negative) nonverbal behavior evoked greater activity in putative mirror neuron areas, such as the bilateral inferior parietal lobule (IPL). This effect was related to a stronger inhibitory influence of cognitive control areas on mirror system activity in response to a spouse's negative nonverbal cues, an effect that strengthened with increasing perceiver marital satisfaction. Our valence-asymmetric findings imply that neurobehavioral responsiveness to a close other's emotions may depend, at least partly, on cognitive control resources, which are used to support the perceiver's interpersonal goals (here, goals that are relevant to relationship stability).

Lifestyle Factors Counteract the Neurodevelopmental Impact of Genetic Risk for Accelerated Brain Aging in Adolescence.

BACKGROUND: The transition from childhood to adolescence is characterized by enhanced neural plasticity and a consequent susceptibility to both beneficial and adverse aspects of one's milieu. METHODS: To understand the implications of the interplay between protective and risk-enhancing factors, we analyzed longitudinal data from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) Study (n = 834; 394 female). We probed the maturational correlates of positive lifestyle variables (friendships, parental warmth, school engagement, physical exercise, healthy nutrition) and genetic vulnerability to neuropsychiatric disorders (major depressive disorder, Alzheimer's disease, anxiety disorders, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia) and sought to further elucidate their implications for psychological well-being. RESULTS: Genetic risk factors and lifestyle buffers showed divergent relationships with later attentional and interpersonal problems. These effects were mediated by distinguishable functional neurodevelopmental deviations spanning the limbic, default mode, visual, and control systems. More specifically, greater genetic vulnerability was associated with alterations in the normative maturation of areas rich in dopamine (D2), glutamate, and serotonin receptors and of areas with stronger expression of astrocytic and microglial genes, a molecular signature implicated in the brain disorders discussed here. Greater availability of lifestyle buffers predicted deviations in the normative functional development of higher density GABAergic (gamma-aminobutyric acidergic) receptor regions. The two profiles of neurodevelopmental alterations showed complementary roles in protection against psychopathology, which varied with environmental stress levels. CONCLUSIONS: Our results underscore the importance of educational involvement and healthy nutrition in attenuating the neurodevelopmental sequelae of genetic risk factors. They also underscore the importance of characterizing early-life biomarkers associated with adult-onset pathologies.

Adolescent neurodevelopment and psychopathology: The interplay between adversity exposure and genetic risk for accelerated brain ageing.

In adulthood, stress exposure and genetic risk heighten psychological vulnerability by accelerating neurobiological senescence. To investigate whether molecular and brain network maturation processes play a similar role in adolescence, we analysed genetic, as well as longitudinal task neuroimaging (inhibitory control, incentive processing) and early life adversity (i.e., material deprivation, violence) data from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development study (N = 980, age range: 9-13 years). Genetic risk was estimated separately for Major Depressive Disorder (MDD) and Alzheimer's Disease (AD), two pathologies linked to stress exposure and allegedly sharing a causal connection (MDD-to-AD). Adversity and genetic risk for MDD/AD jointly predicted functional network segregation patterns suggestive of accelerated (GABA-linked) visual/attentional, but delayed (dopamine [D2]/glutamate [GLU5R]-linked) somatomotor/association system development. A positive relationship between brain maturation and psychopathology emerged only among the less vulnerable adolescents, thereby implying that normatively maladaptive neurodevelopmental alterations could foster adjustment among the more exposed and genetically more stress susceptible youths. Transcriptomic analyses suggested that sensitivity to stress may underpin the joint neurodevelopmental effect of adversity and genetic risk for MDD/AD, in line with the proposed role of negative emotionality as a precursor to AD, likely to account for the alleged causal impact of MDD on dementia onset.

Overlapping brain correlates of superior cognition among children at genetic risk for Alzheimer's disease and/or major depressive disorder.

Early life adversity (ELA) tends to accelerate neurobiological ageing, which, in turn, is thought to heighten vulnerability to both major depressive disorder (MDD) and Alzheimer's disease (AD). The two conditions are putatively related, with MDD representing either a risk factor or early symptom of AD. Given the substantial environmental susceptibility of both disorders, timely identification of their neurocognitive markers could facilitate interventions to prevent clinical onset. To this end, we analysed multimodal data from the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development study (ages 9-10 years). To disentangle genetic from correlated genetic-environmental influences, while also probing gene-adversity interactions, we compared adoptees, a group generally exposed to substantial ELA, with children raised by their biological families via genetic risk scores (GRS) from genome-wide association studies. AD and MDD GRSs predicted overlapping and widespread neurodevelopmental alterations associated with superior fluid cognition. Specifically, among adoptees only, greater AD GRS were related to accelerated structural maturation (i.e., cortical thinning) and higher MDD GRS were linked to delayed functional neurodevelopment, as reflected in compensatory brain activation on an inhibitory control task. Our study identifies compensatory mechanisms linked to MDD risk and highlights the potential cognitive benefits of accelerated maturation linked to AD vulnerability in late childhood.

Pubertal timing and functional neurodevelopmental alterations independently mediate the effect of family conflict on adolescent psychopathology.

This study tested the hypothesis that early life adversity (ELA) heightens psychopathology risk by concurrently altering pubertal and neurodevelopmental timing, and associated gene transcription signatures. Analyses focused on threat- (family conflict/neighbourhood crime) and deprivation-related ELAs (parental inattentiveness/unmet material needs), using longitudinal data from 1514 biologically unrelated youths in the Adolescent Brain and Cognitive Development (ABCD) study. Typical developmental changes in white matter microstructure corresponded to widespread BOLD signal variability (BOLDsv) increases (linked to cell communication and biosynthesis genes) and region-specific task-related BOLDsv increases/decreases (linked to signal transduction, immune and external environmental response genes). Increasing resting-state (RS), but decreasing task-related BOLDsv predicted normative functional network segregation. Family conflict was the strongest concurrent and prospective contributor to psychopathology, while material deprivation constituted an additive risk factor. ELA-linked psychopathology was predicted by higher Time 1 threat-evoked BOLDSV (associated with axonal development, myelination, cell differentiation and signal transduction genes), reduced Time 2 RS BOLDsv (associated with cell metabolism and attention genes) and greater Time 1 to Time 2 control/attention network segregation. Earlier pubertal timing and neurodevelopmental alterations independently mediated ELA effects on psychopathology. Our results underscore the differential roles of the immediate and wider external environment(s) in concurrent and longer-term ELA consequences.

The Neural Dynamics of Individual Differences in Episodic Autobiographical Memory.

The ability to mentally travel to specific events from one's past, dubbed episodic autobiographical memory (E-AM), contributes to adaptive functioning. Nonetheless, the mechanisms underlying its typical interindividual variation remain poorly understood. To address this issue, we capitalize on existing evidence that successful performance on E-AM tasks draws on the ability to visualize past episodes and reinstate their unique spatiotemporal context. Hence, here, we test whether features of the brain's functional architecture relevant to perceptual versus conceptual processes shape individual differences in both self-rated E-AM and laboratory-based episodic memory (EM) for random visual scene sequences (visual EM). We propose that superior subjective E-AM and visual EM are associated with greater similarity in static neural organization patterns, potentially indicating greater efficiency in switching, between rest and mental states relevant to encoding perceptual information. Complementarily, we postulate that impoverished subjective E-AM and visual EM are linked to dynamic brain organization patterns implying a predisposition towards semanticizing novel perceptual information. Analyses were conducted on resting state and task-based fMRI data from 329 participants (160 women) in the Human Connectome Project (HCP) who completed visual and verbal EM assessments, and an independent gender diverse sample (N = 59) who self-rated their E-AM. Interindividual differences in subjective E-AM were linked to the same neural mechanisms underlying visual, but not verbal, EM, in general agreement with the hypothesized static and dynamic brain organization patterns. Our results suggest that higher E-AM entails more efficient processing of temporally extended information sequences, whereas lower E-AM entails more efficient semantic or gist-based processing.

The intrinsic neural architecture of inhibitory control: The role of development and emotional experience.

Inhibitory control is a key determinant of goal-directed behavior. Its susceptibility to reward implies that its variations may not only reflect cognitive ability, but also sensitivity to goal-relevant information. Since cognitive ability and motivational sensitivity vary as a function of age and mood, we hypothesized that their relevance for predicting individual differences in inhibition would similarly vary. Here, we tested this prediction with respect to the brain's intrinsic functional architecture. Specifically, we reasoned that age and affective functioning would both moderate the relationship between inhibition and resting state expression of the dynamic neural organization patterns linked to engaging in cognitive effort versus those involved in manipulating motivationally salient information. First, we used task fMRI data from the Human Connectome Project (N = 359 participants) to identify the brain organization patterns unique to effortful cognitive processing versus manipulation of motivationally relevant information. We then assessed the association between inhibitory control and relative expression of these two neural patterns in an independent resting state dataset from the Nathan Kline Institute-Rockland lifespan sample (N = 247). As hypothesized, the relation between inhibition and intrinsic functional brain architecture varied as a function of age and affective functioning. Among those with superior affective functioning, better inhibitory control in adolescence and early adulthood was associated with stronger resting state expression of the brain pattern that typified processing of motivationally salient information. The opposite effect emerged beyond the age of 49. Among individuals with poorer affective functioning, a significant link between inhibition and brain architecture emerged only before the age of 28. In this group, superior inhibition was associated with stronger resting state expression of the neural pattern that typified effortful cognitive processing. Our results thus imply that motivational relevance makes a unique contribution to superior cognitive functioning during earlier life stages. However, its relevance to higher-order mentation decreases with aging and increased prevalence of mood-related problems, which raises the possibility that patterns of neurobehavioral responsiveness to motivational salience may constitute sensitive markers of successful lifespan development.

Electroconvulsive therapy "corrects" the neural architecture of visuospatial memory: Implications for typical cognitive-affective functioning.

Although electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) is a widely used and effective treatment for refractory depression, the neural underpinnings of its therapeutic effects remain poorly understood. To address this issue, here, we focused on a core cognitive deficit associated with depression, which tends to be reliably ameliorated through ECT, specifically, the ability to learn visuospatial information. Thus, we pursued three goals. First, we tested whether ECT can "normalize" the functional brain organization patterns associated with visuospatial memory and whether such corrections would predict post-ECT improvements in learning visuospatial information. Second, we investigated whether, among healthy individuals, stronger expression of the neural pattern, susceptible to adjustments through ECT, would predict reduced incidence of depression-relevant cognition and affect. Third, we sought to quantify the heritability of the ECT-correctable neural profile. Thus, in a task fMRI study with a clinical and a healthy comparison sample, we characterized two functional connectome patterns: one that typifies trait depression (i.e., differentiates patients from healthy individuals) and another that is susceptible to "normalization" through ECT. Both before and after ECT, greater expression of the trait depression neural profile was associated with more frequent repetitive thinking about past personal events (affective persistence), a hallmark of depressogenic cognition. Complementarily, post-treatment, stronger expression of the ECT-corrected neural profile was linked to improvements in visuospatial learning, a mental ability which is markedly impaired in depression. Subsequently, using data from the Human Connectome Project (HCP) (N = 333), we demonstrated that the functional brain organization of healthy participants with greater levels of subclinical depression and higher incidence of its associated cognitive deficits (affective persistence, impaired learning) shows greater similarity to the trait depression neural profile and reduced similarity to the ECT-correctable neural profile, as identified in the patient sample. These results tended to be specific to learning-relevant task contexts (working memory, perceptual relational processing). Genetic analyses based on HCP twin data (N = 128 pairs) suggested that, among healthy individuals, a functional brain organization similar to the one normalized by ECT in the patient sample is endogenous to cognitive contexts that require visuospatial processing that extends beyond the here-and-now. Broadly, the present findings supported our hypothesis that some of the therapeutic effects of ECT may be due to its correcting the expression of a naturally occurring pattern of functional brain organization that facilitates integration of internal and external cognition beyond the immediate present. Given their substantial susceptibility to both genetic and environmental effects, such mechanisms may be useful both for identifying at risk individuals and for monitoring progress of interventions targeting mood-related pathology.

Cognitive resources, valence, and memory retrieval of emotional events in older adults.

In 2 studies with older adults, the authors investigated the effect of executive attention resources on the retrieval of emotional public events. Participants completed a battery of working memory tasks, as a measure of executive attention, and a battery of tasks assessing memory, as well as subjective experiences associated with the retrieval of remote public events. Participants also rated the valence of each public event story. The group-rated valence of the public event stories predicted retrieval and the quality of experiences associated with them, such that emotionally arousing events elicited the highest memory rates and the richest experiences. Furthermore, positive public events elicited the highest memory rates. Executive attention moderated only the relationship between event valence and how participants' associated memories are experienced at retrieval, such that superior executive attention resources predicted richer experiences associated with positive relative to neutral and negative stories. The current results extend previous findings on the effects of aging on emotion regulation, suggesting that cognitive control resources modulate subjective experiences associated with retrieved memories for remote real life events, but not memory retrieval itself.

Expressive suppression and neural responsiveness to nonverbal affective cues.

Optimal social functioning occasionally requires concealment of one's emotions in order to meet one's immediate goals and environmental demands. However, because emotions serve an important communicative function, their habitual suppression disrupts the flow of social exchanges and, thus, incurs significant interpersonal costs. Evidence is accruing that the disruption in social interactions, linked to habitual expressive suppression use, stems not only from intrapersonal, but also from interpersonal causes, since the suppressors' restricted affective displays reportedly inhibit their interlocutors' emotionally expressive behaviors. However, expressive suppression use is not known to lead to clinically significant social impairments. One explanation may be that over the lifespan, individuals who habitually suppress their emotions come to compensate for their interlocutors' restrained expressive behaviors by developing an increased sensitivity to nonverbal affective cues. To probe this issue, the present study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to scan healthy older women while they viewed silent videos of a male social target displaying nonverbal emotional behavior, together with a brief verbal description of the accompanying context, and then judged the target's affect. As predicted, perceivers who reported greater habitual use of expressive suppression showed increased neural processing of nonverbal affective cues. This effect appeared to be coordinated in a top-down manner via cognitive control. Greater neural processing of nonverbal cues among perceivers who habitually suppress their emotions was linked to increased ventral striatum activity, suggestive of increased reward value/personal relevance ascribed to emotionally expressive nonverbal behaviors. These findings thus provide neural evidence broadly consistent with the hypothesized link between habitual use of expressive suppression and compensatory development of increased responsiveness to nonverbal affective cues, while also suggesting one explanation for the suppressors' poorer cognitive performance in social situations. Moreover, our results point to a potential neural mechanism supporting the development and perpetuation of expressive suppression as an emotion regulation strategy.

Shame, sexual compulsivity, and eroticizing flirtatious others: an experimental study.

Clinical observation and correlational studies with nonclinical samples suggest that a linkage between negative affective states (especially shame) and engagement in erotic pursuits typifies sexual compulsivity. The present study tested whether experimental induction of shame leads to increased interest in erotically suggestive targets among more sexually compulsive individuals. A total of 74 age-traditional heterosexual university students first recalled either an emotionally neutral or a shame-inducing personal experience, then completed a nonpredictive gaze-cueing task featuring flirtatious or emotionally neutral faces of the same or opposite sex. They also rated the faces' attractiveness and completed a validated sexual compulsivity scale and two control measures (executive control, sociosexuality). Higher (versus lower) sexual compulsivity predicted weaker gaze-triggered attentional orienting in response to the flirtatious opposite-sex face in the shame (versus neutral) condition, and this was accounted for by (higher) attractiveness ratings of the flirtatious opposite-sex face. Shame thus appears to increase sexualization (i.e., reduces salience of agentic features and increases appeal of physical attributes) of erotically suggestive targets among more sexually compulsive individuals.

The Look that Binds: Partner-Directed Altruistic Motivation and Biased Perception in Married Couples.

A trustworthy appearance is regarded as a marker of a globally positive personality and, thus, evokes a host of benevolent responses from perceivers. Nevertheless, it is yet to be determined whether the reverse is also true, that is, whether social targets who evoke unambiguously benign motivations in perceivers are regarded as possessing a more trustworthy appearance (cf. Oosterhof & Todorov, 2008). To this end, elderly long-term married couples completed measures of partner-directed altruistic motivation, accommodative behaviors, marital satisfaction, and trust in the partner. They also completed a face-processing task involving spousal and stranger faces one year later. Higher motivation to prioritize a spouse's well-being (but none of the other relationship functioning variables assessed) predicted perceiving one's spouse's emotionally neutral face as being more trustworthy-looking. Results are discussed in the context of the reciprocal relationship between higher-order motivational processes and basic perceptual mechanisms in shaping relational climates.

Personality at Face Value: Facial Appearance Predicts Self and Other Personality Judgments among Strangers and Spouses.

Character judgments, based on facial appearance, impact both perceivers' and targets' interpersonal decisions and behaviors. Nonetheless, the resilience of such effects in the face of longer acquaintanceship duration is yet to be determined. To address this question, we had 51 elderly long-term married couples complete self and informant versions of a Big Five Inventory. Participants were also photographed, while they were requested to maintain an emotionally neutral expression. A subset of the initial sample completed a shortened version of the Big Five Inventory in response to the pictures of other opposite sex participants (with whom they were unacquainted). Oosterhof and Todorov's (2008) computer-based model of face evaluation was used to generate facial trait scores on trustworthiness, dominance, and attractiveness, based on participants' photographs. Results revealed that structural facial characteristics, suggestive of greater trustworthiness, predicted positively biased, global informant evaluations of a target's personality, among both spouses and strangers. Among spouses, this effect was impervious to marriage length. There was also evidence suggestive of a Dorian Gray effect on personality, since facial trustworthiness predicted not only spousal and stranger, but also self-ratings of extraversion. Unexpectedly, though, follow-up analyses revealed that (low) facial dominance, rather than (high) trustworthiness, was the strongest predictor of self-rated extraversion. Our present findings suggest that subtle emotional cues, embedded in the structure of emotionally neutral faces, exert long-lasting effects on personality judgments even among very well-acquainted targets and perceivers.

Proficiency in positive vs. negative emotion identification and subjective well-being among long-term married elderly couples.

Evidence is accruing that positive emotions play a crucial role in shaping a healthy interpersonal climate. Inspired by this research, the current investigation sought to shed light on the link between proficiency in identifying positive vs. negative emotions and a close partner's well-being. To this end, we conducted two studies with neurologically intact elderly married couples (Study 1) and an age-matched clinical sample, comprising married couples in which one spouse had been diagnosed with Parkinson's Disease (Study 2), which tends to hinder emotional expressivity. To assess proficiency in identifying emotions from whole body postures, we had participants in both studies complete a pointlight walker task, featuring four actors (two male, two female) expressing one positive (i.e., happiness) and three negative (i.e., sadness, anger, fear) basic emotions. Participants also filled out measures of subjective well-being. Among Study 1's neurologically intact spouses, greater expertise in identifying positive (but not negative) emotions was linked to greater partner life satisfaction (but not hedonic balance). Spouses of PD patients exhibited increased proficiency in identifying positive emotions relative to controls, possibly reflective of compensatory mechanisms. Complementarily, relative to controls, spouses of PD patients exhibited reduced proficiency in identifying negative emotions and a tendency to underestimate their intensity. Importantly, all of these effects attenuated with longer years from PD onset. Finally, there was evidence that it was increased partner expertise in identifying negative (rather than positive) emotional states that predicted greater life satisfaction levels among the PD patients and their spouses. Our results thus suggest that positive vs. negative emotions may play distinct roles in close relationship dynamics as a function of neurological status and disability trajectory.