Emotion Regulation, Aging and Mental Disorder (R01 Clinical Trial Not Allowed)

This Funding Opportunity Announcement (FOA) encourages applications for mechanistic research on age-related changes in emotion regulation and how they may contribute to mental disorders in middle-aged and older adults.In particular, research is sought that will advance understanding of irregularities in the integrative neural-behavioral mechanisms of emotion regulation in adult mood and anxiety disorders, and that will examine whether the irregularities are associated with typical or atypical maturational trajectories of emotion processing. If older adults who suffer episodes of affective dysregulation share the same patterns of improved emotional function with age as have been found to be typical of the older adult population in general. Research that helps to clarify whether they do or do not manifest typical emotion processing trajectories may lead to very different understanding of the irregularities involved their dysregulation.It is anticipated that such studies may identify novel targets for mental health interventions or prevention efforts, or provide clues as to which available intervention strategies might be optimally applied to normalize emotion dysregulation or to strengthen emotional resilience at particular stages of the adult life cycle.