Preparing for the Worst: Evidence that Older Adults Proactively Downregulate Negative Affect.

ABSTRACT: Previous studies have only investigated age-related differences in emotional processing and encoding in response to, not in anticipation of, emotional stimuli. In the current study, we investigated age-related differences in the impact of emotional anticipation on affective responses and episodic memory for emotional images. Young and older adults were scanned while encoding negative and neutral images preceded by cues that were either valid or invalid predictors of image valence. Participants were asked to rate the emotional intensity of the images and to complete a recognition task. Using multivariate behavioral partial least squares (PLS) analysis, we found that greater anticipatory recruitment of the amygdala, ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC), and hippocampus in older adults pred

SUBMITTER: Corbett B 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8205626 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature